Category: Map

Boston: Washington Street Walking Map

Boston: Washington Street Walking Map

By |

From Dudley Square to Chinatown, Washington Street is in the midst of an astonishing small-business and real-estate revival that is bringing new life and vitality to this historic part of the city. In colonial times Washington St was a narrow land bridge connecting Boston proper, which lay out on a peninsula, to the mainland behind. Boston Neck, as it was called, was not more than 100 feet wide at some points. When the early 19th century saw overcrowding of the city’s center, city business and government began to fill in the marshland along both sides of the Neck. New Chinese immigrants settled the land around the train station at the northern edge, and wealthy merchants built elegant town houses to the south. The financial panic of the 1870s led to the exodus of wealthy families. An elevated rapid transit train was constructed down the center in 1899 and did little to enhance the area’s appeal. The dismantling of the El in the 1980s finally set the stage for redevelopment.


Click for “WalkBoston – Boston’s Washington Street Walking Map” on Google Maps

Boston: Southwest Corridor Park Walking Map

Boston: Southwest Corridor Park Walking Map

By |

The Southwest Corridor Park was almost a highway. On this walk you can see what happened when the expressway plan was dropped, the narrow corridor became transit lines, and a park was built around it.

The never-built Southwest Expressway would have continued I-95 from Route 128 to downtown Boston, replacing the commuter and Amtrak rail line embankment. Hundreds of businesses and homes between Forest Hills and the South End were demolished in the 1960s to prepare for the new highway. As demolition progressed, however, community residents and activists lobbied in protest. Governor Francis Sargent reexamined the issue and announced his decision in 1972: no road. Funding set aside for I-95 was transferred to public transportation, the first such transfer in the country. The Orange Line–then an elevated line on Washington Street–was relocated into the underground rail corridor.


Click for “WalkBoston’s Boston: Southwest Corridor Park Walking Map” on Google Maps

Boston: Savin Hill Walking Map

Boston: Savin Hill Walking Map

By |

Savin Hill sits serenely above a tangle of teeming transportation arteries. The neighborhood offers a delightful jumble of residential architectural styles lining streets that circle the hill to the park at its very top. Here you can enjoy views of the sea, downtown Boston, the peninsula of UMass Boston and the JFK Library—as well as its own ocean beach and two yacht clubs.

The neighborhood dates to 1630, when Puritans built a temporary settlement for about 140 people on what they called Rock Hill. By the 1800s the arrival of railroad transportation transformed Savin Hill. These new arteries first connected the area to Boston; it became one of the city’s first suburbs. Yet ironically, they also isolated it.

Cut off from the ocean in the early 1930s and from the surrounding urban area in the 1950s, Savin Hill became an increasingly identifiable neighborhood. Still, being cut off from the outside world has enhanced rather than detracted from its neighborly feeling and livability.


Click for “WalkBoston’s Savin Hill Walking Map” on Google Maps

Boston: Urban Core Walking Maps

Boston: Urban Core Walking Maps

By |

One of the many benefits of walking is that you see and experience things you’d miss using other modes of travel. And the best way to enjoy them is with a WalkBoston map.

Our maps feature places that are wonderful to walk, easy to navigate, and convenient to get around. Each one is created by those know the territory best – people who live there or are expert in a walk’s particular theme or topic.Each has a self-guided walk with a detailed route, distances and descriptions of sights and scenes.

Click on the points on the map and then on the link “Google Map” for the map you would like to view.


Click for “WalkBoston’s Boston Urban Core Walking Maps” and more on Google Maps