Boston, Massachusetts
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, the capital of the state of Massachusetts, U.S.A., in Suffolk county; lat. 42° 21' 27.6" N., long. 71° 3' 30" W. Pop. (1900) 560,892, (197,129 being foreign born); (1905, state census) 595,580; (1910), 670,585. Boston is the terminus of the Boston & Albany (New York Central), the Old Colony system of the New York, New Haven & Hartford, and the Boston & Maine railway systems, each of which controls several minor roads once independent. The city lies on Massachusetts bay, on what was once a pear-shaped peninsula attached to the mainland by a narrow, marshy neck, often swept by the spray and water. On the north is the Charles river, which widens here into a broad, originally much broader, inner harbour or back-bay. The surface of the peninsula was very hilly and irregular, the shore-line was deeply indented with coves, and there were salt marshes that fringed the neck and the river-channel and were left oozy by the ebbing tides. Until after the War of Independence the primitive topography remained unchanged, but it was afterwards subjected to changes greater than those effected on the site of any other American city. The area of the original Boston was only 783 acres, but by the filling in of tidal flats (since 1804) this was increased to 1829 acres; while the larger corporate Boston of the present day - including the annexed territories of South Boston (1804), Roxbury (1868), Charlestown, Dorchester, Brighton and West Roxbury (1874) - comprehends almost 43 sq. m. The beautiful Public Garden and the finest residential quarter of the city - the Back Bay, so called from that inner harbour from whose waters it was reclaimed (1856-1886) - stand on what was once the narrowest, but to-day is the widest and fairest portion of the original site. Whole forests, vast quarries of granite, and hills of gravel were used in fringing the water margins, constructing wharves, piers and causeways, redeeming flats, and furnishing piling and solid foundations for buildings. At the edge of the Common, which is now well within the city, the British troops in 1775 took their boats on the eve of the battle of Lexington; and the post-office, now in the very heart of the business section of the city, stands on the original shore-line. The reclaimed territory is level and excellently drained. The original territory still preserves to a large degree its irregularity of surface, but its hills have been much degraded or wholly razed. Beacon Hill, so called from its ancient use as a signal warning station, is still the most conspicuous topographical feature of the city, but it has been changed from a bold and picturesque eminence into a gentle slope. After the great fire of 1872 it became possible, in the reconstruction of the business district, to widen and straighten its streets and create squares, and so provide for the traffic that had long outgrown the narrow, crooked ways of the older city. Atlantic Avenue, along the harbour front, was created, and Washington Street, the chief business artery, was largely remade after 1866. It is probable that up to 1875, at least, there had been a larger outlay of labour, material and money, in reducing, levelling and reclaiming territory, and in straightening and widening thoroughfares [1] in Boston, than had been expended for the same purposes in all the other chief cities of the United States together. Washington Street, still narrow, is perhaps the most crowded and congested thoroughfare in America. The finest residence streets are in the Back Bay, which is laid out, in sharp contrast with the older quarters, in a regular, rectangular arrangement. The North End, the original city and afterwards the fashionable quarter, is now given over to the Jews and foreign colonies.
The harbour islands, three of which have been ceded to the United States for the purpose of fortification, are numerous, and render the navigation of the shipping channels difficult and easily guarded. Though tortuous of access, the channels afford a clear passage of 27-35 ft. since great improvements were undertaken by the national government in 1892, 1899, 1902 and 1907, and the harbour, when reached, is secure. It affords nearly 60 sq. m. of anchorage, but the wharf line, for lack of early reservation, is not so large as it might and should have been. The islands in the harbour, now bare, were for the most part heavily wooded when first occupied. It has been found impossible to afforest them on account of the roughness of the sea-air, and the wash from their bluffs into the harbour has involved large expense in the erection of sea-walls. Castle Island has been fortified since the earliest days; Fort Independence, on this island, and Forts Winthrop and Warren on neighbouring islands, constitute permanent harbour defences. The broad watercourses around the peninsula are spanned by causeways and bridges, East Boston only, that the harbours may be open to the navy-yard at Charlestown, being reached by ferry (1870), and by the electric subway under the harbour. At the Charlestown navy-yard (1800) there are docks, manufactories, foundries, machine-shops, ordnance stores, rope-walks, furnaces, casting-pits, timber sheds, ordnance-parks, ship-houses, etc. The famous frigate "Independence" was launched here in 1814, the more famous "Constitution" having been launched while the yard was still private in 1797. The first bridge over the Charles, to Charlestown, was opened in 1786. The bridge of chief artistic merit is the Cambridge Bridge (1908), which replaced the old West Boston Bridge, and is one feature of improvements long projected for the beautifying of the Charles river basin.
