Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston

by Michael Rawson

Drinking a glass of tap water, strolling in a park, hopping a train for the suburbs: some aspects of city life are so familiar that we don t think twice about them. But such simple actions are structured by complex relationships with our natural world. The contours of these relationships social, cultural, political, economic, and legal were established during America s first great period of urbanization in the nineteenth century, and Boston, one of the earliest cities in America, often led the nation in designing them. A richly textured cultural and social history of the development of nineteenth-century Boston, this book provides a new environmental perspective on the creation of America s first cities.

"Eden on the Charles" explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of parks and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a city upon a hill to the process of urbanization and were forced to conform their goals to the realities of Boston s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of their battles for control over the city s development were ultimately recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston s history, we find the seeds of the environmental relationships that for better or worse have defined urban America to this day.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Urban, Environment

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

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Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creating 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. This theory 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.

[Doug Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever lived in Boston, Michael Rawson's Eden on the Charles  is a great book to help understand how Boston developed in the 19th Century. You may know the basic transformation of Boston from a small ithsmus surrounded by shallow flats to the larger bustling city of today. For a book labeling a city as Eden, it's mostly about conflict. Conflict between the classes and conflict between different visions of the city. It uses those conflicts to highlight five developments in the city.

The first conflict is over the use of the Boston Common. In the early days of the city it was a common pasture. As the city grew, the common became a spot for recreation. That transformation increased as the affluent residents began calling Beacon Hill home. The conflict arose between those looking to keep agriculture in the city and those who wanted more recreation in the city (and didn't enjoy dodging cow patties).

The second conflict was over potable water. For centuries, residents were able to supply water through wells in the city. By the middle of the 19th century, wells became inadequate. The conflict was between those who thought water should be delivered by the government or by private parties. By this time in the city's history there were a few companies privately supplying water. Once the decision fell in favor of the government, the conflict was over how to pay for it. On one side was a movement to have it paid through general tax revenue. On the other was those who wanted it paid through a usage charge. Anyone who has paid a water bill knows how this was finally resolved.

The third conflict was over the suburbs. Boston offered water, streetlights, and police protection. The outlying communities ( West Roxbury and Brookline in particular) offered a rural lifestyle, allowing you to escape from the frenzy of the city. While residents enjoyed the idyllic lifestyle in the more rural communities, they also enjoyed the peace that came from good roads, streetlights, and clean water supplied by the city. Ultimately, West Roxbury failed to deliver the services wanted by the residents and they agreed to be annexed by Boston. Brookline did a better job implementing resident services and managed to avoid the lure of annexation.

The fourth conflict discussed in the book was over filling the harbor. Throughout its history Boston has slowly grown as landowners began filling in the flats that surrounded the isthmus. By the middle of the 19th century mariners became concerned that the harbor's shipping lanes were getting filled with debris. The conflict ended up being one that turned on scientific reasoning and political will. Little was understood about the hydrological forces taking place in the harbor that made it such a good harbor for that time period.

The last topic had the least conflict. Everyone wanted to preserve some wilderness in the outlying regions of the city. The biggest targets were Blue Hills, Lynn Woods, and Middlesex Fells.

This is a serious book. It was a finalist in  for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History. It's well written. At times, it's breezy and easy to read. At other times, it slogs through the topics.

If you have an interest in the history of Boston or enjoying reading about the environmental history you will find lots of good reading in   Eden on the Charles . If you don't have those interests... Well that's probably not you because they would have stopped reading well before this point in this essay.

[Kevin Schafer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book #1 on Boston.

A look at the interactions between the city of Boston and the natural world. If you enjoyed Nature's Metropolis, you will love this. I left the experience with an expanded understanding of how cities interact (or dont) with their natural and political boundaries. The sections on Boston Common and the growth of Boston are particularly well done.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is cat nip for urban planners or anyone really who wonders how cities are made. This is the story of Boston starting in the 1600s and going into the 20th century. Land fill, public vs private water, making of the suburbs, setting of the city boundaries, how a small farming community transforms into a large port and a major US city. A must read for anyone who lives in or near Boston, and anyone interested in how public policy gets made.

