Local Lore and Lingo in Boston
Fit in with the locals by mastering key terms and pronunciations in Boston
By Kimberly Blanton, The Boston Globe | Published: 11/18/2008
Boston's iconic Back Bay neighborhood runs horizontally along the Charles River.
Boston proper forms a half moon that curves around the bay -- Boston. Tony downtown neighborhoods provide access to the harbor and its waterfront activities, from whale-watching to sunning. All the city's geographic reference points can be traced from there.
The Charles River meanders into the harbor from the west and provides Boston's northernmost boundary. The grid of streets that make up the city's iconic Back Bay neighborhood -- labeled in alphabetic order: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth etc. -- runs horizontally along the Charles River.
Cambridge is visible across the river from Back Bay and can be reached on foot via a bridge with a long span that locals call the "Mass Ave. Bridge."
Emanating in a northeastern direction from Boston's half moon is the North Shore, which runs up to New Hampshire. Similarly, one can follow the South Shore in a southeastern direction all the way to Cape Cod and the islands, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. On the Shores are expensive waterfront suburbs backed up in the interior by bedroom communities and gritty, working-class cities.
NEIGHBORHOODS AND SQUARES
Ranked by land mass, Boston is the nation's second-smallest city, after San Francisco. Inside the city limits, it is organized, first, by neighborhoods and, second, by squares within each neighborhood. Urban neighborhoods are crowded around the bay's semicircle: Charlestown on the north, and next to it the North End, the Waterfront, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and South Boston.
But Boston's green neighborhoods -- Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain -- fill the vast majority of the city's 48.4 square miles, which extend in a liver-shaped lobe southwest of the central city. These neighborhoods have ample green space, ponds and the Franklin Park Zoo, which are interspersed with small town centers and dense-packed residential areas or sprawling lots with 19th century mansions. The parks that are linked together to create the city's Emerald Necklace tend to be small in the central city and blossom into large green spaces in the outer neighborhoods.
All over Boston, squares are named for famous city founders and politicians, such as Winthrop Square in downtown Boston -- for the first government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- and for local politicians and private citizens that few would recognize outside a two- or three-block radius. There is a square -- Louisburg Square -- named for the 1754 Battle of Louisburg in which Massachusetts militia sacked a French fortress. And there is must-see Copley Square, named for the American portraitist John Singleton Copley, where Trinity Church, built by the famous Back Bay architect Henry Hobson Richardson, is located. To find Fenway Park, look for Kenmore Square on the Green Line subway map.
Squares are also prevalent outside Boston, including in Cambridge. Leaving Boston and crossing into Cambridge on the Red Line subway, the train stops are: Kendall Square, Central Square, Harvard Square, Porter Square and Davis Square. Next, Somerville's squares include Ball Square, Teele Square and Powderhouse Square.