Comparatively few relics of the early town have been spared by time and the improvements of the modern city. Three cemeteries remain intact - King's chapel burying ground, with the graves of John Winthrop and John Cotton; the Old Granary burial ground in the heart of the city, where Samuel Sewall, the parents of Franklin, John Hancock, James Otis and Samuel Adams are buried; and Copp's Hill burial ground, containing the tombs of the Mathers. Christ church (1723) is the oldest church of the city; in its tower the signal lanterns were displayed for Paul Revere on the night of the 18th of April 1775. The Old South church (1730-1782), the old state house (1748, restored 1882), and Faneuil Hall (1762-1763, enlarged 1805, reconstructed 1898) are rich in memorable associations of the period preceding the War of Independence. The second was the seat of the royal government of Massachusetts during the provincial period, and within its walls from 1760 to 1775 the questions of colonial dependence or independence probably first came into evident conflict. The Old South church has many associations; it was, for instance, the meeting-place of the people after the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, when they demanded the removal of the British troops from the city; and here, too, were held the meetings that led up to the "Boston Tea Party" of 1773. Faneuil Hall (the original hall of the name was given to the city by Peter Faneuil, a Huguenot merchant, in 1742) is associated, like the Old South, with the patriotic oratory of revolutionary days and is called "the cradle of American liberty." Its association with reform movements and great public issues of later times is not less close and interesting. [2] The adjoining Quincy market may be mentioned because its construction (1826) was utilized to open six new streets, widen a seventh, and secure flats, docks and wharf rights - all without laying tax or debt upon the city. The original King's chapel (1688, present building 1749-1754) was the first Episcopal church of Boston, which bitterly resented the action of the royal governor in 1687 in using the Old South for the services of the Church of England. The new state house, the oldest portion of which (designed by Charles Bulfinch) was erected in 1795-1798, was enlarged in 1853-1856, and again by a huge addition in 1889-1898 (total cost about $6,800,000 to 1900). Architecturally, everything is subordinated to a conformity with the style of the original portion; and its gilded dome is a conspicuous landmark. Other buildings of local importance are the city hall (1865); the United States government building (1871-1878, cost about $6,000,000); the county court-house (1887-1893, $2,250,000); the custom-house (1837-1848); and the chamber of commerce (1892).
Copley Square, in the Back Bay, is finely distinguished by a group of exceptional buildings: Trinity church, the old Museum of Fine Arts, the public library and the new Old South church. Trinity (1877, cost $800,000), in yellowish granite with dark sandstone trimmings, the masterpiece of H.H. Richardson, is built in the Romanesque style of southern France; it is a Latin cross surmounted by a massive central tower, with smaller towers and an adjacent chapel reached by open cloisters that distribute the balance (see Architecture, Plate XVI. fig. 137). It has windows by La Farge, William Morris, Burne-Jones and others.
The library (1888-1895; cost $2,486,000, exclusive of the site, given by the state) is a dignified, finely proportioned building of pinkish-grey stone, built in the style of the Italian Renaissance, suggesting a Florentine palace. It has an imposing exterior (see Architecture, Plate XVI. fig. 135), a beautiful inner court, and notable decorative features and embellishments, including bronze doors by D.C. French, a statue of Sir Henry Vane by Macmonnies, a fine staircase in Siena marble, some characteristic decorative panels by Puvis de Chavannes (illustrating the history of science and literature), and other notable decorative paintings by John S. Sargent (on the history of religion), Edwin A. Abbey (on the quest of the Holy Grail). The old Museum of Fine Arts (1876) is a red brick edifice in modern Gothic style, with trimmings of light stone and terra-cotta. The new Old South (the successor of the Old South, which is now a museum) is a handsome structure of Italian Gothic style, with a fine campanile. The dignified buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are near. In Huntington Avenue, at its junction with Massachusetts Avenue, is another group of handsome new buildings, including Horticultural Hall, Symphony Hall (1900) and the New England Conservatory of Music. In the Back Bay Fens, reclaimed swamps laid out by F.L. Olmsted, still other groups have formed - among others those of the marble buildings of the Harvard medical school; Fenway Court, a building in the style, internally, of a Venetian palace, that houses the art treasures of Mrs. J.L. Gardner, and Simmons College. Here, too, is the new building (1908) of the Museum of Fine Arts. Throughout the Fens excellently effective use is being made of monumental buildings grouped in ample grounds.
Boston compares favourably with other American cities in the character of its public and private architecture. The height of buildings in the business section is limited to 125 ft., and in some places to 90 ft.
One of the great public works of Boston is its subway for electric trams, about 3 m. long, in part with four tracks and in part with two, constructed since 1895 at a cost of about $7,500,000 up to 1905. The branch to East Boston (1900-1904) passes beneath the harbour bed and extends from Scollay Square, Boston, to Maverick Square, East Boston; it was the first all-cement tunnel (diameter, 23.6 ft.) in the world. The subway was built by the city, but leased and operated by a private company on such terms as to repay its cost in forty years. Another tunnel has been added to the system, under Washington Street. The narrow streets and the traffic congestion of the business district presented difficult problems of urban transit, but the system is of exceptional efficiency. There is an elevated road whose trains, like the surface cars, are accommodated in the centre of the city by the subway. All the various roads - surface, elevated (about 7 m., built 1896-1901), and subway - are controlled, almost wholly, by one company. They all connect and interchange passengers freely; so that the ordinary American five-cent fare enables a passenger to travel between almost any two points over an area of 100 sq. m. The two huge steam-railway stations of the Boston & Maine and the Boston & Albany systems also deserve mention. The former (the North, or Union station, 1893) covers 9 acres and has 23 tracks; the latter (the South Terminal, 1898), one of the largest stations in the world, covers 13 acres and has 32 tracks, and is used by the Boston & Albany and by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways.
A noteworthy feature of the metropolitan public water service was begun in 1896 in the Wachusett lake reservoir at Clinton, on the Nashua river. The basin here excavated by ten years of labour, lying 385 ft. above high-tide level of Boston harbour, has an area of 6.5 sq. m., an average depth of 46 ft., and a capacity of 63,068,000,000 gallons of water. It is the largest municipal reservoir in the world [3] , yet it is only part of a system planned for the service of the metropolitan area.
