Living in Back Bay, Boston, MA

About Back Bay

Where it is

As defined by the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, the Charles River to the north, Arlington Street and Park Square to the east, Columbus Avenue, Huntington Avenue, Dalton Street and the Massachusetts Turnpike to the south, and Charlesgate East to the west. The smaller Back Bay Architectural District runs from Back Street to Boylston Street between Arlington Street and Charlesgate East.

Back Bay was a tidal bay of the Charles River until the 19th century. The Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation, chartered in 1814, built a milldam across it that doubled as a toll road; the basin behind it trapped sewage and the venture failed. Filling of the area enclosed by the dam began in 1857, and construction of houses followed from 1859. By 1882 the present neighborhood had been filled, and the City of Boston credits the mid-century landfilling with more than 450 acres of usable land by the 1880s. Arthur Gilman's plan, modeled on Haussmann's Paris, set five parallel east-west streets, Beacon, Marlborough, Commonwealth, Newbury and Boylston, crossed by streets named in alphabetical order from Arlington to Hereford.

Commonwealth Avenue runs down the middle of the grid on a 32-acre mall that Gilman designed in 1856 in the French boulevard style, the green link between the Public Garden and Frederick Law Olmsted's park system. The row houses, three to five stories, were held to setbacks written into the lot deeds, so the blocks read as continuous walls. Commercial use reached Boylston Street around 1880 and Newbury Street in the early 20th century, often by adapting existing row houses. Copley Square gathers H. H. Richardson's Trinity Church (1872 to 1877) and the Boston Public Library's McKim Building (1895), and the 52-story Prudential Tower, completed in 1964, rises to the south.

The Back Bay Architectural District was established in 1966 to regulate exterior changes, and it was expanded in 1974, 1979 and 1981. All proposed exterior work goes to the Back Bay Architectural Commission, and approval is needed before work begins. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1973. Along the river, the Charles River Esplanade was built after the Charles River Dam was completed in 1910, and pedestrian overpasses connect it to the city's streets.

Homes in Back Bay

Back Bay's housing is mostly Victorian brownstone row houses of three to five stories, built from 1859 as the land was filled. The Boston Planning & Development Agency's tabulation of the 2014 to 2018 American Community Survey counts 11,992 housing units, 9,842 of them occupied; 31.8% of occupied units were owner occupied and 68.2% renter occupied.