The North End, Street by Street: A Short History of Boston’s Oldest Neighborhood
Puritans, sea captains, Irish and Jewish families, then Italian immigrants: the North End has been remade many times. Here is how it became the place we know.
The North End is small enough to walk in an afternoon, yet it holds nearly four centuries of Boston life. Its narrow, crooked streets follow paths laid down long before anyone planned a city grid. Here is a guide to how the neighborhood changed, layer by layer.
The colonial waterfront
In the 1600s and 1700s, the North End was one of the busiest and most prosperous parts of Boston. Ships tied up at wharves along the harbor, and merchants, shipbuilders and craftsmen lived close to their work. The Mather family of ministers preached here, and the area’s churches and burying grounds date from this era.
Two landmarks survive from those years:
- The Paul Revere House, built around 1680, is the oldest house in downtown Boston. Revere lived there at the time of his famous ride in 1775.
- Old North Church, formally Christ Church, opened in 1723 and is the oldest standing church building in Boston. Its steeple held the two lanterns that signaled the British were moving by water.
Waves of newcomers
As wealthier families moved to newer neighborhoods in the 1800s, the North End’s large old houses were divided into tenements and boarding houses. The neighborhood became a landing place for immigrants arriving by sea.
Irish families came first in large numbers, especially during and after the famine years of the 1840s. Later in the century, Eastern European Jewish families settled here too. By the early 1900s, Italian immigrants, many from southern Italy and Sicily, had become the dominant community, and they shaped the North End’s identity for the century that followed.
Cut off, then reconnected
In the 1950s, the elevated Central Artery highway was built along the neighborhood’s edge. It walled the North End off from downtown for decades, and many residents felt the neighborhood had been left on the other side of a concrete barrier.
The Big Dig moved the highway underground. When the elevated road came down, the Rose Kennedy Greenway took its place, opening a line of parks and walkways that once again links the North End to the rest of the city.
The North End today
Today the neighborhood is known for its Italian bakeries, cafes, restaurants and summer religious feasts, many of them organized by societies whose roots go back to particular towns in Italy. It is also a residential neighborhood where people live in small apartments above storefronts, hang laundry in back courts and know their neighbors.
A few ideas for a winter visit:
- Walk Hanover and Salem Streets early in the day, before the crowds.
- Climb to Copp’s Hill Burying Ground for a view across the harbor to Charlestown.
- Find the plaque for the 1919 Molasses Flood near the waterfront parks on Commercial Street.
- Check hours before visiting the Paul Revere House or Old North Church, since winter schedules can be shorter.
Reading the layers
The best way to understand the North End is to look up. Colonial street patterns, Victorian tenement facades, church bell towers and Italian social club signs all sit side by side. Each group that lived here left something behind, and the neighborhood’s charm comes from that mix rather than from any single era.