The park system is quite unique among American cities. The Common, a park of 48 acres, in the centre of the city, has been a public reservation since 1634, and no city park in the world is cherished more affectionately for historical associations. Adjoining it is the Public Garden of 24 acres (1859), part of the made area of the city. Commonwealth Avenue, one of the Back Bay streets running from the foot of the Public Garden, is one of the finest residence streets of the country. It is 240 ft. wide, with four rows of trees shading the parking of its central mall, and is a link through the Back Bay Fens with the beautiful outer park system. The park system consists of two concentric rings, the inner being the city system proper, the outer the metropolitan system undertaken by the commonwealth in co-operation with the city. The former has been laid out since 1875, and includes upwards of 2300 acres, with more than 100 m. of walks, drives and rides. Its central ornament is Franklin Park (527 acres). The metropolitan system, which extends around the city on a radius of 10 to 12 m., was begun in 1893. It embraces over 10,000 acres, including the Blue Hill reservation (about 5000 acres), the highest land in eastern Massachusetts, a beautiful reservation of forest, crag and pond known as Middlesex Fells, two large beach bath reservations on the harbour at Revere and Hull (Nantasket), and the boating section of the Charles river. At the end of 1907 more than $13,000,000 had been expended on the system. Including the local parks of the cities and towns of the metropolitan district there are over 17,000 acres of pleasure grounds within the metropolitan park district. Boston was the pioneer municipality of the country in the establishment of open-air gymnasiums. A great improvement, planned for many years, was brought nearer by the completion of the new Cambridge Bridge. This improvement was projected to include the damming of the Charles river, and the creation of a great freshwater basin, with drive-ways of reclaimed land along the shores, and other adornments, somewhat after the model of the Alster basins at Hamburg.
Art and Literature. - The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 (though there were art exhibits collected from 1826 onward) and its present building was erected in 1908. It has one of the finest collections of casts in existence, a number of original pieces of Greek statuary, the second-best collection in the world of Aretine ware, the finest collection of Japanese pottery, and probably the largest and finest of Japanese paintings in existence. Among the memorials to men of Massachusetts (a large part of them Bostonians) commemorated by monuments in the Common, the Public Garden, the grounds of the state house, the city hall, and other public places of the city, are statues of Charles Sumner, Josiah Quincy and John A. Andrew by Thomas Ball; of Generals Joseph Hooker and William F. Bartlett, and of Rufus Choate by Daniel C. French; of W.L. Garrison and Charles Devens by Olin L. Warner; of Samuel Adams by Anne Whitney; of John Winthrop and Benjamin Franklin by R.S. Greenough; of Edward Everett (W.W. Story), Colonel W. Prescott (Story), Horace Mann (E. Stebbins), Daniel Webster (H. Powers), W.E. Channing (H. Adams), N.P. Banks (H.H. Kitson), Phillips Brooks (A. St Gaudens), and J.B. O'Reilly (D.C. French).
Among other important monuments are a group by J.Q.A. Ward commemorating the first proof of the anaesthetic properties of ether, made in 1846 in the Massachusetts General Hospital by Dr W.T.G. Morton; an emancipation group of Thomas Ball with a portrait statue of Lincoln; a fine equestrian statue, by the same sculptor, of Washington, one of the best works in the country (1869); an army and navy monument in the Common by Martin Millmore, in memory of the Civil War; another (1888) recording the death of those who fell in the Boston Massacre of 1770; statues of Admiral D.G. Farragut (H.H. Kitson), Leif Ericson (Anne Whitney), and Alexander Hamilton (W. Rimmer); and a magnificent bronze bas-relief (1897) by Augustus St Gaudens commemorating the departure from Boston of Colonel Robert G. Shaw with the first regiment of negro soldiers enlisted in the Civil War. There is an art department of the city government, under unpaid commissioners, appointed by the mayor from candidates named by local art and literary institutions; and without their approval no work of art can now become the property of the city.
The public library, containing 922,348 volumes in January 1908, is the second library of the country in size, and is the largest free circulating library in the world (circulation 1907, 1,529,111 volumes). There was a public municipal library in Boston before 1674 - probably in 1653; but it was burned in 1747 and was apparently never replaced. The present library (antedated by several circulating, social and professional collections) may justly be said to have had its origin in the efforts of the Parisian, Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864), from 1830 on, to foster international exchanges. From 1847 to 1851 he arranged gifts from France to American libraries aggregating 30,655 volumes, and a gift of 50 volumes by the city of Paris in 1843 (reciprocated in 1849 with more than 1000 volumes contributed by private citizens) was the nucleus of the Boston public library. Its legal foundation dates from 1848. Among the special collections are the George Ticknor library of Spanish and Portuguese books (6393 vols.), very full sets of United States and British public documents, the Bowditch mathematical library (7090 vols.), the Galatea collection on the history of women (2193 vols.), the Barton library, including one of the finest existing collections of Shakespeariana (3309 vols., beside many in the general library), the A.A. Brown library of music (9886 vols.), a very full collection on the anthropology and ethnology of Europe, and more than 100,000 volumes on the history, biography, geography and literature of the United States. The library is supported almost entirely by municipal appropriations, though holding also considerable trust funds ($388,742 in 1905). The other notable book-collections of the city include those of the Athenaeum, founded in 1807 (about 230,000 vols. and pamphlets), the Massachusetts Historical Society (founded 1791; 50,300), the Boston medical library (founded 1874; about 80,000), the New England Historic-Genealogical Society (founded 1845; 33,750 volumes and 34,150 pamphlets), the state library (founded 1826; 140,000), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (founded 1780; 30,000), the Boston Society of Natural History (founded 1830; about 35,000 volumes and 27,000 pamphlets).
