Maps Reveal How Immigration Transformed Boston’s Neighborhoods

A 1905 bird's eye view of Boston's harbor, the second busiest port of entry for new immigrants at the time. More than 530,000 people entered the U.S. here between 1900 and 1910.

In 1910, Boston was the fifth biggest city in the United States, with a population just over 670,000. It was the second busiest port of entry for foreigners at the time, and 240,000 of its citizens were foreign born. A new exhibit at the Boston Public Library uses maps, modern and historic photos, and census data to illustrate how waves of immigration shaped the city and its individual neighborhoods in the 20th century — and continue to shape them today.

“The idea is to look at Boston as a whole, but then to zero in on certain neighborhoods and see what those stories are,” said Michelle LeBlanc, director of education at the library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, which is hosting the exhibit. “It’s sort of a microcosm-macrocosm way of looking at the city.”

Boston is a smaller city today than it was a century ago, with a population of about 636,000 in 2012, according to the Census Bureau. But its population is rebounding after dipping below 563,000 in 1980. “Over the last 10 years Boston’s population has grown, and it’s largely just because of immigration,” LeBlanc said. “We would have lost population otherwise.”

The percentage of foreign-born residents is lower than it used to be: 27 percent, compared to 36 percent in 1910. But some neighborhoods are still remarkably diverse. East Boston’s population is almost 50 percent foreign born, the highest percentage of any neighborhood in the city.

The exhibit includes a brochure from 1910 advertising a new planned neighborhood, “Orient Heights,” built on landfill an an area of East Boston that was once covered by marshland. “They were trying to entice immigrant families from the slums of the West End and North End because there’s open space and fresh air and all that,” LeBlanc said. Contrary to the development’s name, LeBlanc says the biggest immigrant groups at that time were Italians and Eastern European Jews. Today the biggest immigrant groups in the neighborhood are from El Salvador and Columbia.

Maps and streetscapes in the exhibit show how Boston’s Chinatown grew during the past century, but LeBlanc says the exhibit doesn’t directly confront the touchy topic of gentrification, which some advocates say is putting the squeeze on the neighborhood’s immigrant community.

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