TRINITY CHURCH COPLEY-PLAZA HOTEL
PIERCE BUILDING PUBLIC LIBRARY
BUNKER HILL MONUMENT
Boston is situated at the head of Massachusetts Bay, about two hundred miles northeast of New York, and occupies a peninsula between the Charles River and the arm of the bay known as Boston Harbor. Originally the town was founded on three hills, Beacon, Copp’s and Fort, which, however, have been materially cut down. The metropolitan area now includes also East Boston, on Noddle’s or Maverick Island, on the other side of the harbor; South Boston, separated from the old city by an arm of the harbor; Charlestown, on the other side of the river; and the suburban districts of Brighton, Roxbury (or Boston Highlands), West Roxbury (including Jamaica Plain), and Dorchester. Boston is connected with the city of Cambridge by several bridges across the Charles. The old town is cramped and irregular, and its streets are narrow and crooked; but the new parts, especially the so-called Back Bay, formed by filling in the tide-water flats on the Charles, are laid out on a very spacious scale.
The chief retail business streets of Boston are Washington Street and Tremont Street. Among the finest residence streets are Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, Marlborough Street, Mt. Vernon Street, and Bay State Road.
Boston Common, a park of forty-eight acres in the heart of the city, shaded by fine elms and other trees and crossed by many pleasant walks, has been reserved for public use since 1634 and is carefully guarded for this purpose in the charter of 1822. Just across Charles from the Common is the fine Public Garden, reclaimed from what was low-lying waste land.
That part of the Common adjoining Tremont Street and known as the Tremont Street Mall is now occupied by eight small buildings, covering the entrances to the stations of the Boston Subway, a wonderful piece of engineering that facilitates traffic by an underground system of electric cars. The subway was, in part, constructed in 1895-1898, at a cost of about four million one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, and since greatly extended by the expenditure of many millions more.