The leading educational institutions are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the largest purely scientific and technical school in the country, opened to students (including women) in 1865, four years after the granting of a charter to Prof. W.B. Rogers, the first president; Boston University (chartered in 1869; Methodist Episcopal; co-educational); the New England Conservatory of Music (co-educational; private; 1867, incorporated 1880), the largest in the United States, having 2400 students in 1905-1906; the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy (1852); the Massachusetts Normal Art School (1873); the School of Drawing and Painting (1876) of the Museum of Fine Arts; Boston College (1860), Roman Catholic, under the Society of Jesus; St John's Theological Seminary (1880), Roman Catholic; Simmons College (1899) for women, and several departments of Harvard University. The Institute of Technology has an exceptional reputation for the wide range of its instruction and its high standards of scholarship. It was a pioneer in introducing as a feature of its original plans laboratory instruction in physics, mechanics and mining. The architects of the United States navy are sent here for instruction in their most advanced courses. Boston University was endowed by Isaac Rich (1801-1872), a Boston fish-merchant, Lee Claflin (1791-1871), a shoe manufacturer and a benefactor of Wesleyan University and of Wilbraham Seminary, and Jacob Sleeper. It has been co-educational from the beginning. Its faculties of theology - founded in 1841 at Newbury, Vt., as the Biblical Institute; in 1847-1867 in Concord, N.H.; and in 1867-1871 the Boston Theological Seminary - law, music, medicine, liberal arts and agriculture (at Amherst, in association with the Massachusetts Agricultural College), all antedate 1876. The funds for Simmons College were left by John Simmons in 1870, who wished to found a school to teach the professions and "branches of art, science and industry best calculated to enable the scholars to acquire an independent livelihood." The Lowell Institute (q.v.), established in 1839 (by John Lowell, Jr., who bequeathed $237,000 for the purpose), provides yearly courses of free public lectures, and its lecturers have included many of the leading scholars of America and Europe. During each winter, also, a series of public lectures on American history is delivered in the Old South meeting house. The public schools, particularly the secondary schools, enjoy a very high reputation. The new English High and Latin school, founded in 1635, is the oldest school of the country. A girls' Latin school, with the same standards as the boys' school, was established in 1878 (an outcome of the same movement that founded Radcliffe College). There are large numbers of private schools, in art, music and academic studies.
In theatrical matters Boston is now one of the chief American centres. The Federal Street theatre - the first regular theatre - was established in 1794, the old Puritan feeling having had its natural influence in keeping Boston behind New York and Philadelphia in this respect. The dramatic history of the city is largely associated with the Boston Museum, built in 1841 by Moses Kimball on Tremont Street, and rebuilt in 1846 and 1880; here for half a century the principal theatrical performances were given (see an interesting article in the New England Magazine, June 1903), in later years under the management of R. Montgomery Field, until in 1903 the famous Boston Museum was swept away, as other interesting old places of entertainment (the old Federal Street theatre, the Tremont theatre, etc.) had been, in the course of further building changes. The Boston theatre dates from 1854, and there were seventeen theatres altogether in 1900.
As a musical centre Boston rivals New York. Among musical organizations may be mentioned the Handel and Haydn Society (1815), the Harvard Musical Association (1837), the Philharmonic (1880) and the Symphony Orchestra, organized in 1881 by the generosity of Henry Lee Higginson. This orchestra has done much for music not only in Boston but in the United States generally. In 1908 the Boston Opera Company was incorporated, and an opera house has been erected on the north side of Huntington Avenue.
Boston was the undisputed literary centre of America until the later decades of the 19th century, and still retains a considerable and important colony of writers and artists. Its ascendancy was identical with the long predominance of the New England literary school, who lived in Boston or in the country round about. Two Boston periodicals (one no longer so) that still hold an exceptional position in periodical literature, the North American Review (1815) and the Atlantic Monthly (1857), date from this period. The great majority of names in the long list of worthies of the commonwealth - writers, statesmen, orators, artists, philanthropists, reformers and scholars, are intimately connected with Boston. Among the city's daily newspapers the Boston Herald (1846), the Boston Globe, the Evening Transcript (1830), the Advertiser (1813) and the Post (1831) are the most important.
Industry and Commerce. - Boston is fringed with wharves. Commercial interests are largely concentrated in East Boston. Railway connexion with Worcester, Lowell and Providence was opened in 1835; with Albany, N.Y., and thereby with various lines of interior communication, in 1841 (double track, 1868); with Fitchburg, in 1845; and in 1851 connexion was completed with the Great Lakes and Canada. In 1840 Boston was selected as the American terminus of the Cunard Line, the first regular line of trans-Atlantic steamers. The following decade was the most active of the city's history as regards the ocean carrying trade. Boston ships went to all parts of the globe. The Cunard arrangement was the first of various measures that worked for a commercial rapprochement between the New England states and Canada, culminating in the reciprocity treaty of 1854, and Boston's interests are foremost to-day in demanding a return to relations of reciprocity. Beginning about 1855 the commerce of the port greatly declined. The Cunard service has not been continuous. In 1869 there was not one vessel steaming directly for Europe; in 1900 there were 973 for foreign ports. Great improvements of the harbour were undertaken in 1902 by the United States government, looking to the creation of two broad channels 35 ft. deep. Railway rates have also been a matter of vital importance in recent years; Boston, like New York, complaining of discriminations in favour of Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Galveston. Boston also feels the competition of Montreal and Portland; the Canadian roads being untrammelled in the matter of freight differentials. Boston is the second import port of the United States, but its exports in 1907 were less than those of Philadelphia, of Galveston, or of New Orleans. The total tonnage in foreign trade entering and leaving in 1907 was 5,148,429 tons; and in the same year 9616 coasting vessels (tonnage, 10,261,474) arrived in Boston. The value of imports and exports for 1907 were respectively $123,414,168 and $104,610,908. Fibres and vegetable grasses, wool, hides and skins, cotton, sugar, iron and steel and their manufactures, chemicals, coal, and leather and its manufactures are the leading imports; provisions, leather and its manufactures, cotton and its manufactures, breadstuffs, iron and steel and their manufactures are the leading exports. In the exportation of cattle, and of the various meat and dairy products classed as provisions, Boston is easily second to New York. It is the largest wool and the largest fish market of the United States, being in each second in the world to London only.
