The Plan of the Back Bay Area in Boston

Abstract

THE BACK BAY district, Boston's well-known residential area, represents a significant chapter in the history of city planning in nineteenth-century America.1 The importance of this development lies in its spacious and monumental plan, the comprehensive building regulations which insured the area's handsome residential character and in the far-seeing policy adopted by its sponsors of developing it as a civic and cultural center. At the outset it is important to call the reader's attention to two different uses of the name Back Bay. We employ the term Back Bay fill in referring to that portion of the bay which was filled in, but we use Back Bay district for the smaller portion of the total fill which, roughly speaking, lies between the Boston and Albany railroad tracks and the Charles River and which was developed as a district of fine residences and important public buildings (Fig. 1). Before turning to the history of the fill and an analysis of the district, however, some note should be made of the topographical character of early Boston.