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Boston History

Boston has transformed itself countless times over four centuries since the Puritans arrived in 1630 and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Early figures such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and Anne Hutchinson endeavored to create a “City upon a Hill” where Puritan values would flourish in the New World.  Venerable institutions such as Harvard College and Boston Latin School were founded to instill and propagate a New World education set forth by the Puritan clergy.

Path of Presidents

Reveals an unparalleled catalogue of presidential history in Greater Boston.

The Freedom Trail

Meet your costume guide and walk the Freedom Trail into history

Black Heritage Trail

With National Park Service Ranger or self guided

Paul Revere and Old North Church

Relive Paul Revere's ride in front of the Old North Church

Faneuil Hall

Have a chat with Samuel Adams in front Faneuil Hall

Throwing Tea

Go back in time and throw tea in the harbor

Tea Party Ship Guides

The guides are ready to share our history with you

Boston Common Visitor Center - Open Daily

The Boston Common Visitor Center is Open Daily! While visiting Boston, visit our Information Centers...

Framing Mass Killings Exhibit

Revolutionary Spaces’ new exhibit at the Old State House, Framing Mass Killings, explores how the...

How Do You See the World? + Mapparium™ Experience

How Do You See the World? features compelling stories about global progress—how individuals...

Impassioned Destruction: Politics, Vandalism, and the Boston Tea Party

On December 16, 1773, radical Bostonians threw 340 crates of tea into Boston Harbor to protest what...

Inn at Hastings Park Historical Tour of Lexington & Concord

Embark on a captivating historical tour of Lexington and Concord, delving into the events that...

Jazz Scene In Boston: Telling The Local Story

The Museum of African American History celebrates Boston's rich jazz history in this exhibit! Jazz,...

Lexington Visitor Center: Walking Tours

Let our costumed guides transport you back in time to 1775 as they share the events that occurred on...

MIT Starr Forum | Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear: progress depends on the...

Nichols House Museum Guided Tour

Home to an early 20th-century family of artists, thinkers, and social activists, as well as their...

Objects of Addiction Exhibit: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade

The Objects of Addiction Exhibit explores the entwined histories of the opium trade and the Chinese...

Polly Sumner Doll: Conventional & Controversial Cargo Exhibit

This is a Boston Tea Party 250th Anniversary Exhibit: This year, Revolutionary Spaces is...

Read & Work at the Athenaeum

Purchase a Day Pass to this National Landmark library and cultural center with stunning reading...

The Death & Dying Ghost Tour

Recurring daily. The Death and Dying Tour is the only ghost tour for adults only, this is the...

The Ghosts of Boston - All Ages Tour

Recurring daily our All-Ages Ghosts of Boston Tour takes you on a family-friendly journey through...

Tour the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame

Get an exclusive look at the Wang Theatre & the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame exhibits by...

Beacon Hill's South Slope tour

Explore the connection between architecture and politics in this tour along the charming streets of...

Boston by Little Feet - tour for children & families

Travel through 300 years of history on this fun and interactive tour of Boston's Freedom Trail....

Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently

Henry David Thoreau was a leading figure in the American Transcendentalist movement and the era of...

King's Chapel - Guided Crypt and Sanctuary Tours

Guided by our team of knowledgeable and passionate Historic Site Educators, tours lead visitors...

Road to Revolution tour

Explore the makings of a revolution! From the Boston Massacre to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, the...

Heart of the Freedom Trail tour

This 1 hour tour is the perfect introduction to Boston’s Revolutionary history! Visit some of the...

North End: Boston's Immigration Gateway tour

Explore Boston’s oldest neighborhood, the North End, with our knowledgeable guide. Discover the...

Treasures from the West End Museum Archives

Step into the past and experience history interactively at the West End Museum's exclusive event:...

Dark Side of Boston tour

Recurring weekly on Sundays, Fridays and Saturdays until November 19, 2023. Hear tales of misery,...

Freedom Trail Tours in Spanish

Este tour es una caminata de una duración aproximada de hora y media, por favor traer zapatillas...