Manufacturing is to-day the most distinctive industry, as was commerce in colonial times. The value of all manufactured products from establishments under the "factory system" in 1900 was $162,764,523; in 1905 it was $184,351,163. Among the leading and more distinctive items were printing and publishing ($21,023,855 in 1905); sugar and molasses refining ($15,746,547 in 1900; figures not published in 1905 because of the industry being in the hands of a single owner); men's clothing (in 1900, $8,609,475, in 1905, $11,246,004); women's clothing (in 1900, $3,258,483, in 1905, $5,705,470); boots and shoes (in 1900, $3,882,655, in 1905, $5,575,927); boot and shoe cut stock (in 1905, $5,211,445); malt liquors (in 1900, $7,518,668, in 1905, $6,715,215); confectionery (in 1900, $4,455,184, in 1905, $6,210,023); tobacco products (in 1900, $3,504,603, in 1905, $4,592,698); pianos and organs ($3,670,771 in 1905); other musical instruments and materials (in 1905, $231,780); rubber and elastic goods (in 1900, $3,139,783, in 1905, $2,887,323); steam fittings and heating apparatus (in 1900, $2,876,327, in 1905, $3,354,020); bottling, furniture, etc. Art tiles and pottery are manufactured in Chelsea. Shipbuilding and allied industries early became of great importance. The Waltham watch and the Singer sewing-machine had their beginning in Boston in 1850. The making of the Chickering pianos goes back to 1823, and of Mason & Hamlin reed organs to 1854; these are to-day very important and distinctive manufactures of the city. The ready-made clothing industry began about 1830.
Government. - Beyond a recognition of its existence in 1630, when it was renamed, Boston can show no legal incorporation before 1822; although the uncertain boundaries between the powers of colony and township prompted repeated petitions to the legislature for incorporation, beginning as early as 1650. In 1822 Boston became a city. Thus for nearly two centuries it preserved intact its old "town" government, disposing of all its affairs in the "town-meeting" of its citizens. Excellent political training such a government unquestionably offered; but it became unworkable as disparities of social condition increased, as the number of legal voters (above 7000 in 1822) became greater, and as the population ceased to be homogeneous in blood. All the citizens did not assemble; on the contrary ordinary business seldom drew out more than a hundred voters, and often a mere handful. From very early days executive officers known as "select-men," constables, clerks of markets, hog reeves, packers of meat and fish, etc., were chosen; and the select-men, particularly, gained power as the attendance of the freemen on meetings grew onerous. Interested cliques could control the business of the town-meeting in ordinary times, and boisterousness marred its democractic excellence in exciting times. Large sums were voted loosely, and expended by executive boards without any budgetary control. The whole system was full of looseness, complexity and makeshifts. But the tenacity with which it was clung to, proved that it was suited to the community; and whether helpful or harmful to, it was not inconsistent with, the continuance of growth and prosperity. Various other Massachusetts townships, as they have grown older, have been similarly compelled to abandon their old form of government. The powers of the old township were much more extensive than those of the present city of Boston, including as they did the determination of the residence of strangers, the allotment of land, the grant of citizenship, the fixing of wages and prices, of the conditions of lawsuits and even a voice in matters of peace and war. The city charter was revised in 1854, and again reconstructed in important particulars by laws of 1885 separating the executive and legislative powers, and by subsequent acts. A complete alteration of the government has indeed been effected since 1885. Boston proper is only the centre of a large metropolitan area, closely settled, with interests in large part common. This metropolitan area, within a radius of approximately 10 m. about the state house, contained in 1900 about 40% of the population of the state. In the last two decades of the 19th century the question of giving to this greater city some general government, fully consolidated or of limited powers, was a standing question of expediency. The commonwealth has four times recognized a community of metropolitan interests in creating state commissions since 1882 for the union of such interests, beginning with a metropolitan health district in that year. The metropolitan water district (1895) included in 1908 Boston and seventeen cities or townships in its environs; the metropolitan sewerage district (1889) twenty four; the park service (1893) thirty-nine. Local sentiment was firmly against complete consolidation. The creation of the state commissions, independent of the city's control, but able to commit the city indefinitely by undertaking expensive works and new debt, was resented. Independence is further curtailed by other state boards semi-independent of the city - the police commission of three members from 1885 to 1906, and in 1906 a single police commissioner, appointed by the governor, a licensing board of three members, appointed by the governor; the transit commission, etc. There are, further, county offices (Suffolk county comprises only Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop), generally independent of the city, though the latter pays practically all the bills.
