Four centuries of Boston, 1630–2030
It started a revolution, buried its dead in the heart of downtown, and still walks you past four hundred years on a single afternoon. Fall in love on foot.
- 906
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- neighborhoods
Boston400 as living memory
Open one object and the anniversary becomes a person, a place, a route, and a thread through the city.
The older layer. Then open Boston Public Library.
A slow campus crossing. Then open Tsai Performance Center.
One good detour. Then open Boston Common.
The older layer. Then open Abbotsford.
Boston’s 400th is a once-in-a-century civic moment. Present the record the city is built on.
Inquire about this placement →Upcoming anniversaries computed live from the graph · full timeline →
The road to 2030 the program of quadricentennial moments
America’s 250th — July 4, 2026
The Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. Boston — where the Revolution began — anchors the national commemoration with a season o…
Charlestown 400 (2029)
Charlestown was settled in 1629, a year before Boston — its quadricentennial in 2029 is the opening act of the regional 400 sequence, with Bunker H…
Boston 400 — The Quadricentennial (2030)
September 7, 2030 marks 400 years since Winthrop’s settlers named Boston. The quadricentennial is the organizing horizon for a decade of civic comm…
Drag a slider across four centuries and watch the founding, the Revolution, the institutions, and the modern city appear on the map in the order history actually wrote them.
Historic figures the people who shaped the city — ranked by their reach in the graph
Paul Revere
North End silversmith, engraver and revolutionary courier (1735–1818), immortalized by Longfellow’s 1860 poem about his midnight ride.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The most famous poet of 19th-century America (1807–1882), who wrote "Paul Revere’s Ride" from his Brattle Street house — Washington’s former headqu…
Martin Luther King Jr. (BU years)
King earned his PhD in systematic theology at Boston University (1951–1955), shaped by Howard Thurman at Marsh Chapel; BU holds a major collection…
Samuel Adams
Brewer, agitator and master political organizer (1722–1803) — architect of the Sons of Liberty, the committees of correspondence, and the meetings…
John Winthrop
Puritan lawyer and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1588–1649), who led the 1630 fleet and framed the settlement as “a city upon a h…
William Lloyd Garrison
Printer and abolitionist (1805–1879) who made Boston the capital of American abolition — dragged through its streets by a mob in 1835, vindicated b…
John Hancock
Boston’s richest merchant and the Revolution’s banker (1737–1793); president of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration, first go…
Crispus Attucks
Sailor of African and Wampanoag descent (c. 1723–1770), first to die at the Boston Massacre — remembered as the first casualty of the American Revo…
Pathways routes through the graph · all 5 →
Historic geography browse by place
Back Bay
Victorian brownstone district built on filled tidal marsh in the 19th century — Newbury Street, Copley Square and the Boston Public Library.
Beacon Hill
Gas-lit, brick-sidewalked neighborhood beneath the State House dome; home of the 19th-century free Black community on its north slope.
North End
Boston’s oldest residential neighborhood — Paul Revere’s house, Old North Church, and the densest Italian food scene in New England.
Fenway–Kenmore
Neighborhood of ballpark, colleges and museums — Fenway Park, the MFA, Northeastern and BU’s East Campus all within a mile.
Charlestown
Boston’s oldest planned settlement (1629) — a year older than Boston itself — home to the Bunker Hill Monument and the Navy Yard, annexed to the ci…
South End
The largest intact Victorian row-house district in the country — bowfront brick blocks around leafy squares, a landmark district since 1983, and on…
Seaport
Boston’s newest neighborhood — parking lots and fish piers transformed since 2010 into a glass district of labs and towers around the ICA, with For…
South Boston
"Southie" — triple-deckers, the St. Patrick’s Day parade (and Evacuation Day), Castle Island, and three miles of harbor beaches.
East Boston
Island neighborhood across the harbor — Boston’s immigrant gateway for 180 years (Irish, Italian, now Latin American), with skyline views from Pier…
Dorchester
Boston’s largest and most populous neighborhood, founded the same summer as Boston itself (1630) — triple-decker capital of America, with the JFK L…
Roxbury
The heart of Black Boston — founded 1630, annexed 1868, centered on Nubian Square, with the 1747 Shirley-Eustis royal governor’s mansion still stan…
Jamaica Plain
Streetcar suburb turned Boston’s green bohemia — wrapped by Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, anchored by the Arnold Arboretum and the Sam Adams brewery.
Chinatown
One of the largest and last surviving historic Chinatowns in the country — through the 1890s gate on Beach Street, a dense quarter of dim sum, late…
Downtown & Financial District
The original Shawmut settlement’s street plan, still walkable beneath the towers — the Freedom Trail threads it from the Common to Faneuil Hall.
Mission Hill
Brick row houses and triple-deckers climbing from the Longwood hospitals to the 1878 Mission Church basilica — student energy from Northeastern on…
Brighton
Western Boston between the Pike and the reservoir — cattle-market town turned student and young-professional quarter, shared territory of BC and BU.
West End
The neighborhood urban renewal erased in 1958 — now MGH, TD Garden and towers, with the West End Museum keeping the memory of the 2,700 displaced f…
The timeline — oldest first graph-ranked by year
John Winthrop
Puritan lawyer and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1588–1649), who led the 1630 fleet and framed the settlement as “a city upon a h…
Anne Hutchinson
Midwife and theologian (1591–1643) whose weekly meetings challenged Boston’s ministers; tried for heresy and banished in 1638 — the colony’s foundi…
Charlestown
Boston’s oldest planned settlement (1629) — a year older than Boston itself — home to the Bunker Hill Monument and the Navy Yard, annexed to the ci…
Founding of Boston (1630)
Puritan settlers under John Winthrop moved from Charlestown to the Shawmut Peninsula in September 1630, renaming it Boston.
Dorchester
Boston’s largest and most populous neighborhood, founded the same summer as Boston itself (1630) — triple-decker capital of America, with the JFK L…
Roxbury
The heart of Black Boston — founded 1630, annexed 1868, centered on Nubian Square, with the 1747 Shirley-Eustis royal governor’s mansion still stan…
King’s Chapel Burying Ground
Boston’s oldest burying ground (1630) — John Winthrop lies here, alongside Mary Chilton, the first woman ashore from the Mayflower.
Phipps Street Burying Ground
Historic cemetery in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Boston Common
America’s oldest public park (1634) — colonial cow pasture, militia ground, and the starting point of the Freedom Trail.
Editorial 7 guides & essays, built on the graph
Why BostonIt started a revolution, buried its dead in the heart of downtown, and still walks you past four hundred years on a single afternoon. Fall in love on foot.
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