One of the world famous American cities - Boston was founded almost 400 years ago, and for several decades played the role of the largest and most important settlement in America, but later this role was transferred to New York.
After Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, mariners from all over Europe flocked to the new mainland to colonize and make it habitable. The British were no exception, who in 1584 founded the first colony in the United States of America.
After the successful development of new territories by the British, the first settlements were built by the colonialists. One of them was Boston, founded on September 17, 1630 by the Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts colony and named after one of the cities in Great Britain. Soon, the first university in the United States was created on the territory of this settlement, but then still a college - Harvard.
Boston officially received the city status in 1822, before that it was considered a settlement. In the middle of the 19th century, the new city became a major commercial and industrial center of the United States. This was largely due to the abolition of slavery. Around the same time, the mass migration of Europeans to America began. It was they who brought Catholicism to Boston, and soon the Catholic community became the largest in the city.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the city gradually fell into decay, which is why its administration decided on a large-scale construction and redevelopment of Boston. In the mid-1960s, the historic city center was rebuilt, and a project was created to raise awareness of Boston by introducing innovative medical technologies.
According to the 2010 census, about 618,000 people live in Boston. About a million more people live in the suburbs, who periodically travel to Boston on weekdays, thereby increasing its population. Now this city is at the peak of development, annually about 150 thousand people enter its one hundred and twenty-seven higher educational institutions. The Boston City Hall plans to soon expand the area of the city, and to open a museum dedicated to the history of the city in the historic center by the 400th anniversary.
