Featured Apartment:
Boston-East Boston - A large, modern, studio apartment in East Boston. It has an eat-in-kitchen, wall-to-wall carpeting, a tiled bath, large closets, and AC. Hot water is included in the rent. Laundry is in the building. View More Listing -->
East Boston Information
East Boston is a blue-collar neighborhood that is separated from the rest of
the city of Boston by Boston Harbor and bordered by Winthrop, Revere, and the
Chelsea Creek. The landmass that is East Boston today was originally five
islands--Noddle, Hog, Governor's, Bird and Apple--that were connected using
landfill.
Not long after the settling of Boston, Noddle Island served as grazing land for
cattle, but in the 1830s ferry service to the island and the construction of the
Maverick House Hotel made the spot a vacation destination. The character of the
area changed when the marshland was filled in and the streets laid out. Since
the mid-19th century, the community has served as a foothold for immigrants to
America: Irish and Canadians came first, followed by Russian Jews and Italians,
then came Southeast Asians, and, most recently, large numbers of Central and
South Americans.
The population of East Boston, which was recorded as a mere thousand in 1837,
exploded to a high of just over 64,000 according to the 1925 census. Most of
these were families from southern Italy. Today the neighborhood is home to a
little more than 38,000 people, with the median income per household around
$31,000. Current demographic is a true potpourri of cultures, with groups of
residents of Italian, Central American, Vietnamese, and even Irish descent
populating various enclaves of the neighborhood.
Though the North End is today thought of as Boston's "Little Italy," Orient
Heights, the historic hill in East Boston, was the very first area in
Massachusetts to which Italians immigrated, back in the 1860's and '70s, and
remains the heart of the Italian community in East Boston.
For a long time, transportation has played a role in the shaping of East Boston.
The world's finest clipper ships were built at the shipyard owned by Donald
McKay in the mid-1800s; the tunnel connecting the neighborhood to the rest of
the city via subway, the first underwater tunnel of its kind in the US, opened
in 1904; rows of houses were torn down to build the Sumner (1934) and Callahan
(1961) tunnels, connecting automobile traffic from downtown Boston to the
neighborhood; an airfield built in East Boston in the early 1920s eventually
expanded to become Logan International Airport.
Today, East Boston is primarily known for Logan Airport and the controversy
surrounding it. Conflict with the Massachusetts Port Authority (MassPort), which
owns and operates Logan, has been a source of bitterness among local residents
for decades. One expansion of the airport resulted in the community losing Wood
Island Park, a greenspace designed by the noted landscape architect Frederick
Law Olmsted. In another episode, Logan construction caused noisy trucks to
rumble through the neighborhood until a group of local women took to the streets
with their baby carriages and blocked the vehicles. The tension between the
airport and local citizens continues, with MassPort attempting to expand again
and add a fifth runway.
Though East Boston has a spectacular view of the downtown skyline, the
community's rents and property values have increased more slowly than the
extraordinary growth seen in the rest of the metro-Boston region during the late
1990s and early 2000s. This slower growth can largely be attributed to two
factors: the isolated nature of the neighborhood and the difficulties of real
estate development with the pre-existing pollution along the waterfront & by a
local government that hinders any potential for private investment.
East Boston is home to one of Boston's more popular public beaches. Constitution
Beach -- which is known to locals as "Shays Beach" -- is a small beach located
in the Orient Heights section of the community. It has been undergoing
renovations since the mid 1990s and is entering the final stages of the
renovation process, in which a new public bathhouse and refreshment stand will
be built. During peak season, it is not uncommon to see more than 1,000
residents on the sands of Constitution Beach.