Historical Societies
Related Guides
Boston Planning & Development Agency Research Division, January 2021 (click image)
The 26 Neighborhoods
- Nearby Neighborhoods (BU Today) Boston is famous for its neighborhoods, many of them fun, interesting, and easy to get to. BU Today has assembled a guide to several neighborhoods, with helpful lists of where to eat, shop, and hang.
Featured Immigration & Demographic Information Sources
Immigration
Demographics
- Boston in Context: Neighborhoods - 2015-2019 (based on American Community Survey data), January 2021 Boston in Context -Neighborhoods compares the United States, Massachusetts, Boston, and Boston’s neighborhoods across several social, economic, and housing characteristics. These data are from the 2014-2018 American Community Survey (ACS). Neighborhood boundaries are based on a combination of census tracts, zip codes and zoning districts. For Decennial Census data analyses, neighborhoods can be de-fined by Census Blocks, the smallest available geography. However, this report uses ACS data that are only available at the Block Group and Census Tract level. When Census Tracts are split by Neighborhood boundaries, the Census Tract is assigned to the Neighborhood where the higher concentration of residents lived at the Block level in the 2010 Decennial Census. Because they cannot be separately identified at the Census Tract level, the neigh-borhoods of Chinatown, Leather District, and Downtown are combined into “Downtown” for all ACS analyses. The same is done with the South End and Bay Vil-lage. The consolidated neighborhood is called “South End” for all ACS analyses.Lastly, Census Tract 9815.02 is partially in East Boston and partially in Revere. The Census Bureau counts the entire population of the Tract as residing in Revere, and we follow that guidance in omitting them from the Neighborhood-level analyses
Selected Books
The New Bostonians : how immigrants have transformed the metro area since the 1960s by
Among the most consequential pieces of Great Society legislation, the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the nation?s doors to large-scale immigration from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A half century later, the impact of the ?new immigration? is evident in the transformation of the country?s demographics, economy, politics, and culture, particularly in urban America. In The New Bostonians, Marilynn S. Johnson examines the historical confluence of recent immigration and urban transformation in greater Boston, a region that underwent dramatic decline after World War II. Since the 1980s, the Boston area has experienced an astounding renaissance?a development, she argues, to which immigrants have contributed in numerous ways. From 1970 to 2010, the percentage of foreign-born residents of the city more than doubled, representing far more diversity than earlier waves of immigration. Like the older Irish, Italian, and other European immigrant groups whose labor once powered the region?s industrial economy, these newer migrants have been crucial in re-building the population, labor force, and metropolitan landscape of the New Boston, although the fruits of the new prosperity have not been equally shared.
Location: Mugar Stacks F73.9.A1 J64 2015 print & online
A People's Guide to Greater Boston by
A People's Guide to Greater Boston reveals the region's richness and vibrancy in ways that are neglected by traditional area guidebooks and obscured by many tourist destinations. Affirming the hopes, interests, and struggles of individuals and groups on the receiving end of unjust forms of power, the book showcases the ground-level forces shaping the city. Uncovering stories and places central to people's lives over centuries, this guide takes readers to sites of oppression, resistance, organizing, and transformation in Boston and outlying neighborhoods and municipalities--from Lawrence, Lowell, and Lynn to Concord and Plymouth. It highlights tales of the places and people involved in movements to abolish slavery; to end war and militarism; to achieve Native sovereignty, racial equity, gender justice, and sexual liberation; and to secure workers' rights. In so doing, this one-of-a-kind guide points the way to a radically democratic Greater Boston, one that sparks social and environmental justice and inclusivity for all.
Publication Date: 2020
A People's History of the New Boston by
Although Boston today is a vibrant and thriving city, it was anything but that in the years following World War II. By 1950 it had lost a quarter of its tax base over the previous twenty-five years, and during the 1950s it would lose residents faster than any other major city in the country. Credit for the city's turnaround since that time is often given to a select group of people, all of them men, all of them white, and most of them well off. In fact, a large group of community activists, many of them women, people of color, and not very well off, were also responsible for creating the Boston so many enjoy today. This book provides a grassroots perspective on the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, when residents of the city's neighborhoods engaged in an era of activism and protest unprecedented in Boston since the American Revolution. Using interviews with many of those activists, contemporary news accounts, and historical sources, Jim Vrabel describes the demonstrations, sit-ins, picket lines, boycotts, and contentious negotiations through which residents exerted their influence on the city that was being rebuilt around them. He includes case histories of the fights against urban renewal, highway construction, and airport expansion; for civil rights, school desegregation, and welfare reform; and over Vietnam and busing. He also profiles a diverse group of activists from all over the city, including Ruth Batson, Anna DeFronzo, Moe Gillen, Mel King, Henry Lee, and Paula Oyola. Vrabel tallies the wins and losses of these neighborhood Davids as they took on the Goliaths of the time, including Boston's mayors. He shows how much of the legacy of that activism remains in Boston today.
Location: Mugar Stacks F73.52 .V73 2014 print & online
City of Neighborhoods: Memory, Folklore, and Ethnic Place in Boston by
East Boston has long been known as an Italian neighborhood and Southie as an Irish one, while nearby North Quincy has seen in recent decades an influx of Chinese Americans and immigrants. Such urban spaces in America can become intimately intertwined with ethnic identities (Little Italy, Greektown, Chinatown, Little Havana). Yet local residents often readily acknowledge an underlying diversity--both historically and as a result of more recent changes--that complicates such stereotypes. Digging into the ever-shifting terrain of American ethnicity and urban spaces, Anthony Bak Buccitelli investigates folk practices, social memory, and local histories in three Boston-area neighborhoods. He looks at the ways locals represent their neighborhoods and themselves via events, symbols, stories, and landmarks, from the shamrock to the Chinese flag, whether the St. Patrick's Day parade in Southie or the Columbus Day parade in East Boston, from urban graffiti and websites to the Dorchester Heights Monument. City of Neighborhoods exposes the processes of selection and emphasis that produce, sustain, challenge, and change understandings of urban spaces as ethnic places. Honorable mention, Wayland Hand Prize for Folklore and History, American Folklore Society
Publication Date: 2016 - online
Stories, streets, and saints : photographs and oral histories from Boston's North End by
Stories, Streets, and Saints documents the history of an important Italian American neighborhood, Boston's North End, from the age of immigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the era of neighborhood upheaval in the'New Boston'of the 1980s. Drawing on years of fieldwork, on-site photography, and scholarly research, Anthony V. Riccio records, translates, and transcribes compelling oral histories of elderly Italian American storytellers who weave social history in their unique village idiom, providing an intimate look at daily life in an Italian American neighborhood.
Publication Date: 2022 - online
Additional Resources
- Atlascope Boston "...a tool for exploring historic urban maps in metropolitan Boston and telling stories about how places have changed over time."
- Community Organiztions Boston, Google Search Google search: community organizations neighborhood name, e.g., South End
Neighborhood Images
Boston's South End, Images of America by Call Number: Mugar Memorial Library Reference X (F73.68.S74 S26 1998 )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.
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