Boston
Boston names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Boston the largest city of New England
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the largest city of New England, the capital of Massachusetts and the county-seat of Suffolk co. It is situated at the Boston harbor and at the mouths of the Mystic and Charles rivers. It is also on the New York, New Haven and Hartford, and the Boston and Maine railroads. It has regular steamship communication to all important domestic and foreign points. The city has an area of 47.81 square miles. The city includes Boston proper, and the suburbs of East Boston, South Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Charleston, Brighton, West Roxbury, and other outlying communities. Within a 50 mile radius of the city more people live than in any other similar area The capital invested in in the United States with the exception of New York. Old Boston or Boston proper occupies a peninsula of about 700 acres of uneven surface and contained originally three hills, known as Beacon, originally Copp and Fort. From these hills the place was called by the early settlers Trimountain, later changed to Tremont. Extending about two miles along the harbor and separated from Boston proper by an arm of it, is South Boston, containing large docks and warehouses. The city is connected with Charleston and Cambridge by several bridges. The harbor is an indentation of Massachusetts Bay, embracing about 75 square miles, with numerous arms, and containing many islands. The population of the city, according to the census of 1920 was 748,060. The estimated population of the metropolitan district in 1920 was 1,824,746. Within this metropolitan district are included Cambridge, Lynn, Waltham, Somerville, Malden and other cities. Boston has one of the finest natural harbors of the world, with a water frontage of more than 40 miles, most of which is in active use for commercial purposes. In the older portions of the city the streets are narrow and irregular, but since 1872, when the city was visited by a destructive fire, much has been done toward straightening them. The newer section built on recovered land on the Back Bay and the Fenway are far more regular and handsome in appearance. The financial center of the city is State street. The retail center is on Washington, Tremont, and Winter streets. On High and the neighboring streets are the boot and shoe markets. The wholesale dry goods establishments are on Franklin, Chauncey, Summer, and neighboring streets. The suburbs of the city are exceedingly attractive because of their natural beauty and notable buildings. Boston is the center of the largest shoe and textile manufacturing community in the world. It is the commercial metropolis of New England and is the greatest wool and leather market in the United States. It has also a large commerce in grain, cotton, iron, steel products, sugar, flour, hides and leather, and meats and dairy products. The manufactures include boots and shoes, foundry and machine - shop products, musical instruments, machinery, clothing, iron ware, books, brass goods, confectionery, rubl rubber goods, and many others. It is also the greatest fish market in the world. There were in 1917 2, - 653 industrial establishments. The value of the products of industry in 1918 was $ 522,646,032. the same year was $ 281,497,115. The average number of wage earners employed was 88,763. The total amount paid in wages in 1917 was $ 68,002,939. The value of the exports of the city in 1919 was $ 334,554,031, and of the imports $ 299,364,999, or a total trade of $ 633,919,030. Boston ranks second among the cities of the United States as a shipping center and has an important seaport. It ranks fourth in the total of foreign trade, in the amount of bank clearings, assessed valuation, and population. It ranks eighth in the value of the manufactured products. The chief exports are iron and steel products, meat and dairy products, breadstuffs, boots, shoes, and leather, metal, cotton and cotton products, rubber products, paper, chemical products, and dyes. The chief imports are wool, cotton, hides and skins, fiber products, sugar and molasses, chemicals, drugs and dyes, leather and fish. In 1919 Boston was the richest community per capita in the United States. The total assessed valuation of the city in that year was $1,528,165,778. Boston is noted for its magnificent park system. There are within the city limits 24 large parks and 42 separate playgrounds, with a total of 327 acres. There are in addition 14 playgrounds and parks with an area of 155 acres. There are also 75 smaller parks and squares, acres. The cost making a total of 2,688.5 of the main park system from 1877 is $11,788,065. The largest park is Franklin Park, named for Benjamin Franklin, containing 527 acres, of which about 80 are occupied by the zoological gardens. There are also within the city limits 958 acres of metropolitan parks and parkways under State control, the largest of which is Stony Brook Reservation in West Roxbury. The most noted parks within the city limits are the Common and the Public Garden. These contain many memorials, including statues of Washington, Edward Everett, and others. The school system has always been noted for its excellence. Boston spent more per capita for school purposes than any other