A new charter went into effect in 1910. It provided for municipal elections in January; for the election of a mayor for four years; for his recall at the end of two years if a majority of the registered voters so vote in the state election in November in the second year of his term; for the summary removal for cause by the mayor of any department head or other of his appointees, for a city council of one chamber of nine members, elected at large each for three years; for nomination by petition; for a permanent finance commission appointed by the governor; for the confirmation of the mayor's appointments by the state civil service commission; for the mayor's preparation of the annual budget (in which items may be reduced but not increased by the council), and for his absolute veto of appropriations except for school use. The school committee (who serve gratuitously) appoint the superintendent and supervisors of schools. The number of members of the school-board was in 1905 reduced from twenty-four to five, elected by the city at large, and serving for one, two or three years; at the same time power was centralized in the hands of the superintendent of schools. Civil service reform principles cover the entire municipal administration. The city's work is done under an eight-hour law.
An analysis of city election returns for the decade 1890-1899 showed that the interest of the citizens was greatest in the choice of a president; then, successively, in the choice of a mayor, a governor, the determination of liquor-license questions by referendum, and the settlement of other referenda. On 21 referenda, 10 being questions of license, the ratio of actual to registered voters ranged on the latter from 57.00 to 75.38% (mean 61.15), and on other referenda from 75.63 to 33.40 (mean 61.39), - the mean for all, 64.18. But the average of two presidential votes was 85.37%; and the maxima, minima and means for mayors and governors were respectively 83.86, 74.99, 78.36 and 84.73, 61.78, 75.72. Of those who might, only some 50 to 65% actually register. Women vote for school committee-men (categories as above, 95.18, 59.62, 76.49%). On a referendum in 1895 on the expediency of granting municipal suffrage to women only 59.08% of the women who were registered voted, and probably less than 10% of those entitled to be registered.
Hospitals, asylums, refuges and homes, pauper, reformatory and penal institutions, flower missions, relief associations, and other charitable or philanthropic organizations, private and public, number several hundreds. The Associated Charities is an incorporated organization for systematizing the various charities of the city. The Massachusetts general hospital (1811-1821) - with a branch for mental and nervous diseases, McLean hospital (1816), in the township of Belmont (post-office, Waverley) about 6 m. W.N.W. of Boston; the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind (1832), famous for its conduct by Samuel G. Howe, and for association with Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller; the Massachusetts school for idiotic and feebleminded children (1839); and the Massachusetts charitable eye and ear infirmary (1824), all receive financial aid from the commonwealth, which has representation in their management. The city hospital dates from 1864. A floating hospital for women and children in the summer months, with permanent and transient wards, has been maintained since 1894 (incorporated 1901). Boston was one of the first municipalities of the country to make provision for the separate treatment of juvenile offenders; in 1906 a juvenile court was established. A People's Palace dedicated to the work of the Salvation Army, and containing baths, gymnasium, a public hall, a library, sleeping-rooms, an employment bureau, free medical and legal bureaus, etc., was opened in 1906. Simmons College and Harvard University maintain the Boston school for social workers (1904). Beneficent social work out of the more usual type is directed by the music and bath departments of the city government. In the provision of public gymnasiums and baths (1866) Boston was the pioneer city of the country, and remains the most advanced. The beach reservations of the metropolitan park system at Revere and Nantasket, and several smaller city beaches are a special feature of this service. Benjamin Franklin, who was born and spent his boyhood in Boston, left £1000 to the city in his will; it amounted in 1905 to $403,000, and constituted a fund to be used for the good of the labouring class of the city.
Largely owing to activity in public works Boston has long been the most expensively governed of American cities. The average yearly expenditure for ten years preceding 1904 was $27,354,416, exclusive of payments on funded and floating debts. The running expenses per-capita in 1900 were $35.23; more than twice the average of 86 leading cities of the country (New York, $23.92; Chicago, $11.62). Schools, police, charities, water, streets and parks are the items of heaviest cost. The cost of the public schools for the five years from 1901-1902 to 1906-1907 was $27,883,937, of which $7,057,895.42 was for new buildings; the cost of the police department was $11,387,314.66 for the six years 1902-1907; and of the water department $4,941,343.37 for the six years 1902-1907; of charities and social work a much larger sum. The remaking of the city was enormously expensive, especially the alteration of the streets after 1866, when the city received power to make such alterations and assess a part of the improvements upon abutting estates. The creation of the city water-system has also been excessively costly, and the total cost up to the 31st of January 1908 of the works remaining to the city after the creation of the metropolitan board in 1898 was about $17,000,000. The metropolitan water board - of whose expenditures Boston bears only a share - expended from 1895 to 1900 $20,693,870; and the system was planned to consume finally probably 40 millions at least. The city park system proper had cost $16,627,033 up to 1899 inclusive; and the metropolitan parks $13,679,456 up to 1907 inclusive. There are no municipal lighting-plants; but the companies upon which the city depends for its service are (with all others) subject to the control of a state commission. In 1885 a state law placed a limit on the contractable debt and upon the taxation rate of the city. Revenues were not realized adequate to its lavish undertakings, and loans were used to meet current expenses. The limits were altered subsequently, but the net debt has continued to rise. In 1822 it was $100,000; in 1850, $6,195,144; in 1886, $24,712,820; in 1904, $58,216,725; in 1907, $70,781,969 (gross debt, $104,206,706) - this included the debt of Suffolk county which in 1907 was $3,517,000. The chief objects for which the city debt was created were in 1907, in millions of dollars: highways, 24.07, parks, 16.29, drainage and sewers, 15.05, rapid transit, 13.57 and water-works, 4.53. Boston paid in 1907 36% of all state taxes, and about 33, 62, 47 and 79% respectively of the assessments for the metropolitan sewer, parks, boulevards and water services. About a third of its revenue goes for such uses or for Suffolk county expenditures over which it has but limited control. The improvement of the Back Bay and of the South Boston flats was in considerable measure forced upon the city by the commonwealth. The debt per capita is as high as the cost of current administration relatively to other cities. The average interest rate on the city obligations in 1907 was about 3.7%. The city's tax valuation in 1907 was $1,313,471,556 (in 1822, $42,140,200; in 1850, $180,000,500), of which only $242,606,856 represented personalty; although in the judgment of the city board of trade such property cannot by any possibility be inferior in value to realty.