[Christian Erichsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

History is narrative. While this position may be recognized and incorporated into the studies of all contemporary historians, that doesn't mean that the fine art of weaving a narrative is universal in the field's writers. In fact, the distinct talent of turning research theses into an engaging, even poetic, read seems to be increasingly lost. And no surprise, as the manic competition over narrowing funding for the humanities drives historians into increasingly narrow subfields and niche disciplines, where they lack the time for the kind of broad reading and thinking that produces good writing. The result is a historian whose research skills may be excellent, and may have a clear vision of their specific area, but who fail to hold the readers attention, and worse, leave that reader feeling that not every part of the question has been adequately addressed, because it is outside of their wheelhouse.

Unfortunately, 'Eden on the Charles' is a clear example of these patterns. While the period study of an individual city is an established genre (as is environmental history), Rawson overly focuses on the elites who were responsible for shaping the cities policies and environmental constructions most directly. While the recurring insight that a major motivator for such decisions was a classist and racist tension with immigrants is illuminating, we are almost never privy to how those groups constructed or used the environment themselves, and the result is the rendering of the entire Boston Irish population into an anonymous collective force upon the wealthy of Massachusetts. Also neglected is the relationship between Boston and other cities, even in an environmental sense-while comparisons are made, in a city that depended upon and revolved around its interactions with the outside world, some attention must be given to how these issues developed in other places, or how Boston's environment was part of a greater whole. Writing in the 21st century, with better methodology for studying the historical subaltern and globalized networks than ever before, such oversights are gross negligence.

An observation which leads naturally to my greatest problem with the book: while printed and formatted like a nonfiction novel, the dry, completely linear prose feels exactly like the worst kind of textbook. The book is divided into discrete chapters focusing on unique issues over the entire 19th century, such as urban expansion; the problem with this is that each chapter must then 'reset the clock' to the beginning of the period. In addition, each of these chapters is formatted exactly like an essay, with a one or two paragraph opening thesis, subsections developing the issue over time, all leading into a thuddingly pat concluding paragraph which 'neatly' tie the contents into the next section.

Reader, I am deeply, deeply invested in the subject and study of history, but even the most curious student requires something to hold their attention over 200+ pages of faceless, characterless elites debating water sourcing and the outdated theory of tidal scouring. Texts like these are why history gets an undeserved reputation for being dull and lifeless. Good historical writing can make tangible to the reader the passions, interests, and conflicts of entire past worlds. 'Eden on the Charles' has made me curious to find a book on the subject which does.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, but not quite as much as I thought I would. I think it is an important book to keep around...for people interested in urban history, or environmental history, or the history of Boston specifically. There are a lot of fascinating stories to tell, and Rawson has clearly done the research and tells them well. He goes into how the Common went from an actual common that people used for cows to a refined park for promenading and such, how Bostonians built the public water system, how the pastoral outer suburbs were absorbed into Boston, and how some resisted absorption. All of this was interesting, but it was really hard for me to figure out what it was all supposed to add up to, in the end. He has a larger point here about how Bostonians changed the way they thought about nature and the urban relationship to nature, and how this same change was happening in a lot of places but happened in Boston first...but the book still felt a little disjointed for some reason. Like it ALMOST came together, but just not quite.
Interesting book to read just as one moves back to Boston after a decade away. It was surprising to me to learn here that Brookline has always been snooty and annoying. I thought that was just a modern development, but no. Always been that way. They've been trying to pretend that they aren't a part of the city for a hundred and fifty years now. And this is why you can't park overnight there. Friggin' Brookline.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched and well-written history of Boston's relationship to the natural environment in the nineteenth century. In five chapters Rawson describes, respectively, the "enclosure" of the Boston Commons from cow pasturage in 1830, the construction of the municipal water system in 1848, the growth of suburbs and the creation of the nation's first "Country Club" in Brookline in 1882, the work of the Harbor Commissioners (created in 1866) to keep the harbor open for commerce, and the creation of the Metropolitan Park Commission in 1893 and, afterwards, the creation Boston's "Emerald Necklace" of connected parks.