city in the United States. There is an extensive system of kindergarten and primary grade schools, besides a large number of secondary schools. There were in 1920, 264 permanent school buildings, and 137 portable houses. There were 3,413 teachers in all the schools. The number of pupils registered in the day schools in 1919 was 122, 452, in the evening schools 8,260, and in the continuation schools were registered 9,651. The valuation of the school property was $ 27,670,000, and the cost of was $ maintenance was $7,373,499. The institutions for higher education in the city of included Massachusetts Institute of Tech- after nology, Boston University, the New Eng- from meeting house land Conservatory of Music, and Sim- come. mons College and Boston College. Within was the metropolitan area are Harvard Uni- was versity and Tufts College. Among the grand notable and historical buildings in the memorable city are the State House on Beacon Hill, 1770, the Boston Atheneum on Beacon street, harbor a Masonic temple on the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets, the Public imposition Library in Copley Square, and the Mu- part seum of Fine Arts in Copley Square. The quartered quartere Bunker Public Library is one of the largest and best equipped in the United States. It within contained in 1920 1,197,498 volumes, of 1775. which about 300,000 were in the branch evacuate libraries. The city is well equipped with granted theaters and other public buildings. broke There were in 1919 39 theaters. The city Mechanics' Building on Huntington avenue seats 4,350 people, the Boston Opera House 3,000, the Symphony Hall 2,569, and Tremont Temple 2,441. Among the buildings which date from colonial times and are of great historical value are Faneuil Hall, known as the cradle of liberty, and erected in 1742; the Old State House, erected in 1748; the Old South Church, the Old North Church, and Kings Chapel. The city has excellent transportation facilities facilities, which include surface, under- . The Treground, and elevated railroads mont street subway, opened in 1897, was the first municipal subway in the United States. There are now completed the East Boston tunnel, Washington street tunnel, the Cambridge connection subway, the Boylston street subway, the East Boston tunnel extension, and the Dorchester tunnel. The total approximate cost of all subways and tunnels is $36,000,000. There are 345 churches of all denominations, including Roman Catholic, 65; Jewish, 38; Baptist, 35; Congregational, 36; Unitarian, 24; Methodist Episcopal, 31; Protestant Episcopal, 36; Lutheran, byterian. 11. The mother 12; and Presbyterian, church of the Christian Scientists is located in Boston and is one of the most beautiful structures in the city. There were in 1920 15 National banks, with an aggregate capital of $28,959,000. There were also 30 trust companies with a capital of $26,901,100. The total resources of the National banks were $601,- 284,213. There were 24 savings banks of $341,215,952. The city with deposits is the seat of a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. The net funded debt of the city in 1919 82,287,030. The tax rate was $ 2.12. Boston was settled in 1630 by a party Puritans from Salem. It was named a town in Lincolnshire, England, which most of the colonists had In 1632 the first erected, and in 1635 a public school built. In the same year the first jury in the country met here. A massacre occurred here in and in 1773 several cargoes of English tea were thrown overboard in the by citizens exasperated by the of taxes. During the early of the Revolution the British were in the town. The battle of Hill was fought on Breed's Hill, the present city limits, June 17, Washington forced the British to in 1776. The city charter was in 1822, and in 1872 a great fire out in the business portion of the and destroyed about 65 acres of buildings. This part of the city was soon rebuilt, and, since then, Boston has been most prosperous cities in the one of the United States.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the capital of Massachusetts and metropolis of New England . It is situated on a peninsula formed by the Charles River and an arm of Massachusetts Bay. The area of the original peninsula has been more than doubled by filling in Back Bay and by encroaching elsewhere upon the water front. The first settlement was effected in 1630 by a colony of several hundred well-to-do Puritans under the personal direction of Governor John Winthrop. They named their new home after their old town of Boston on the coast of Lincolnshire, England. The name is a corruption of St. Botolph's town. The English Boston still has its parish church of St. Botolph's, with Gothic spire, chime of bells, and lighthouse tower. The settlers of Boston were the strongest body of colonists to settle in the New World. They had education and means. They left England to establish a church to their own liking, and were, from the first, leaders in colonial affairs. The government of the town was managed like a country township, through the town meeting, up till 1822. In case of an emergency the leaders convoked, not a meeting, of the council, but a town meeting. This explains the activity and influence of Sam Adams and the number of orderly uprisings like the Boston Tea Party . Boston has always been