Living in Charlestown, Boston, MA

About Charlestown

Where it is

A peninsula north of the Charles River, opposite downtown Boston, bordered by the Mystic River and Boston Harbor, with I-93 along its western edge, the Navy Yard on the harbor, and Sullivan Square where the Charlestown Neck once joined it to the mainland.

Charlestown was laid out by Thomas Graves and settled in 1629, and the City of Boston calls it the city's oldest neighborhood; John Winthrop's company stopped here in 1630 before crossing the Charles River to found Boston. On June 17, 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Breed's Hill, and British forces burned almost the whole town. The first bridge to Boston opened in 1786, and the Navy Yard opened in 1800. Charlestown voters approved annexation on October 7, 1873, by 2,240 to 1,947, and it became part of Boston on January 5, 1874.

The peninsula rises to two small hills, Bunker Hill to the north and Breed's Hill, both covered mostly in housing, much of it red-brick row houses. The 221-foot granite Bunker Hill Monument, reached by 294 steps, was dedicated on Breed's Hill in 1843. City Square, in the southern part of the neighborhood, was the site of the city hall before annexation, and Sullivan Square sits where landfill erased the narrow Charlestown Neck. The Navy Yard closed on July 1, 1974; the National Park Service holds 25 acres as part of Boston National Historical Park, and most of the redeveloped buildings were converted to office, commercial and residential use. The Orange Line has run through Charlestown since April 7, 1975, when Community College and Sullivan Square stations replaced the City Square and Thompson Square stations of the Charlestown Elevated, which had opened in 1901.

Two large changes are under way. The Bunker Hill Housing redevelopment, a partnership of the Boston Housing Authority, the Joseph J. Corcoran Company, Leggat McCall and the Charlestown Resident Alliance, is replacing 1,100 public housing units with 2,699 public, income-restricted and market-rate rental units, with 73,000 square feet of retail and civic space; its first building broke ground in June 2023, and the next, a nine-story building of 265 units, was expected to start in mid to late 2025. On September 28, 2023, after four years of work, the Boston Planning & Development Agency board adopted PLAN: Charlestown, which sets out how new growth can fit along the Rutherford Avenue corridor and in Sullivan Square and proposes new zoning to allow more housing and retail in existing industrial areas.

Homes in Charlestown

Charlestown's housing stock is largely red-brick row houses, many near the waterfront, along with homes in converted Navy Yard buildings and the Bunker Hill public housing now being rebuilt. The Boston Planning & Development Agency's tabulation of the 2014 to 2018 American Community Survey counts 9,536 housing units, 9,050 of them occupied; 46.1% of occupied units were owner occupied and 53.9% renter occupied.