The Report on a Thoroughfare Plan For Boston, published in 1930 by the City of Boston, is a fascinating document. The plan set in motion a number of projects that became part of Boston's modernized street system, including the tunnels to East Boston, the Central Artery, and a host of smaller projects throughout the city. Perhaps more interesting are the projects which were never built, which I will discuss as well--we see the origins of the Roxbury crosstown highway here. There are about a hundred illustrations and I will try to scan as many of these as practical.
Elisabeth H. Herlihy's "History of Boston's Street System" from the report is a good overview of Boston's roads in five parts, the first of which you may read below.
THE HISTORY OF BOSTON’S STREET SYSTEM
By ELISABETH M. HERLIHY, Secretary City Planning Board
I. Physical Growth and Topographic Changes.
The first official survey of the Town of Boston, ordered by the State in 1794, showed a total area of 783 acres, but the century and a half which preceded this survey had witnessed a remarkable rise and fall in acreage totals. Starting with an approximate area of 750 acres at the time of the settlement of Boston in 1630, the first ten years saw the original sites of Chelsea, Winthrop, Revere, Braintree, Quincy, Randolph, Holbrook, Brookline and East Boston granted to the smaller yet already recognized metropolis, until the Boston town meeting in 1639 was found exercising jurisdiction over fully 43,000 acres of land, or considerably more than it is even at the present day. The tide apparently turned soon after, however, East Boston only remaining permanently annexed, the other lands being disposed of by grant or by sale, so that in the closing years of the eighteenth century Boston's territory comprised very little more than its original holdings.
Again the tide turned, and the work of rehabilitation was begun. In fact, the nineteenth might be recorded as the greatest of centuries so far as the City of Boston is concerned for it was during this period that practically all of the great physical changes were accomplished. The annexation of South Boston took place in 1804, Roxbury in 1868, Dorchester in 1870, and Charlestown, Brighton and West Roxbury in 1874. Several important reclamation projects were also undertaken during this period, including the filling in of the coves and inlets and the reclamation of the Back Bay which increased the original area by more than 1,000 acres of made land. It was during the nineteenth century also that Boston shed its swaddling clothes and emerged in 1822 duly incorporated as the first city in the Commonwealth and the largest city in New England. The twentieth century saw its area again increased, in 1912, by the annexation of Hyde Park, and with the work of reclamation still going on, Boston at the present time is a city of 30,598 acres, or nearly forty times its original size.
This development has been by no means devoid of interest
and at the same time not entirely devoid of design. In fact, Boston may
be said to have had its inception in city planning principles however
much these may have been later overturned by the historic cow. It is
recorded that early in the 17th century the Massachusetts Company in
England engaged Thomas Graves, a skilful engineer of Kent, to go to New
England in their interests and "layout" a town. Arriving first in
Salem, he soon removed, in company with about one hundred others, to
Charlestown, or Mishawum, "a great spring," as it was known to the
Indians, arriving there on June 24 (or July 4 new style), 1629, which
is said to be the only date for the foundation of Charlestown for which
good authority can be adduced.
Mr. Graves proceeded without delay to "model and layout the form of the town with streets about the hill," providing for each inhabitant a two-acre lot to plant upon. Their residence there was short-lived, however, sickness, grief, hunger, and particularly a lack of good water, soon prompting them to accept the invitation of William Blaxton (or Blackstone), the first white settler in Boston who several years earlier had taken up his residence on the other side of the Charles River at a place called by the Indians "Shawmut," said to be indicative, in their dialect, of the abundance and sweetness of its waters. Thither the little colony removed to share with their more fortunate neighbor his acres and his excellent spring on the west slope of Beacon Hill, thus effecting the actual settlement of Boston on September 17,1630.
For our first topographic description of the ancient peninsula, we are dependent upon Anne Pollard, an impulsive young woman who was foremost to leap ashore from the first boat load of colonists as they passed over from Charlestown and touched at the North End. Although but an old lady's recollection of the scenes of her youth, recorded after the lapse of almost a century, her description is nevertheless possessed of characteristic New England flavor. She described it as a place
"very uneven, abounding in small hollows and swamps, covered with blueberries and other bushes."