a commercial city. Sloops went up and down the coast gathering furs and other colonial products. Ships made regular voyages to the mother country. John Hancock, perhaps the most influential man in the colony, was a wealthy merchant. The English government could devise no severer punishment for the rebellious city than the Boston Port Bill of 1774, forbidding ships to enter Boston Harbor. Boston is still the second maritime city of the Union in point of commercial activity. It is the principal wool market, and handles more leather, hides, shoes, and fish than any other city in the Union. Enough shoes are made in the vicinity of Boston to supply every man, woman, and child in North America and the West Indies with a new pair yearly. The census of 1900 gave the city a population of 562,192, or fifth in the United States . If suburbs be counted, the rank of Boston is fourth, or if a radius of fifty miles be used, it is second only to New York. The state census of 1905 reported a population of 593,598. The affairs of the city have been well managed on the whole. A fine park system, a public library, one of the best water supply systems in the world, sanitation, street railways, and lighting have been managed without the outrageous scandals that have fallen on other American cities. The proximity of Harvard University, the presence of other institutions of learning, an excellent system of public schools, the activities of noted publishers, the residence of by far the lion's share of the names noted in American literature, notably Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell, the publication of the Atlantic Monthly, and a leading place in the affairs of Congregationalism and Unitarianism have given Boston a decided reputation for intellectuality. Its being the intellectual, commercial, and political center of a large section led Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a spirit of facetiousness, to dub Boston "the hub of the universe." Visitors take a particular interest in the Public Garden and Boston Common, in Bunker Hill Monument, in the Old South Church, now the depositary of colonial relics, and in Faneuil Hall where Sam Adams, Daniel Webster, and Wendell Phillips spoke. Librarians from all over the United States go to see the building and arrangements of the Public Library. The State House with its gilded dome is open to everybody. Merchants, of course, take most interest in the wharves and business districts. Travelers find Boston an easy city to reach. All trains from New York way use the South Station, one of the largest in the world. All trains from Canada, the west and north, use the Union Station in the northern part of the city, so there is little opportunity for confusion. See Adams ; Faneuil Hall; Harvard; Massachusetts Boston harbor
Boston a seaport in Lincolnshire
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a seaport in Lincolnshire, England, 107 miles N. E. of London. Its name is a contraction of Botolph's town, and it is commonly supposed to occupy the site of the Benedictine Abbey founded on the Witham by St. Botolph in 654, and destroyed in 870 by the Danes. The parish church of St. Botolph measures 283 by 99 feet, and is one of the largest without transepts in England. In 1843 the restoration of the church was commenced, the work continuing 10 years, and over $50,000 being expended. A chapel to the memory of the Rev. Thomas Cotton, at one time Vicar of Boston, was erected at the expense of the inhabitants of the city of Boston, Mass. A promenade by the river is tastefully laid out, with a people's park, public gardens, and recreation ground adjoining. Boston has also a free charity, national, grammar, ch gra and other schools, a guildhall, etc. The chief exports are coal, machinery, corn, and wool; and the imports consist of timber, maize, cotton seed, and general The river and canals merchandise. furnish communication with Lincoln and several other towns. Boston is a great market for cattle and sheep, and has manufactures of canvas, sail cloth, ropes, sacking, beer, iron, brass, leather, bricks, whiting and hats, with some shipbuilding. Fox, the martyrologist, and of the "Illusbert Ingram, founder of Herbert News" News," trated London " to whom a statue was erected in 1862, were natives of Boston. Since the Distribution of Seats Act (1885) Boston returns only one member to Parliament. The town owns extensive docks. Pop. about 17,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 counted 748,060 people and called Boston "the center of the largest shoe and textile manufacturing community in the world" and "the greatest fish market in the world." Those industries drained away to the South and overseas after the Second World War, and the city's population sank below 563,000 by 1980 before recovering to about 675,000 in the 2020 census, with a metropolitan area of roughly 4.9 million. Today the economy rests on hospitals, universities, finance and biotechnology rather than boots, wool and leather, and the working waterfront the entry describes has largely been rebuilt as offices, housing and the Seaport district. The "narrow and irregular" streets survive, but the elevated Central Artery that cut through them from 1959 was buried between 1991 and 2007 in the Big Dig, at a cost of some $15 billion.
Written for this edition, 2026.