Boston: South Bay and the Shirley-Eustis House Walking Map

If you look past the South Bay’s energy of modern commerce with some imagination, you can still visualize three-masted sailing ships, muscular steam locomotives, aristocratic estates, horse-drawn streetcars, and personalities of an earlier age who shaped and were shaped by the evolution of this area.

When the Puritans arrived in Boston, they found two large bays separated by a narrow isthmus roughly following today’s Washington Street. The southern bay—unsurprisingly named South Bay—was a large tidal marsh.

The bluffs overlooking South Bay, graced by the stately mansion of British royal governor William Shirley, were gradually lined with homes by the local gentry of the young republic. Influenced by the Industrial Revolution, over the 19th century these forces transformed the bay into a place devoted to industry and commerce.
Today only the Fort Point Channel remains as a remainder of South Bay’s watery history. Explore today’s South “Bay,” the neighborhood that landfill built.

Click for “WalkBoston’s South Bay and the Shirley-Eustis House Walking Map” on Google Maps