The grand story isn't too surprising here, but the book is filled with interesting facts and anecdotes. For instance, the Harbor Commissioners had an explicit system of "compensation-in-kind" for developers who filled in tidal flats, which forced them to create tidal waters elsewhere to assist the harbor or pay into a "compensation fund." The scheme almost perfectly mimics contemporary "wetlands banking," except it was founded on a false theory of "tidal scouring."

Overall, this is one of the better written books on the urban-environmental connection in American history.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boston was vastly different—a glorified town—at the beginning of the nineteenth century (75% of the present city's landmass is nineteenth-century infill). Channeling its early 17th century charge to be a city upon a hill, it developed into a full-fledged “complete” city by the end of the nineteenth century. However, it was shaped by very different, competing legacies beyond its Puritan beginnings and Yankee era. Irish and other immigrants outnumbered yankees three to one by the end of the nineteenth century. There were many negations that went into shaping the Boston; preserving the Common, filling in the Back Bay, designing the park system, inventing the suburbs, and providing the city with clean water. Dawson does a masterful job of tying the theme of a complicated commitment to building a city upon hill throughout his chronicle of “the making of Boston.”

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable and interesting as it relates to how American cities, Boston in particular, were built. A little dry but thoroughly researched.

Three stars for some sloppy editing of typos and for the lack of illustrations in the Kindle version. The visuals of the maps and historical photos would have been very helpful to those of us who know these areas now and want to see how they looked in the 19th century. I’m not sure what the permissions issue is, but the electronic version is lacking without the illustrations.

[Gradon Tripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing, well-written look into the history of Boston -- from John Winthrop and the first settlers, to the fading influence of the Brahmins nearly 400 years later -- through its citizens' interaction with nature.

My one fault is that Rawson glanced over what is surely the largest feat of environmental engineering in nineteenth century Boston, the filling of the Back Bay. Nowhere in Boston is the impact of land-filling more present to present-day Bostonians than there.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone with an interest in urban history and/or Boston will find this book interesting. Rawson looks at how Boston's citizens in the 19th century sought to tame and frame the natural world they found around them. In the process, they were among the first urbanites in the nation to grapple with water shortages, suburban sprawl, preserving green space, and other issues. It's interesting to note that wealthy people were just as intent on avoiding taxes, government and the less well-to-do (mainly immigrants) in the 1800s as they are today. The writing could be more lively, but Rawson is clear and generally focused. The maps are an added bonus, although I still found myself pulling out a Boston atlas now and then.

[Jack Gronholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Should be a 3.5; lots and of interesting ideas, and overall good presentation of how Boston’s relationship to nature shaped those of cities across America. That said, it’s definitely a slow read, and Rawson repeats himself *a lot*. He’s also really really into writing hyper-explicit transitions between each section and chapter in a way that I find very clunky.

Learned a lot though so I can’t hate on it too much.

[W. Nikola-Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Muir and Whitehill's and then Nancy Seasholes' treatment of the various land-making and development projects that have changed the face of Boston's landmass over time, Michael Rawson's more philosophical--if occasionally romantic--treatment of Boston's topographic history reads as a breath of fresh air, uplifting and illuminating.

[Alexandra Grieco · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for a class. i would only recommend if you REEEEEAAAALLY like history

[Tamera Mcmahon · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Competing ambitions embedded in the Boston ideal effected the relationship with a particular natural environment or a facet of the natural world: When Bostonians debated whether to bid a privately owned waterworks or a public system they argued about the meaning of water. To some, fresh water was a” gift from God” and should be a common resource available to all citizens, to others it was a commodity to be sold at market rates, and to others it was a promising vehicle of social reform.”

