Boston ( BAW-stən, ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as a cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 square miles (125 km2) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 5 million in 2025, making it the largest metropolis in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States.
Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire, England. During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776).
Following American independence from Great Britain, Boston played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center, and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston's many firsts include the nation's first public park (Boston Common, 1634), the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635), and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897). By the 21st century, Boston emerged as a global leader in higher education and research, and has become the largest biotechnology hub in the world. With an economy led by finance, professional and business services, information technology, and government, the city is a national leader in medicine, engineering, and business.
Etymology
Isaac Johnson—in one of his last official acts as leader of the Charlestown community before his death on September 30, 1630—named the new settlement across the river "Boston" after Johnson's hometown of Boston, Lincolnshire, from where he, his wife (namesake of the Arbella), and John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) emigrated. The name of the English town derives from its patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church Cotton served as the rector until he and Johnson emigrated to New England. In early sources, Lincolnshire's Boston was known as "St. Botolph's town", which was later abbreviated as "Boston". Before this renaming, the settlement on the peninsula was known as "Shawmut" by William Blaxton and "Tremontaine" by the Puritan settlers he invited.
History
Indigenous era
Before European colonization, the region surrounding present-day Boston was inhabited by the Massachusett people, who established small, seasonal communities in present-day Boston. In 1630, settlers led by John Winthrop arrived and found Shawmut Peninsula nearly empty of Native people. Most had died of European diseases borne by earlier settlers and traders. Archaeological excavations have unearthed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England, located on Boylston Street, which Native people constructed as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.
European settlement
The first European to live in what would become Boston was a University of Cambridge-educated Anglican cleric named William Blaxton. He was most directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonists in 1630, after Blaxton invited one of their leaders, Isaac Johnson, to cross Back Bay from the failing colony of Charlestown and share the peninsula with him. In September 1630 Puritans made the crossing to present-day Boston.
Puritan influence on Boston began even before the settlement was founded with the 1629 Cambridge Agreement, which created the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was signed by the colony's first governor, John Winthrop. Puritan ethics and their focus on education also influenced the city's early history. In 1635, America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston.
Boston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia outgrew it in the mid-18th century. Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the town engaged in shipping and fishing during the colonial era. Boston was a primary stop on the Caribbean trade route and imported large amounts of molasses, which led to the creation of Boston baked beans.
Boston's economy stagnated in the decades prior to the American Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia both surpassed Boston in wealth. During this period, Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other New England cities were growing rapidly.
American Revolution and Siege of Boston
Boston played a central role in the American Revolution. Many crucial events of the American Revolution and subsequent American Revolutionary War occurred in or near Boston, where the city's revolutionary spirit against unpopular policies of the British Parliament was widespread and ultimately inspiring to the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. When Parliament passed the Stamp Act 1765, the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then lieutenant governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, were razed by Boston mobs. The British government responded by sending 2,000 troops of the 14th Foot and 29th Foot to Boston in 1768 to occupy the city and enforce Crown authority, which further inflamed tensions. In 1770, five soldiers of the 29th Foot fired into a Boston mob in what became known as the Boston Massacre, which led to the withdrawal of the occupational troops and helped fuel revolutionary sentiment in the colonies.
In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which many colonists saw as an attempt by Parliament to compel them to accept taxes established by the Townshend Acts. This led to the Boston Tea Party, a defining event of the American Revolution in which angered Bostonians threw an entire shipment of tea sent from the East India Company into Boston Harbor, escalating the American Revolution. Parliament responded by implementing the Intolerable Acts and demanding compensation for the destroyed tea. This response, in turn, angered the colonists further, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, which were fought around Boston in Massachusetts Bay Colony.
During the siege of Boston from April 19, 1775, to March 17, 1776, New England-based Patriot militia impeded movement by the British Army. Sir William Howe, then commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured Charlestown in present-day Boston during the Battle of Bunker Hill in what proved to be a pyrrhic victory. Bunker Hill also demonstrated the skill and training of the Patriot militia, and led the British to avoid further large-scale engagements for the rest of the Boston campaign.
On June 14, 1775, in an effort to unify the Revolutionary War effort, the Second Continental Congress, convening in the colonial-era capital of Philadelphia, founded the Continental Army and unanimously appointed George Washington as its commander-in-chief. Washington then immediately departed Philadelphia for Boston, where he arrived on July 2 and led the Continental Army in the siege. Fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes, and American troops faced challenges with a deficiency of munitions and supplies. Boston Neck, then narrow and only approximately 100 feet wide, impeded Washington's ability to launch a frontal assault on Boston, which led to a prolonged stalemate between the American besiegers and the besieged British garrison. A young American officer, Rufus Putnam, came up with a plan to make portable fortifications out of wood, which were erected on the frozen ground under cover of darkness. Putnam supervised the effort, which successfully installed the fortifications and dozens of cannons on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga. When the British discovered the newly emplaced artillery, they responded by launching a cannon barrage for two hours, which proved unable to reach the American cannons. Perceiving that his position was untenable, Howe ordered his troops to evacuate Boston, which was carried out on March 17. The date is celebrated annually in Boston as Evacuation Day.
Post-revolution and the War of 1812
After the Revolution, Boston's long seafaring tradition helped make it one of the nation's busiest ports for both domestic and international trade. Boston's harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807, which was adopted during the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the meantime. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. The small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads furthered the region's industry and commerce.
During this period, Boston also flourished culturally. It was admired for its rarefied literary life and generous artistic patronage. Members of old Boston families, later dubbed "Boston Brahmins", came to be regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites. They are often associated with the American upper class, Harvard University, and the Episcopal Church.
Boston was a prominent port of the Atlantic slave trade in the New England Colonies, but was soon overtaken by Salem, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. Boston eventually became a center of the American abolitionist movement. The city reacted largely negatively to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, contributing to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make an example of Boston after Anthony Burns's attempt to escape to freedom.
In 1822, the citizens of Boston voted to change the official name from the "Town of Boston" to the "City of Boston", and on March 19, 1822, the people of Boston accepted the charter incorporating the city. At the time Boston was chartered as a city, the population was about 46,226, while the area of the city was only 4.8 sq mi (12 km2).
19th century
In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Famine; by 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston. In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling there.
By 19th century's end, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants with their residence yielding lasting cultural change. Italians became the largest inhabitants of the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community, and the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics since the early 20th century; prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.
Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its area through land reclamation by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront. Reclamation projects in the middle of the 19th century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown.
After the Great Boston Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (240 ha) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. The city annexed the adjacent towns of South Boston (1804), East Boston (1836), Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (including present-day Mattapan and a portion of South Boston) (1870), Brighton (including present-day Allston) (1874), West Roxbury (including present-day Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) (1874), Charlestown (1874), and Hyde Park (1912). Other proposals were unsuccessful for the annexation of Brookline, Cambridge, and Chelsea.
20th century
Many architecturally significant buildings were built during the early years of the 20th century: Horticultural Hall, the Tennis and Racquet Club, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fenway Studios, Jordan Hall, and the Boston Opera House. The Longfellow Bridge, built in 1906, was mentioned by Robert McCloskey in Make Way for Ducklings, describing its "salt and pepper shakers" feature. Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, opened in 1912, with the Boston Garden opening in 1928. Logan International Airport opened on September 8, 1923.
On January 15, 1919, a flood of molasses in the North End killed 21 people and injured 150.
On November 28, 1942, Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub was the site of the Cocoanut Grove fire, the deadliest nightclub fire in United States history, killing 492 people and injuring hundreds more.