Guided Innovation Trail Tour

Proof that history is not just for the past! From anti-aging technology to gene editing, the newest...

The Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

The Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site is open for tours May...

Tour Harvard Square

Are you looking for an in-person experience, we are still offering public walking tours of Harvard...

19th-Century Photo Fair by The Daguerreian Society

For three days this month – starting Thursday, Sept. 28 – Boston will be the center of...

Hub of Literary America Walking Tour

Journey to Victorian Boston and see where writers and poets including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa...

Walking Tour of Jamaica Pond

Come with the Jamaica Plain Historical Society to walk around the Jamaica Pond. Once a district that...

Walking Tour of Sumner Hill

Join the Jamaica Plain Historical Society in a walk around Sumner Hill. Developed as a suburb by...

A Sail Through Time sailing tour

Step aboard the Liberty Star schooner for a guided sailing adventure on Boston Harbor. Sail...

Tour: Reinventing Boston: A City Engineered

A walk through Boston is a walk through time. On this guided walk through the Greenway and along the...

Rowes Wharf: Sensationally Good City-Making

When the modern Rowes Wharf was conceived in 1982, it was a design competition with a bold vision of...

Back Bay's Victorian Architecture tour

On this guided tour, explore how Boston’s back bay was filled in to become one of the United States’...

Mapping Places From Above: A Peak into the BPL's Bird’s-Eye View Map Collection

The Boston Public Library holds a remarkable collection of approximately 500 bird’s-eye view maps...

Return to the Renaissance at Hammond Castle Museum

Join us for one of two sessions as we Return to the Renaissance on our oceanside lawn with a live...

Boston's Loyalist tour

Hear the stories of Bostonians who remained loyal to the British crown. “History is written by the...

Guided Tour: Before Boston - Shawmut Peninsula Through 1630

Explore 12,000 years of human activity on Shawmut Peninsula, the lands we now call Boston. Follow in...

Colonial Cocktails And Radical Minds: A Revolutionary Book Launch

Join us for an evening of history, literature, and libations as Chattermark Distillers and Harvard...

Guided Tour: Jewish Beacon Hill

Journey to Beacon Hill’s North Slope at the turn of the 20th century. Explore the lives of its...

The Stones Cry Out with John Hanson

Many people visit Boston's historic burying grounds to see the monuments of historical figures like...

Gay Community News at 50: Defining GCN

In 1973, a small group of gay men and lesbians founded "Gay Community News," a local Boston...

Beacon Hill with a BOO!

Join us on October 28, 29 and 31 for our most popular event of the year! For more than 30 years,...

East Boston: Maverick Square & Beyond tour

Discover East Boston’s rich history and dynamic present by exploring the neighborhood of Maverick...

Game Night: Tabletop Gaming at Hammond Castle Museum

Join us for a night of tabletop gaming in the Great Hall! We will have gamer favorites such as:...

First Flag Ceremony, First Flag Raising, and Grand Union Flag

Grand Union Flag Raising – First Flag Raising A Reenactment of the Raising of America’s First...

Given its geographical location, Boston quickly came to rely on its port for commerce and sustenance.  Trade was paramount and it was the emergence of Boston’s maritime merchants – trading goods like tea, sugar, fish, and tobacco – which ultimately led to a collision course with the British Empire.  As the China Trade grew, along with Boston’s reliance on tea as an import and an export, and as Britain’s East India Company depreciated, a fraught situation developed; Britain, facing debt and discord, transferred war debts and trading deficits to its colonies.

Early Boston Harbor

Boston was in a state of defiance and non-compliance from the outset.  As the British Parliament passed a succession of acts aimed at taxing the colonists and restricting their political power, leading figures such as Sam Adams, John Hancock, John Adams and Paul Revere initiated a movement which transcended class lines and drove the people of Boston into open rebellion.  Catalytic events such as the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party drove events inexorably towards revolution.  By the time Paul Revere road into the countryside on April 18, 1775, the city of Boston was ready to fight.  The Battle of Bunker Hill occurred two months later and by early 1776 General George Washington was in Boston to take control of the Continental Army.

