Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Written in Stone
All over central Boston, you'll see plaques commemorating some long-gone
people, event, or even place (“On this site stood . . .”). Each one tells a little
story, not just in its text but also in its context. A plaque commemorating the
first Catholic Mass in Boston (on School St. near Borders, across the street from
the Freedom Trail) doesn't seem like a big deal now, but in a Puritan city, tol-
eration of “popery” couldn't have come easily. On Commercial Street near Hull
Street, a marker describes the Molasses Flood of 1919, during which 2 million
gallons of raw molasses spilled out of a ruptured storage tank into the streets,
killing 21 people. The story recalls the days when manufacturing and industry
dominated the area that's now the residential North End and scenic water-
front. Look around as you walk around—history is everywhere, just waiting for
you to discover it.
Moments
been separated for half a century by an
ugly elevated highway and connecting
downtown directly with increasingly
beautiful Boston Harbor. The Greenway
is one of the most eye-catching products
of the “Big Dig,” which cost $14.6 billion
before formally wrapping up at the end of
2007. The boom in development and
construction it helped launch is still going
on, fairly impervious to the ups and
downs of the economy.
Today you'll find a metropolis of nearly
600,000 at the heart of the Greater
Boston area, which encompasses 83 cities
and towns and some 4 million people.
The hospitals and medical centers are
among the best in the world, and health
care was a hot topic long before the state
took a leading role in the country's ongo-
ing debate over universal coverage. Educa-
tion and tourism are pillars of the local
economy, which has mirrored national
trends (positive and negative) in unem-
ployment statistics. Though hardly reces-
sion-proof, the banking, financial services,
insurance, and high-tech industries are
vital components as well. The ongoing
real-estate downturn has put a damper on
the red-hot Boston market, but the city
remains one of the most expensive places
in the country to live (and to visit, if you
don't budget carefully).
As they have for more than a century,
immigrants flock to the Boston area,
where Irish, eastern European Jewish,
Italian, Portuguese, African American,
Latino, West Indian, and, most recently,
Asian arrivals have settled. Between 1990
and 2000, the city's Asian population
nearly doubled, and the Latino popula-
tion grew by more than one-third.
Because of “white flight,” Boston is
what urban planners call a “doughnut
city.” It has a relatively large black popu-
lation (23.8% of Boston residents are
black, compared with 11% of the U.S.
population) surrounded by many lily-
white suburbs. The 2000 Census showed
that Boston had become a “majority
minority” city, with whites making up
less than 50% of the population for the
first time. One of the only neighborhoods
that gained white residents in the 1990s is
the South End, where gentrification is
sweeping through, homogenizing an area
long known for its economic and ethnic
diversity.
Whatever their origins, Bostonians
share at least a passing interest in sports.
(“How about those Red Sox?” is a favorite
conversational gambit all over town.) The
New England Patriots, who play in a dis-
tant suburb, triumphed in the Super
Bowl in 2002, 2004, and 2005—only to