Once the Common was free of cows - “The newly refined pasture was encouraging a certain degree of reverence that was, in turn, promoting further efforts to reduce the space. Nature and society were sharing each other within the close quarters of a growing city.”

The Boston Common became the largest municipal green space in America, before Farming Park in Philadelphia or Central Park in New York City.

The transformation of the Common influenced development of additional areas - the construction of a botanical garden in 1837, which became so popular it became the Boston Public Garden. This leads to an “unbroken chain of refined spaces.”

The next battle - water. Boston’s wells produced “hard” water not desirable for washing. The supply of water - a right or a commodity?

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'Say what some poets will ... Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet. whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.'" (quoting Melville, 19)

"When the Common shed its cows in 1830, it became the largest municipal green space in America dedicated entirely to passive recreation. ... The transformation of this simple pasture therefore embodied the key intellectual shift that had to take place in order for parks to become possible: labor and production had to be banished in favor of leisure, at least in certain public places." (73)

"After two decades of scrutinizing the area's water sources, scientists unexpectedly turned up a previously hidden characteristic of the local water that also began to shape the debate. In 1845, scientists found tiny animals and plants in Long Pond. The 'animalcules,' or microscopic life, were only visible with the assistance of a microscope, so most of the city's residents had neither seen nor heard of them. But the announcement of their existence created a great deal of concern about the fitness of such water for human consumption." (109)

"At the same time [mid-1800s], writes historian Van Wyck Brooks, Boston's Brahmins were collecting antiques 'as if the race were truly dying and one had to gather the relics before they vanished.' Like those trying to remember the colonial period, those trying to preserve its remains were searching for a usable past that could anchor the present against social and environmental change." (255)

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, I didn't actually finish this book, but I am going to write about it anyways. I had about 50 pages go and I just couldn't handle it anymore. I'm sure this book would be interesting to some people, however that person is not me. Who do I think it would be interesting to? Civil Engineers? Environmentalists? A tree? I thought this book would be more history oriented, but it really wasn't. I think the guy did some good research, but the writing was incredibly dry, at some times obvious and mostly really boring. The book is broken up into a few different sections. The first, about Boston Common, was sort of interesting. I walk by The Common every day and it was nice to putreal life and what was being told in the pages of my book - together. The rest of the book, ug. One chapter was all about drinking water, another about creation of the suburbs and another about the creation of Boston harbor. There wasn't enough people in the this book -- and I dont think the environment was a big enough character! This really isn't a history of Boston, but more about the history of the land itself. Snooooozefest.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rawson shows how the geography Boston's settlers encountered dictated what Boston became. From the water being hard in most places, to the harbor and what proved incorrect theories of what formed it and more, we like to think we control the landscape but it this book shows it can be quite the reverse. He also delves in social issues like the Common changing from common land where cows were grazed to strictly a leisure park, creating the municipal water system rather than the smaller private ones preceding it, towns lobbying to become part of Boston or fighting to remain independent of Boston, and the beginnings of land preservation/parks in Boston and its surrounding areas. It's a fascinating read.

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Clearly written view of the growth of Boston and Metropolitan Boston using five major themes:
"Enclosing the Commons, Constructing Water, Inventing the Suburbs, Making the Harbor,
Recreating the Wilderness."

[Sasha]

Pulitzer Prize nominee. Again, great topic but not much talk about it. Seems worth looking into, particularly since there's bound to be discussion of my beloved Franklin Park.

[Cappy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are interested in environmental science, urban planning, or Boston, you should read this book.

[Heather C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read if you're interested in cities and infrastructure.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful historical account of urban and suburban planning in Boston in 19th century. Well researched and thoughtfully written. Was a joy to read!