Building Boston, Shaping Shorelines

“Building Boston, Shaping Shorelines” illustrates the building of land in Boston. The maps in this story animate how Boston has grown, especially since the beginning of large-scale projects to make land around the original peninsula in the nineteenth century.

Unstated on all these maps is the forced removal of Indigenous Peoples who lived and continue to live in and around Boston. As we stand on this land and tell the history of the growth of Boston, we acknowledge that this land is the original homeland of the Massachusett people.

All these maps are full of indigenous names, including, of course, the name Massachusetts itself. In the Algonquin dialect shared by the tribes of Eastern Massachusetts, “Massachusetts” means “at the great hill.” This hill referred to the Great Blue Hill in Milton, which still exists as part of the state park system. But if we think about the name more broadly in the history of Boston, it allows us to acknowledge more deeply the history of settler colonialism in the region. The process of building Boston and shaping its new shorelines has been one of displacing the hills on the original peninsula to create a larger city capable of supporting a larger population. Building Boston, that is, has been a process of an increasing number of settlers keeping many indigenous names but emptying them of their meaning and forcing the indigenous inhabitants from their land. Despite these attempts at erasure, the Massachusett Tribal Nation has never left and remains a vibrant community south of the city. 

In curating this exhibition, we owe a deep debt to the research of Nancy Seasholes. Her work in Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (2003) and the Atlas of Boston History (2019) has excavated more than anyone else what lies beneath the surface of Boston’s history.

Edwin Olsen and Blake Clark, “The Colour of an Old City: A Map of Boston, Decorative and Historical,” 1926.

As Olsen and Clark illustrate with witty lyrics and caricatures, Boston carries the history of the European settlement and American independence in its buildings and streets.

This history includes the violent displacement of many Native Americans. The caricature and pithy poem on this map ignore both this violence and the persistence of native communities in and around Boston for longer that it has existed. Ironically, the streets Olsen and Clark highlight here—Seneca and Oneida—were Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) tribes who lived far west of Boston.

Richard F. Lufkin, “The Central Part of Boston, Massachusetts,” 1930.

David Alan Fox, “Boston,” 1983.

With all its filling, annexation, and building, what is Boston to you? For some, it is the original peninsula. For others, it is the mosaic of diverse neighborhoods. And for many it is the distinctive buildings and signs: the Citgo Sign and Fenway Park, the shimmering reflection of the Hancock and Prudential towers, or the old churches anchoring the city to its past.

These two maps emphasize the importance of these buildings and others like them to the experience of downtown Boston. Combining the layout of streets or iconographic views of the city’s landmarks, they together tell a story of the city’s changing identity not through expansion but through how people have used the city.

Joseph F. W. Des Barres, Boston Harbor views and nautical chart, in Charts of the Coast and Harbors of New England, volume 3 of the Atlantic Neptune, 1781.

As the British Empire reached globe-spanning size in the eighteenth century, nautical charts and harbor views needed to be made detailed enough so that the British settlers and officers flooding to the colonies would know not only their trajectory to arrive at major ports, but also where they could safely sail and drop anchor. The British Admiralty commissioned engineers Des Barres and Samuel Holland to survey coastlines of the Americas. These were eventually published together in 1781 as the four-volume Atlantic Neptune. Included in the New England volume, this chart of the Boston Harbor shows the pre-land reclamation Boston shoreline, with surrounding water depths written into the chart – vital information for sailors unfamiliar with the area. The opposite page has views of the harbor and surrounding hills, illustrating the location. The Atlantic Neptune appeared just in time to aid the British Navy during the American Revolution, which makes this depiction of Boston as a colonial city a final snapshot of its pre-independence, pre-filling look.

Union News Company, “Bird’s Eye View of Boston,” 1890.

William J. Finn, “Bird’s Eye View of Boston Harbor along the South Shore to Provincetown,” 1917.

This charming pair of oblique perspective views, separated by almost thirty years, provides a study in similarities and contrasts. An instructive exercise in the passage of time is found in comparing the two and spotting the additions and changes to the topography and built environment. Built in 1915, easily the most prominent addition to the skyline is the Custom House Tower in downtown Boston near the harbor. At 496 feet, it remained the tallest building in Boston (one foot taller than the original John Hancock building which went up in 1947) until the Prudential Tower topped off at 749 feet in 1964.

Charles Perkins, “Map of the Boston Water Works,” 1852.

Metropolitan District Commission, “General plan of M.D.C. Water System,” 1972.

Where eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Boston could supply residents with water from cisterns or wells, the rapidly expanding city soon needed to look farther afield for sources of water. In 1848, the city opened its first aqueduct that supplied water from Lake Cochituate in Natick into the city reservoirs.

But with more land incorporated and created for the city and more people who needed fresh water, Boston had to continue to reach further west for more water. In the 1930s, the city created the huge Quabbin reservoir by relocating more than six thousand people from the Swift River Valley and flooding their towns. To bring this water into the city, Boston also built a series of pumping stations and pressure aqueducts that spanned 60 miles—about half the length of the entire state.