Becoming Boston
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The Town That Couldn’t Contain Itself

As one of the most important centers of a newly independent nation, Boston spent the first half of the nineteenth century reimagining its urban form and building neighborhoods from scratch.

Now oriented towards the new United States instead of towards Britain’s Atlantic empire, Boston found a role as a trading center and, increasingly, as the regional center of the nation’s first industrial revolution. It officially became the City of Boston in 1822, shedding its older town meeting form of government as its population expanded. Hemmed in on all sides by the ocean, Bostonians realized that the tidelands ringing the city could be put to work, first as mill ponds and later as new districts constructed on landfill. Whereas older neighborhoods were built on an ad hoc pattern of winding streets and irregularly sized blocks, these newer neighborhoods—including Back Bay, where the Central Library is located—were usually master planned with gridded streets to facilitate rapid sale and development. Material for filling the tidelands came from trimming down urban highlands like Beacon Hill and Bunker Hill, from gravel quarried on the city’s periphery, and from trash and waste. Today, nearly a sixth of Boston’s area sits on filled land.

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