Following American Independence, Boston’s economy entered a new era of Clipper Ships, textile manufacturing and global trade.  In terms of social and political developments, abolitionist fervor took the town by storm, led by Charles Sumner and William Lloyd Garrison and supported by a vociferous contingent of female abolitionists.  Boston was home to a vibrant and active African-American community which populated Beacon Hill during this era; the first African-American Church, Meeting House, and School were all founded on Beacon Hill.

Also during this era, America’s nascent literary culture began to find its voice as esteemed Boston writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Russell Lowell ushered in a prolific era of American writing.   

In the mid to late 19th century Boston underwent dramatic change to its landscape and population.  The arrival of immigrants from Ireland during the Potato Famine, and then from Italy, Germany, and Poland later in the century, fundamentally changed Boston’s human makeup and political leanings.  Boston’s older caste, the Republican Yankee establishment, was slowly pushed to the margins of Boston’s political life.  While the Yankees maintained control of Boston’s economic and educational institutions, Irish and Italian immigrants took over the city’s political apparatus.  The immigrants brought to Boston a bevy of skilled and unskilled labor that was critical to Boston’s physical development beyond its downtown and port peninsula.  Boston had outgrown its physical size by the 1840s and needed to create new land.

1905 Back Bay Brownstones 

With the help of Irish labor, the city developed the South End and then the Back Bay, re-locating the Yankees during the 1860s and 1870s to the Victorian brownstones and town houses so associated with Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.  Soon enough, iconic landmarks such as Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library existed in the Back Bay as well.  Not bad for an area that had been part of the Charles River Basin for millennia untold.

Always innovative, Boston spearheaded a number of firsts throughout the mid-19th century and early 20th century: ether was used as the first anesthetic at MGH, the nation’s first subway system went into operation, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, and the first mutual fund went public courtesy of MA Financial Services.  The city contracted with Frederick Law Olmstead to beautify Boston with a network of urban parks stretching from the Boston Common to Jamaica Plain.  The Emerald Necklace was born and the project included the creation of the Back Bay Fens which, in turn, facilitated the development of Fenway Park, the oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball.

In the 20th century Boston continued its emergence as an innovation hub and world-class city.  MIT moved across the river to Cambridge and transformed from a tech college to a world-class institute of engineering and technology.  Bizarre and controversial events such as the North End Molasses Flood, Boston Police Strike, Brinks Robbery, Boston Strangler crimes, busing crisis, and destruction of the West End caused a fair share of intrigue and discordance while political figures such as James Michael Curley, John F. Kennedy, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Kevin White, and Michael Dukakis became household names.  As the nation celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, Boston used funds generated from the anniversary to transform and revitalize Faneuil Hall Marketplace and create the Boston National Historical Park.

In the 1980s and 1990s, monumental tasks were undertaken to make Boston a cleaner, more aesthetically-pleasing city.  The cleanup of Boston Harbor and creation of the Big Dig were the most prominent examples.  Boston Harbor is now one of the cleanest urban harbors in the world.  And while the Big Dig vastly exceeded its allotted budget and timeframe, it was a transformative project of unprecedented size that made Boston more efficient for travelers and more beautiful for tourists.  The sprawling Rose Kennedy Greenway atop I-93 is a lush urban space affording visitors and residents alike relaxation and recreation within the city center, not to mention eclectic artisan markets, food trucks, public art installations, outdoor movies and interactive festivals.

As Boston looks ahead to 2022 and beyond, the development of One Seaport Square and the Innovation District in South Boston will hum along and continue to bring new industries of life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and consumer technology to the bustling district. Alongside the Seaport District, Kendall Square in Cambridge makes Greater Boston one of the world’s foremost innovation clusters, and a hotbed of biotech engineering and life sciences research and development.

boston overview aerial zakim

Boston will continue to embrace its past while formulating next steps to encourage the multiculturalism, inclusivity, and youthful character which collectively make the city a great cosmopolitan hub.