Commonwealth City

Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, by Puritan colonists from England. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony are sometimes confused with the Pilgrims, who founded Plymouth Colony ten years earlier in what is today Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The two groups, which differed in religious practice, are historically distinct. The separate colonies were not united until the formation of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.

The Shawmut Peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus and was surrounded by the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River. Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites that were excavated in the city have shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 5000 BC. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountaine, but later renamed the town after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, from which several prominent colonists had emigrated. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity", popularly known as the "City on a Hill" sermon, which espoused the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. (Winthrop also led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, which is regarded as a key founding document of the city.) Puritan ethics molded a stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635). Boston was the largest town in British North America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century.

In the 1770s, British attempts to exert more-stringent control on the thirteen colonies—primarily via taxation—led to the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and several early battles—including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston—occurred in or near the city. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride. After the Revolution, Boston had become one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports because of the city's consolidated seafaring tradition. Exports included rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era, descendants of old Boston families were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later dubbed the Boston Brahmins.

The Embargo Act of 1807, adopted during the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812 significantly curtailed Boston's harbor activity. Although foreign trade returned after these hostilities, Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and by the mid-19th century, the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance. Until the early 20th century, Boston remained one of the nation's largest manufacturing centers and was notable for its garment production and leather-goods industries. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads facilitated the region's industry and commerce. From the mid-19th to late 19th century, Boston flourished culturally. It became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. It also became a center of the abolitionist movement.

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 4, 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 4.7 square miles (12 km2). In the 1820s, Boston's population began to swell, 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. 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 settle in the city. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants—Italians inhabited 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 since the early 20th century, the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics—prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.

Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation—by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront —a process that Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill the coves". The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 19th century. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Haymarket Square area. The present-day State House sits atop this lowered Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the 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 (2.4 km²) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Also, 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). With the recent reorganization of the city from the City of Boston into Commonwealth City, the nearby cities of Cambridge, Chelsea, Brookline, Somerville, Milton, Quincy, and Dedham have been annexed.

By the early and mid-20th century, the city was in decline as factories became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects under the direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), which was established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood. Extensive demolition was met with vociferous public opposition. BRA subsequently reevaluated its approach to urban renewal in its future projects, including the construction of Government Center. In 1965, the first Community Health Center in the United States opened, the Columbia Point Health Center, in the Dorchester neighborhood. It mostly served the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it, which was built in 1953. The health center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center.

By the 1970s, the city's economy boomed after 30 years of economic downturn. A large number of high rises were constructed in the Financial District and in Boston's Back Bay during this time period. This boom continued into the mid-1980s and later began again. Boston now has the second largest skyline in the Northeast (after New York) in terms of the number of buildings reaching a height of over 500 feet (150 m). Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital lead the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Schools such as Boston University, the Harvard Medical School, Northeastern University, and Boston Conservatory attract students to the area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s. In 1984, the City of Boston gave control of the Columbia Point public housing complex to a private developer, who redeveloped and revitalized the property from its rundown and dangerous state into an attractive residential mixed-income community called Harbor Point Apartments, which opened in 1988 and was completed by 1990. It was the first federal housing project to be converted to private, mixed-income housing in the United States, and served as a model for the federal HUD HOPE VI public housing revitalization program that began in 1992.

In the early 21st century, the city has become an intellectual, technological, and political center. In recent years, the city has been reorganized into Commonwealth City, and with that reorganization has truly come to rival the great cities of the United States for prestige and influence. The construction of the Waves neighborhood by Atlas Corporation has placed the city at the forefront of the arcology movement in architecture along with Dubai, Tokyo, and Coast City, while the re-birth of the Boston Globe as the Global News Networks has positioned Commonwealth City as the rising star in news delivery, rivaled only by Atlanta and Metropolis.

For many years, Boston's geography was dictated by the circumstances of its founding and by the reluctance of New England towns to incorporate. The oldest sections of the city remain extremely compact, however the recent incorporation of the so-called "Greater Boston Area" by the city government has led to a rapid decrease of density while at the same time a spiking of the population figures. The Charles River separates the city proper from the neighborhoods of Cambridge, Watertown, and Charlestown. To the east lies Boston Harbor and the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area (BHINRA). This includes part of the city's territory, specifically Calf Island, Gallops Island, Great Brewster Island, Green Island, Little Brewster Island, Little Calf Island, Long Island, Lovells Island, Middle Brewster Island, Nixes Mate, Outer Brewster Island, Rainsford Island, Shag Rocks, Spectacle Island, The Graves, and Thompson Island. The Neponset River forms the boundary between Boston's southern neighborhoods and the newly incorporated neighborhoods of Quincy and, Milton. The Mystic River separates Charlestown from Chelsea and Everett, and Chelsea Creek and Boston Harbor separate East Boston from Boston proper.

Neighborhoods

Climate

Commonwealth City has a climate that is continental in nature but with maritime influences owing to its coastal location, a phenomenon common to coastal southern New England. The climate is classified as either humid continental or humid subtropical. Summers are typically warm, rainy, and humid, while winters are cold, windy, and snowy. Spring and fall are usually mild, but conditions are widely varied, depending on wind direction and jet stream positioning. Prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore affect Boston, minimizing the influence of the Atlantic Ocean.

Accent

Crime

Despite the best efforts of United States law enforcement for nearly two centuries, the presence of organized crime syndicates has remained a constant problem in the Greater Boston Region. This is complicated by a disturbing trend of corruption within the law enforcement entities in Boston dating back to the early 20th century, with local and federal employees often remaining embedded within the system for months or even years at a time. Many politicians and police commissioners have both made and broken their careers on the plank of systemic corruption. The recent reorganization of the CCPD under the privatized security arm of Atlas Corporation has seen a dramatic decrease in the reports of criminal activity and an upswing in the arrests. Nevertheless, opposition to the alliance of the CCPD and Atlas Security remains in the form of the criminal families of old Boston's underground as well as the confusing and often fluid assortment of gangs that vie for control of the illegal enterprise in Commonwealth City.

Crime Families

• Kelly Crime Family (Irish): Still reeling from the recent death of the family's patriarch, Dominic Kelly, this long standing Irish syndicate has reorganized itself under the leadership of Dominic's youngest son, Sullivan "The Saint" Kelly.
• Mannochio Crime Family (Italian): The Mannochio syndicate has inherited the businesses and territory of their now defunct parent family, the Patriarca family. Believed to be under the current control of Anthony "Pisano" Mannochio, this old guard family is struggling to maintain its dominant position in the New England area after nearly a century of decline.
• Scaldi Crime Family (Italian): One of the rising stars of the local underworld scene, this family is a recent import from Gotham's East End. It is believed to be led by the charismatic and beautiful Maria "Malocchia" Scaldi.