Population. - Up to the War of Independence the population was not only American, but it was in its ideas and standards essentially Puritan; modern liberalism, however, has introduced new standards of social life. In 1900 35.1% of the inhabitants were foreign-born, and 72.2% wholly or in part of foreign parentage. Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian, English and German are the leading races. Of the foreign-born population these elements constituted respectively 35.6, 24.0, 7.6, 7.0, 6.7 and 5.3%. Large foreign colonies, like adjoining but unmixing nations, divide among themselves a large part of the city, and give to its life a cosmopolitan colour of varied speech, opinion, habits, traditions, social relations and religions. Most remarkable of all, the Roman Catholic churches, in this stronghold of exiled Puritanism where Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned against each other on the question of the control of the public schools. Despite, however, its heavy foreign admixture the old Americanism of the city remains strikingly predominant. The population of Boston at the end of each decennial period since 1790 was as follows: - (1790), 18,320; (1800), 24,937; (1810), 33,787; (1820), 43,298; (1830), 61,392; (1840), 93,383; (1850), 136,881; (1860), 177,840; (1870), 250,526; (1880), 362,839; (1890), 448,477; (1900), 560,892.
History. - John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay, within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop's company reached Charlestown. At that time a "bookish recluse," William Blaxton (Blackstone), one of the several "old planters" scattered about the bay, had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp's and Fort) led to the adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula, - a name perpetuated variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the 17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations, it was ordered that "Trimountaine shall be called Boston," after the borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens. [4]
For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General Court agreed "by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay." It rapidly became the wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable. Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this epoch - the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions, the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648, 1651, 1656, 1688) etc. - are referred to in the article Massachusetts (q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, the Boston News-Letter, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found "Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet." Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston "town" was drawing society from the "country." Of the two-score or so of families most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous, thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation "as polite as in most of the cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London."
The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded - often evading British laws - with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. The merchant princes and social leaders of the time are painted with elaborate show of luxury in the canvases of Copley. The great English writers of Queen Anne's reign seem to have been but little known in the colony, and the local literature, though changed somewhat in character, showed but scant improvement. About the middle of the century restrictions upon the press began to disappear. At the same time questions of trade, of local politics, finally of colonial autonomy, of imperial policy, had gradually, but already long since, replaced theology in leading interest. In the years 1760-1776 Boston was the most frequently recurring and most important name in British colonial history. Sentiments of limited independence of the British government had been developing since the very beginning of the settlement (see Massachusetts), and their strength in 1689 had been strikingly exhibited in the local revolution of that year, when the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and other high officials, were frightened into surrender and were imprisoned. This movement, it should be noted, was a popular rising, and not the work of a few leaders.
The incidents that marked the approach of the War of Independence need barely be adverted to. Opposition to the measures of the British government for taxing and oppressing the colonies began in Boston. The argument of Otis on the writs of assistance was in 1760-1761. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, was repealed in 1766; it was opposed in Boston by a surprising show of determined and unified public sentiment. Troops were first quartered in the town in 1768. In 1770, on the 5th of March, in a street brawl, a number of citizens were killed or wounded by the soldiers, who fired into a crowd that were baiting a sentry. This incident is known as the "Boston Massacre." The Tea Act of 1773 was defied by the emptying into the harbour of three cargoes of tea on the 16th of December 1773, by a party of citizens disguised as Indians, after the people in town-meeting had exhausted every effort, through a period of weeks, to procure the return of the tea-ships to England. To this act Great Britain replied by various penal regulations and reconstructive acts of government. She quartered troops in Boston; she made the juries, sheriffs and judges of the colony dependent on the royal officers; she ordered capital offenders to be tried in Nova Scotia or England; she endeavoured completely to control or to abolish town-meetings; and finally, by the so-called "Boston Port Bill," she closed the port of Boston on the 1st of June 1774. Not even a ferry, a scow or other boat could move in the harbour. Marblehead and Salem were made ports of entry, and Salem was made the capital. But they would not profit by Boston's misfortune. The people covenanted not to use British goods and to suspend trade with Great Britain. From near neighbours and from distant colonies came provisions and encouragement. In October 1774, when General Gage refused recognition to the Massachusetts general court at Salem, the members adjourned to Concord as the first provincial congress. Finally came war, with Lexington and Bunker Hill, and beleaguerment by the colonial army; until on the 17th of March 1776 the British were compelled by Washington to evacuate the city. With them went about 1100 Tory refugees, many of them of the finest families of the city and province. The evacuation closed the heroic period of Boston's history. War did not again approach the city.
The years from 1776 to the end of "town" government in 1822 were marked by slow growth and prosperity. Commerce and manufactures alike took great impetus. Direct trade with the East Indies began about 1785, with Russia in 1787. A Boston vessel, the "Columbia" (Captain Robert Gray), opened trade with the north-west coast of America, and was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe (1787-1790). In 1805 Boston began the export of ice to Jamaica, a trade which was gradually extended to Cuba, to ports of the southern states, and finally to Rio de Janeiro and Calcutta (1833), declining only after the Civil War; it enabled Boston to control the American trade of Calcutta against New York throughout the entire period. But of course it was far less important than various other articles of trade in the aggregate values of commerce. It was Boston commerce that was most sorely hurt by the embargo and non-importation policy of President Jefferson. In manufactures the foundation was laid of the city's wealth. In politics the period is characterized by Boston's connexion with the fortunes of the Federalist party. The city was warmly in favour of the adoption of the federal constitution of 1787; even Samuel Adams was rejected for Congress because he was backward in its support. It was the losses entailed upon her commerce by the commercial policy of Jefferson's administration that embittered Boston against the Democratic-Republican party and put her public men in the forefront of the opposition to its policies that culminated in lukewarmness toward the War of 1812, and in the Hartford Convention of 1814.
Some mention must be made of the Unitarian movement. Unitarian tendencies away from the Calvinism of the old Congregational churches were plainly evident about 1750, and it is said by Andrew P. Peabody (1811-1893) that by 1780 nearly all the Congregational pulpits around Boston were filled by Unitarians. Organized Unitarianism in Boston dates from 1785. In 1782 King's chapel (Episcopal) became Unitarian, and in 1805 one of that faith was made professor of divinity in Harvard. But the Unitarianism of those times, even the Unitarianism of Channing, was very different from that of to-day. Theodore Parker and Channing have been the greatest leaders. The American Unitarian Association, organized in 1825, has always retained its headquarters in Boston. The theological and philosophical developments of the second quarter of the 19th century were characterized by the transcendental movement (see Massachusetts).
In the period from 1822 to the Civil War anti-slavery is the most striking feature of Boston's annals. Garrison established the Liberator in 1831; W.E. Channing became active in the cause of abolition in 1835, and Wendell Phillips a little later. In 1835 a mob, composed in part of wealthy and high-standing citizens, attacked a city-building, and dragged Garrison through the streets until the mayor secured his safety by putting him in gaol. But times changed. In 1850 a reception was given in Faneuil Hall in honour of the English anti-slavery leader, George Thompson, whose reported intention to address Bostonians in 1835 precipitated the riot of that year. In 1851 the Court House was surrounded with chains to prevent the "rescue" of a slave (Sims) held for rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law; another slave (Shadrach) was released this same year, and in 1854 there was a riot and intense excitement over the rendition of Anthony Burns. Boston had long since taken her place in the very front of anti-slavery ranks, and with the rest of Massachusetts was playing somewhat the same part as in the years before the War of Independence.
Later events of importance have already been indicated in essentials. On the 9th-10th of November 1872 a terrible fire swept the business part of the city, destroying hundreds of buildings of brick and granite, and inflicting a loss of some $75,000,000. Within two years the whole area, solidly rebuilt and with widened and straightened streets, showed no traces of the ruin except an appearance superior in all respects to that presented before the fire. The expense of this re-creation probably duplicated, at least, the loss from the conflagration. Since this time there has been no set-back to the prosperity of the city. But it is not upon material prosperity that Boston rests its claims for consideration. It prides itself on its schools, its libraries, its literary traditions, its splendid public works and its reputation as the chief centre of American culture.
Authorities. - See the annual City Documents; also Justin Winsor (ed.) The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County ... 1630-1880 (4 vols., Boston, 1880-1881), a work that covers every phase of the city's growth, history and life; S.A. Drake, The History and Antiquities of ... Boston (2 vols., Boston, 1854; and later editions), and Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston, 1873, and later editions); Josiah Quincy, A Municipal History of ... Boston ... to ... 1830 (Boston, 1852); C.W. Ernst, Constitutional History of Boston (Boston, 1894); H.H. Sprague, City Government in Boston - its Rise and Development (Boston, 1890); E.E. Hale, Historic Boston and its Neighbourhood (New York, 1898), and L. Swift, Literary Landmarks of Boston (Boston, 1903). A great mass of original historical documents have been published by the registry department of the city government since 1876 (34 v. to 1905). Boston has been described in many works of fiction, and the reader may be referred to the novels of E.L. Bynner, to L. Maria Childs' The Rebels, to J.F. Cooper's Lionel Lincoln, to the early novels of W.D. Howells (also those of Arlo Bates), to O.W. Holmes' Poet and Autocrat, and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, as pictures of Boston life at various periods since early colonial days.
[1] On the alteration of streets alone $26,691,496 were expended from 1822 to 1880.
[2] Faneuil Hall is the headquarters of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization of the country, organized in 1638.
[3] The dam is 1250 ft. long, with a maximum height of 129 ft., only 750 ft. having a depth of more than 40 ft. from high water to rock. The entire surface of the basin was scraped to bed rock, sand or mineral earth, this alone costing $3,000,000. Connected with the reservoir is an aqueduct, of which 2 m. are tunnel and 7 m. covered masonry. The metropolitan system as planned in 1905 for the near future contemplated storage for 80,000,000,000 gallons, reservoirs holding 2,200,000,000 gallons for immediate use, aqueducts capable of carrying 420,000,000 gallons daily, and a minimum daily supply of 173,000,000 gallons.
[4] In 1851 the mayor of the English Boston sent over a copy of that city's seals, framed in oak from St Botolph's church, of which John Cotton, the famous Boston divine (he came over in 1633) had been vicar. The seals now hang in the city hall. In 1855 a number of Americans, including Charles Francis Adams and Edward Everett, and also various descendants of Cotton, united to restore the south-west chapel of St Botolph's church, and to erect in it a memorial tablet to Cotton's memory. The total amount raised by subscription for this purpose was £673.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
