Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston

author: Nancy S. Seasholes
published: Aug. 25, 2011,   recorded: November 2003,   views: 2862
Categories

Related content

Report a problem or upload files

If you have found a problem with this lecture or would like to send us extra material, articles, exercises, etc., please use our ticket system to describe your request and upload the data.
Enter your e-mail into the 'Cc' field, and we will keep you updated with your request's status.
Lecture popularity: You need to login to cast your vote.
  Delicious Bibliography

Description

fter years of determined sleuthing, Nancy Seasholes can now state for the record that one-sixth of Boston, or 5250 acres, consists of “made” land – that is, land created by overcoming incoming tides with mountains of fill. Surprisingly, before Seasholes, only one other historian had attempted to trace the growth of Boston by land fill, and it turns out he got quite a bit wrong. Seasholes, an archaeologist by training, came to her task in a roundabout way, as a consultant in the environmental review process on such large projects as Boston’s “Big Dig.” In her effort to learn whether excavation was taking place on original or “made” land, she consulted a cornucopia of primary sources: city and state records, corporate and municipal commission reports. She uncovered a number of unsavory episodes, including Boston’s effort in the 1840s to keep the famine Irish from settling in the city. By filling in some sewage-filled tidal flats of the South End and Back Bay, Boston created upscale residential areas to entice the wealthy Yankee residents to stay in the city. Today, in these same neighborhoods, falling ground water levels are rotting the wooden pilings on which many historic homes rest, which will be costly to repair, and be extremely vulnerable in an earthquake.

Link this page

Would you like to put a link to this lecture on your homepage?
Go ahead! Copy the HTML snippet !

Reviews and comments:

Comment1 Renush, January 15, 2019 at 7:34 a.m.:

Windows multi-doing abilities allow students and teachers to get things https://clipboardwindows10.com/ done faster and save time, get things done in a snap with Snap Assist, virtual desktops, Task View and many things.

Write your own review or comment:

make sure you have javascript enabled or clear this field: