As I waited for luggage at the Terminal A baggage carousel in Logan Airport recently, I noticed a promotion on a nearby wall for Boston’s Grove Hall neighborhood. The poster advertises all the great things waiting to be discovered in the neighborhood. Visit Franklin Park Zoo! Tee up at William Devine Golf Course! Explore Olmsted’s… (read more)
“Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858. This quote recorded by Holmes is the source of the famous nickname… (read more)
In my most recent post I examined the election results of the largest cities in America. I chose the 26 largest cities based on US Census Bureau data, cities which each had a population of more than 600,000. I also discussed some problems with the data set, as I also did in a post from… (read more)
Boston has a reputation as a very liberal city. I have been a student of Boston elections for over two decades and my research suggests that the city is not as liberal as its national reputation warrants. Is it possible to determine the relative “liberalness” of Boston? Part of this project is dedicated to analyzing… (read more)
The following unwieldy table is an attempt to summarize the 2010 Census for the specific precincts through which the Upper Road to Braintree passes. This chart is meant to accompany the previous entry, Taking the High Road in Roxbury and Dorchester. My intention is merely to highlight the fact that the road passes through neighborhoods… (read more)
The Last of the ‘Old Roads’ from Boston is the road variously referred to as ‘The Way to Braintree’ or the ‘Upper Road to Dorchester.’ It is the last in the sense that the road was laid out in the 1660s to provide a shorter route to the bridge over the Neponset River at what… (read more)
A search for the largest cities in America on Wikipedia (or any database, including the Census Bureau) will yield something like the following list: 1. New York (8,175,133; all data are 2010 US Census figures), 2. Los Angeles (3,792,621), 3. Chicago (2,695,598), 4. Houston (2,100,263)…. so far so good (with the possible exception of Houston,… (read more)
The “hub” of the Hub. The Old State House, Boston A couple of years ago, I walked from Boston to New York along the original road to New York, the Old Boston Post Road. This route took me from downtown Boston, in front of the Old State House (shown at left), to Battery Park in… (read more)
