Boston and its sheltered deepwater harbour are ringed by modest hills, from the Middlesex Fells on the north to the Blue Hills on the south.

The area of the colonial town

The hilly Shawmut Peninsula, upon which Boston was settled, originally was almost completely surrounded by water. It was connected with mainland Roxbury on the south by a narrow neck of land along the line of present-day Washington Street. To the west of the neck were great reaches of mud flats and salt marshes, which were covered by tides at high water and known collectively as the Back Bay. Beyond this, the Charles River flowed down to the peninsula, further dividing it from the mainland on the north and west as it approached Boston Harbor. On the east the peninsula fronted on the harbour, and Town Cove, jutting in from the harbour, divided Boston into the North End and the South End. The centre of the colonial town was at the present Old State House (1711-47), where the only road from the mainland intersected with the principal approach from the harbour.

Although this original centre and the colonial South End have long been given over to banks, offices, and retail and wholesale trade, a few 18th-century buildings remain: Faneuil Hall (1742-1805), the Old Corner Book Store (1711), the Old South Meeting House (1729), and King's Chapel (1750). The North End is the only part of the early town that has been continuously lived in since the 1630 settlement. Colonial survivals such as the Paul Revere House (c. 1680) and Christ Church (1723)--the Old North Church from which lanterns revealed the route of the British march to Lexington in 1775--coexist with the teeming life of a seemingly Mediterranean community.

The considerable extent of shoreline, only a few minutes' walk from any part of the peninsula, provided ample space for wharves and shipyards. From the beginning of the settlement, the shoreline constantly encroached on the harbour as wharves were built and marshy coves were filled. Beyond the original settlement lay Boston Common, a tract of 45 acres (18 hectares) that has remained public open space since its purchase by the town in 1634. Above the Common rose the Trimountain, a three-peaked hill of which Beacon Hill is the only surviving, though greatly reduced, remnant. The other hills became landfill that added to the city's area in the 19th century.

Bulfinch's designs

In the last years of the 18th century, when space became scarce, a series of major changes began to alter radically the physical lineaments of the area. In this period of expansion, the architect Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), who for more than a quarter of a century was also the head of the town government, skillfully transformed an 18th-century English town into a 19th-century American city. Although many of Bulfinch's finest works have been destroyed, the central portion of the present State House (1795-98), above the Common on Beacon Hill, is his work. The construction of the State House on this site led to the conversion of the upland pastures of Beacon Hill into a handsome residential district that has survived with relatively little change. Between the State House and Charles Street are several streets, including famous Louisburg Square, filled with many houses by Bulfinch and other leading 19th-century architects. The area is protected by historic district legislation, and has been designated as the Beacon Hill Historic District.

As pressures of population in the 19th century caused a demand for more and more land, hills were cut down to fill in the coves. So much new land was created that the once water-ringed peninsula has become an indistinguishable part of the mainland. Fill on both sides of the narrow neck that connected the peninsula with the mainland created a new South End, a region that before the end of the century had lapsed into a slum. The waterfront was greatly extended, and the Back Bay was dammed (1818-21) to create tidal power for new mill sites. A causeway along the dam extended west from the Common to Sewell's Point, the present Kenmore Square in the Back Bay area, thus furnishing more direct communication with the mainland. The filling of Back Bay flats just west of Boston Common created land that in the 1830s was laid out as the Public Garden. This became a splendidly planted area with an artificial pond that is spanned by a miniature suspension bridge and traversed by swan-shaped excursion boats in the summer.

The Back Bay mill basins never developed as their promoters had envisioned, partly because the introduction of railway lines through them in the 1830s hindered the flow of water. The area became a stinking nuisance, and the Massachusetts legislature in 1857 authorized its filling, thus creating a substantial amount of new land. The plan adopted provided for four new streets parallel to the Mill Dam (Beacon Street), to be intersected by cross streets. Commonwealth Avenue, which ran west from the Public Garden, was 200 feet (60 metres) wide with a park between its roadways, creating the atmosphere of a Parisian boulevard. Since there were no hills left to cut down, gravel had to be brought in by train from pits some miles away in Needham. By the end of the 19th century the Back Bay was completely filled and built up with houses that were subject to uniform height limits and setbacks. The region today presents a picture of American architecture that is as consistent for the second half of that century as Beacon Hill is for the first. Although many Back Bay houses have been converted to apartments, offices, schools, or other adaptive uses, the region has retained a good deal of its original character, and further changes are subject to architectural control

Imigrants to America in the 1840s worked as indentured servants,maids, dock workers and firemen. Many Irish also worked on the police force. After years of oppression, through hard work they developed political power. Men like PJ Kennedy, John Fitzgerald,and James Michael Curly,are some of Boston's most famous Irish politicians. John F Kennedy, grandson of Kennedy and Fitzgerald,was the first Irish Catholic president of the USA. To learn more about another famous Irish American, visit The RFK clubs