Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the Massachusetts State House as the "Hub of the Universe." In Boston: A Historic Walking Tour, readers are guided on a series of downtown walking tours that radiate out from this Boston landmark. Featuring different excursions that explore Boston's prominent neighborhoods and districts, visitors and natives alike will see how this city has become one of the country's oldest cultural destinations. Boston's growth and development in the 19th and 20th centuries has contributed to it becoming the unofficial "Capital of New England"; its economic and cultural impact...

Laid out in 1848 as a rural garden cemetery by Henry A. S. Dearborn, Forest Hills Cemetery celebrates its 160th anniversary in 2008 as Boston's premier arboretum cemetery. Since the mid-19th century, its 250 magnificent acres have been the resting place of people of all walks of life, ethnicities, religions, and races. Among these are poets Anne Sexton and E. E. Cummings, playwright Eugene O'Neill, and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Forest Hills's landscape is a museum of sculpture, art, and monuments that chronicles the Victorian age to the present. The first crematorium in New England...

South Boston, a peninsular extension of the Massachusetts mainland, was originally dubbed "Great Neck" by the Puritans who settled Dorchester in 1630. After the year 1804, when the town of South Boston was officially separated from Dorchester, tremendous urban development was begun according to a highly organized grid plan. Anthony Mitchell Sammarco's South Boston chronicles the development of this culturally and economically rich suburb from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Southie, as South Boston has affectionately come to be called, today thrives as a close-knit community with...

Originally settled in 1629, Charlestown became well-known as the scene of the pivotal Revolutionary Battle of Bunker Hill, actually fought on Breed's Hill. Recovering from a devastating fire at the hands of the British soon after the battle, Charlestown went on to become a prosperous neighbor to Boston, eventually being annexed to the larger city in 1874. Today the city is enjoying a tremendous rebirth and the restoration of many of its important landmarks, such as the 1780 Warren Tavern.

West Roxbury, located along the scenic Charles River, is a community of tree-lined streets and panoramic views, which has undergone tremendous changes since its incorporation as a town in 1851. Formerly known as "Westerly" or "South Street," West Roxbury has grown from a largely rural area, accessible only by train, into a charming neighborhood of Victorian homes that still offers many of the same advantages that attracted people a century ago--the quietness of small town life, with the attractions of big city living just a short distance away. West Roxbury is also the former home of Brook...

Once a part of Charlestown that could only be reached via "The Neck" (present-day Sullivan Square), Somerville became accessible from Boston with the construction of the Middlesex Canal and the extension of various rail lines in the mid- to late nineteenth century. By 1842, Somerville's population had increased to the point that the town officially separated itself from Charlestown. Over the years, the population continued to grow. With the increase in population came tremendous change, including the subdivision of farms and estates for residential neighborhoods. The city of Somerville was...

With Roslindale, Boston historian Anthony Mitchell Sammarco chronicles the development and evolution of this historic Boston neighborhood in over two hundred black-and-white images coupled with detailed and informative photograph captions. Originally known as "South Street Crossing," Roslindale was once a part of Roxbury and later the Town of West Roxbury. The neighborhood was named "Roslin" by one of its early citizens after a fondly remembered Scottish town whose rolling hills evoked comparison with those of this
area. In this volume, both gradual and radical changes in Roslindale's...

The Back Bay was one of Boston's premier residential neighborhoods between 1837 and 1901. From its quagmire beginnings and with the creation of the Boston Public Garden in the 1830s, the Back Bay was envisioned as an urbane and sophisticated streetscape of stone and brick row houses. The major center of the neighborhood became Art Square, now known as Copley Square, which was surrounded by Trinity Church, New Old South Church, Second Church of Boston, the Boston Public Library, and S.S. Pierce and Company. With images of swan boats and architectural delights, Boston's Back Bay in the...

Boston's financial district is considered the heart of New England's banking and finance. It is a veritable overlay of sleek modern office buildings and elegant high-rise structures of the early twentieth century. In the center of this contemporary skyline is evidence of the financial district's long history. Boston's first skyscraper, the Boston Custom House tower, stands high from where it was built in 1915 on top of the original 1849 custom house building.

Boston's Financial District chronicles the steady change from a romantic neighborhood to numerous banking and business houses. It was...

Originally a narrow, barren strip of land known as the Neck, Boston's South End grew from a lonely sentry post and execution grounds to what is today the largest Victorian neighborhood in the United States. With the filling of the South Cove in the 1830s, the area became one of the greatest planned residential districts of its time, a heritage preserved in unique architectural features such as red brick swell bay facades, elaborate balusters, and fanciful porches.