Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston

Can you imagine a history of Boston that doesn’t even mention Sam Adams (not the beer), John Hancock, or Paul Revere? If you’d like to imagine one, you’ve come to the right place. Leaving the stirring calls of the usual patriotism for others, Michael Rawson delves into the relationship of urban Boston to its natural surroundings and comes up with a most interesting story. If Boston at the inception was supposed by Puritans to be “a city on a hill”—that is, the ideal settlement---it had still to deal with various practical problems to do with the environment. Americans of the late 18th and 19th centuries thought rural life was the ideal, even if “the city on the hill” image stood before them. Starting with the changing usage of Boston Common (from work site and pasture to park), he looks at how the city developed a public water system and how the suburbs broke off from the city itself because a) they wanted to maintain more “bucolic” surroundings and b) because they didn’t want to pay taxes for providing services which the rich or parochial inhabitants could manage themselves. The model of a city grew slowly over time and there was considerable argument over what it should be. He then examines how Boston Harbor, its islands and the surrounding lands or tidal flats were either built over, mined for ballast, or preserved according to a long-held theory of natural “scour” by the rivers draining into the sea which eventually proved entirely faulty. And finally he writes about the early conservation and historic preservation efforts around Boston, though in almost no cases were the preserved lands pristine. The parks around the metropolitan area today provide welcome areas of greenery and water, but establishing them took time and effort. You could say that this book is ultimately about the conflict of classes, the conflict between immigrants and earlier arrivals. The change in each case took a lot of political wrangling based on class. A lot of research and time must have gone into this book which is not difficult reading and supplies the reader with maps, drawings, and old photos. If you live in eastern Massachusetts, there’s no doubt that you’ll learn a lot about what surrounds you every day.

I liked both the subjects of the various chapters (the Boston Common, the Water System, the Suburbs, the Harbor and building a Metropolitan Parks System) and how the author showed how the built and natural environment complement each other.

This book is fascinating! Whether you are a Bostonian or not, it is a great read, if you want to learn about the development of cities like Boston. I especially recommend this book for all American Studies/Urban History majors.

Since I grew up right near Boston I found every page of this book fascinating. The common, the harbor and the MDC, the water system and the suburbs were all topics anyone from Boston would love to know about. Not a hard book to read but it has many ah hah moments.

Product arrived quickly and was a good, quick read.

Really helpful book! We read it in my environmental history class.

Rawson's overview of how Boston took shape is fascinating. I particularly enjoyed his section on the Middlesex Fells, and its origins in Yankee nostalgia for a vanished landscape at the time of the centennial. Highly recommended!

I always like to know the background histofry of an area.