Filling Boston

Boston is one of America's great examples of urban landscaping.  The topographical transformation of the city during the 19th century is striking (and impossible to duplicate today in light of existing environmental laws).  In the 17th and 18th centuries, Boston was a peninsula linked to the mainland by only a narrow stretch of land that could be blocked by one gate along what is now lower Washington St.  Below is a map of the city as it existed in 1775.  Starting from the east (right side) of the map there is no East Boston, just Noodles Island.  As you move clockwise the area where Logan Airport is today is part of Boston Harbor.  To the south of the Boston peninsula most of today's South Boston does not exist, there are just tidal flats.  To the southwest, the area of the city now known as South Bay, is, in fact, still a bay.  Moving due west and just north of Boston neck there is a tidal flat instead of the Back Bay/Commonwealth Avenue area.  Boston Commons is the shoreline and what is today the Public Gardens is part of a tidal flat.  To the northwest Cambridge exists but the area where MIT is today is underwater and to the northeast Charlestown sits on a narrow peninsula. 

It was this geography that made the British position defending Boston impregnable after the battles of Lexington and Concord.  From June 1775 to March 1776, the revolutionary army sat outside the city unable to attack until Henry Knox managed to haul 40 cannon from Fort Ticonderoga in New York across Massachusetts in the midst of winter and emplace them on Dorchester Heights south of the city forcing the British to evacuate.

The Boston peninsula was also much different in the late 18th century.  Today's North End, where Paul Revere lived, was another itself a small peninsula attached to the rest of Boston by a neck of land that occasionally flooded at high tide.  The shoreline and docks were much different.  Faneuil Hall Marketplace, a popular tourist destination today, is now several hundred feet from the harbor but back then was on the shoreline.  Long Wharf, which is still long and juts into the harbor, at that time started near Faneuil Hall and extended almost a 1/2 mile into the harbor.  Today's Beacon Hill was called Trimountain with three peaks, Pemberton, Beacon and Mt Vernon, which became a source of fill material for the early 19th century landfill projects with each peak losing 60 to 100 feet of its original height.

Many of Boston's landmarks are on reclaimed land including Fenway Park, the Prudential Center and Hancock Building, the grid of streets in the Back Bay, the old Boston Garden and North Station, the Public Gardens, Copley Square, MIT, the Science Museum, the Hatch Shell, Storrow Drive, the North End wharves and the JFK Library.

This graphic, courtesy of Boston College, shows the transformation.
The filling projects were driven by two considerations.  First, and of most importance, was providing room for an expanding population and commercial growth as Boston prospered after the revolution and throughout the 19th century.  Second was to address the tidal flats which became brackish, fetid backwaters over time as the refuse of the city accumulated.

The largest and most challenging project was the reclamation of the Back Bay from 1857 to 1894 (area 7 on the graphic above).  The tidal flats had always been a nuisance but the building of a Mill Dam across the area in 1814 exacerbated the problems, including the buildup of sewage.  The fill for the project came from the hills west of Boston, with the primary source being gravel pits in Needham (where THC lived from 1980 to 1992).  At its peak, 3500 railroad cars a day of gravel were being moved from Needham to the fill site!  The layout of the streets was inspired by the work of Baron Haussman who created the great boulevards of Paris during this same period.