Government Center, Boston

Government Center is an area in downtown Boston, bounded by Cambridge, Court, Congress, and New Sudbury Streets. Formerly the site of Scollay Square, it is now the location of Boston City Hall, two Suffolk County courthouses, two state office buildings, and two federal office buildings, a major MBTA subway interchange station, and City Hall Plaza.

Major structures

Boston City Hall

The dominant feature of Government Center is the enormous, imposing, and brutalist Boston City Hall, built in the 1960s as part of Boston's first large Urban Renewal scheme. While considered by some to have architectural merit, the building is not universally admired, and is sharply unpopular among locals. Furthermore, it is resented for having replaced the Victorian architecture of Boston's Scollay Square, a lively commercial district that lapsed into squalor in the Twentieth Century.

Former mayor Menino has proposed moving City Hall to a new building (most recently in July 2008) elsewhere in the city and selling off the land. Some urban planners propose to bulldoze the complex and redevelop the area in the future.

Boston

Boston (pronounced ⁱ/ˈbɒstən/) is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston also served as the historic county seat of Suffolk County until Massachusetts disbanded county government in 1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles (124 km²) with an estimated population of 655,884 in 2014, making it the largest city in New England and the 24th largest city in the United States. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.7 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 8.1 million people, making it the sixth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub, as well as a center for education and culture. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and first subway system (1897).

8/29/00 – Boston, Massachusetts

8/29/00 – Boston, Massachusetts is a two-disc live album and the forty-third in a series of 72 live bootlegs released by the American alternative rock band Pearl Jam from the band's 2000 Binaural Tour. It was released along with the other official bootlegs from the first North American leg of the tour on February 27, 2001.

Overview

The album was recorded on August 29, 2000 in Mansfield, Massachusetts at the Tweeter Center. It was selected by the band as one of 18 "Ape/Man" shows from the tour, which, according to bassist Jeff Ament, were shows the band found "really exciting."Allmusic gave it four out of a possible five stars. Allmusic staff writer Zac Johnson said, "By far one of the best releases in this series." It debuted at number 163 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Track listing

Disc one

Government Center

In the United States, Government Center refers to any of the following locations in the United States:

Boston (cocktail)

A Boston is a cocktail made with London dry gin, apricot brandy, grenadine, and the juice of a lemon.

See also

References

Boston (dance)

The Boston refers to a series of various step dances, considered a slow Americanized version of the waltz presumably named after where it originated. It is completed in one measure with the weight kept on the same foot through two successive beats. The "original" Boston is also known as the New York Boston or Boston Point.

Variations of the Boston include:

References

Boston (novel)

Boston is a novel by Upton Sinclair. It is a "documentary novel" that combines the facts of the case with journalistic depictions of actual participants and fictional characters and events. Sinclair indicted the American system of justice by setting his characters in the context of the prosecution and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Research and writing

Sinclair worked from a passionate conviction that the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti constituted "the most shocking crime that has been committed in American history since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln" and a belief that "It will empoison our public life for a generation."

He interviewed Bartolomeo Vanzetti twice and conducted research following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. For his central character he used as his model a California acquaintance who recounted stories of her earlier life amid Boston's aristocracy. As part of his research he attended the funeral of a Boston industrialist. He recognized that some of his readers might find that disrespectful and offered this defense: "if you are a novelist you think about 'copy' and not about anybody's feelings, even your own." To verify dialogue, he even contacted a journalist to verify his fidelity in transcribing a jailhouse conversation. As a result, he avoided repeating the oft-quoted description of Sacco and Vanzetti, falsely attributed to Vanzetti, as "a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler." In hundreds of letters he sought to acquire and verify details, such as the timing and physical setting of prison visits. He asked other correspondents to review parts of the manuscript for errors.