Later descriptions emphasize the location of the peninsula as flung boldly out from the mainland
"like a restraining arm to hold back the too eager rushing of the rivers Charles and Mystic to the sea. . . . With no more symmetry of form than a splash of molten lead dropped into the cooling waters,"
forming a natural barrier and commanding the entrance to the fertile country beyond.
Among the outstanding features of the new settlement were its hills which have ever continued to be a source of joy and in some respects, at least, of perplexity. Copp's Hill, known first as Windmill Hill and later as Snow Hill, rose precipitously from the water on the northeast to a height of 50 feet, sweeping away in a long gentle slope toward the south and west, leaving its summit almost level. The building of a fort in 1632 furnished the name for Fort Hill which had previously been designated as Corn Hill, being one of the early planting grounds of the colonists. This hill, of which the only trace remaining today is its name, rose to a height of 80 feet above the level of the sea and to the stranger sailing up the harbor was one of the most prominent features of the town. Perhaps most important of all, since they afforded to Boston its original name, Trimountaine, and as they are perpetuated on the city seal to the present day, were the "three little rising hills" comprised in the high ridge of land which extended through the center of the peninsula from the head of Hanover Street southwest to the River Charles. Cotton Hill on the east, afterwards changed to Pemberton, was credited with a height of eighty feet; Beacon Hill, originally known as Centry Hill, in the vicinity of Temple and Bowdoin Streets, 138 feet above the sea; and West Hill in the vicinity of Pinckney Street, called at different times Copley's Hill, Mt. Vernon, Mt. Whoredom, and other names less generally known. In addition, there was a small hill in the marshes at the bottom of the Common of which we find frequent mention in the early records under the name of Fox Hill.
Only second in topographic value to its hills were the coves of Boston. These deep inlets, worn by the sea whenever the yielding nature of the soil permitted, were, in 1630, fast changing the character of the place, washing to a thinner and thinner thread the frail hold of the peninsula upon the mainland. At this point man stepped in and the course of the sea was not only stayed but turned back upon itself, and with immense effect, until today Boston appears firmly welded to the mainland as part and parcel of the Continent.
Thus we have the original framework for our physical city and even for our Metropolitan region, since it must be remembered that the boundary lines of 300 years ago were much more expansive than they are at the present time. In proof of this we have only to recite that the Charlestown of that day included the whole or portions of Somerville, Cambridge, Woburn, Burlington, Wilmington, Stoneham, Winchester, Melrose, Everett, Malden, Wakefield, Medford and Arlington. The process of development or the evolution of the present city from its original chrysalis began almost immediately. The coves swallowed up the hills by the law of natural growth and necessity. Fort Hill, Fox Hill and West Hill have completely disappeared; Castle Island has ceased to be an Island and East Boston is pushing out into the sea, until today Boston is a man-made city to a greater degree than is generally realized with not a foot remaining of the shore line of the original peninsula. This process of expansion has been gradual and not unaccompanied by growing pains.
One of the most important reclamation projects, and one scarcely contemplated in the early days, is generally referred to as the filling in of the Back Bay. Prior to 1850, the population of the City of Boston and of the adjoining Town of Roxbury had grown to such extent that the drainage from these communities into the tidal-flat basin created by the building of a tide mill dam on what is now the line of Beacon Street had created a nuisance. Shortly after 1850, the Commonwealth undertook the reclamation of these flats as a measure of sanitation. As the simplest method of procedure, the State acquired title to the area by right of eminent domain. The fiats were filled and proper drainage was provided. Suitable streets and public spaces were laid out, certain portions of the lands were granted by the Commonwealth to educational institutions, and the remaining lots were sold to private parties. The reclamation, of this considerable territory was of benefit not only to the inhabitants of Boston and neighboring communities in the abolition of a nuisance, but the net result financially was a substantial profit to the State. Similar work is going on in other sections and tidal flats along different portions of the waterfront of Boston Harbor have been and are being reclaimed by State agency.
Thus, to the gradual evolution of local topography by successive action of the rivers, sea, subterranean heat, and even the eruption, of volcanoes around the shore of Boston Harbor, has been added annexation and reclamation, until Boston has reached its present day physical proportions, and while it is no part of the present narrative to enter into the field of prophecy, still history does repeat itself, and in the next 300 years, further and doubtless equally important changes are bound to come.