Following American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to play an important role as a port, manufacturing hub, and center for education and culture.

[29] Isaac Johnson, in one of his last official acts as the leader of the Charlestown community before he died on September 30, 1630, named the then-new settlement across the river "Boston".

The name of the English town ultimately derives from its patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church John Cotton served as the rector until his emigration with Johnson.

[38][39] Archaeological excavations unearthed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England on Boylston Street, which Native people constructed as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.

[47][48] The weather continuing boisterous the next day and night, giving the enemy time to improve their works, to bring up their cannon, and to put themselves in such a state of defence, that I could promise myself little success in attacking them under all the disadvantages I had to encounter.

It was also a testament to the skill and training of the militia, as their stubborn defense made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without suffering further irreplaceable casualties.

Putnam supervised this effort, which successfully installed both the fortifications and dozens of cannons on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox had laboriously brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga.

[69] In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians,[70] French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling there.

During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (240 ha) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights.

[92] The BRA continued implementing eminent domain projects, including the clearance of the vibrant Scollay Square area for construction of the modernist style Government Center.

[96] Boston has also experienced gentrification in the latter half of the 20th century,[97] with housing prices increasing sharply since the 1990s when the city's rent control regime was struck down by statewide ballot proposition.

In 2016, it was announced General Electric would be moving its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to the Seaport District in Boston, joining many other companies in this rapidly developing neighborhood.

[104] On April 15, 2013, two Chechen Islamist brothers detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring roughly 264.

[74] This was accomplished using earth from the leveling or lowering of Boston's three original hills (the "Trimountain", after which Tremont Street is named), as well as with gravel brought by train from Needham to fill the Back Bay.

[119] Downtown and its immediate surroundings (including the Financial District, Government Center, and South Boston) consist largely of low-rise masonry buildings – often federal style and Greek revival – interspersed with modern high-rises.

[120] Back Bay includes many prominent landmarks, such as the Boston Public Library,[121] Trinity Church, single-family homes and wooden/brick multi-family row houses.

[126] Groundwater levels have been dropping in many areas of the city, due in part to an increase in the amount of rainwater discharged directly into sewers rather than absorbed by the ground.

This fluctuation of people is caused by hundreds of thousands of suburban residents who travel to the city for work, education, health care, and special events.

[179][180][181] According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 57% of the population of the city identified themselves as Christians, with 25% attending a variety of Protestant churches and 29% professing Roman Catholic beliefs; 33% claim no religious affiliation, while the remaining 10% are composed of adherents of Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and other faiths.

[185] More than half the Jewish households in the Greater Boston area reside in the city itself, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Somerville, or adjacent towns.

The city is home to a number of technology companies and is a hub for biotechnology, with the Milken Institute rating Boston as the top life sciences cluster in the country.

[23][195] The Route 128 corridor and Greater Boston continue to be a major center for venture capital investment,[196] and high technology remains an important sector.

[198] Excluding visitors from Canada and Mexico, over 1.4 million international tourists visited Boston in 2014, with those from China and the United Kingdom leading the list.

[199] Boston's status as a state capital as well as the regional home of federal agencies has rendered law and government to be another major component of the city's economy.

[200] The city is a major seaport along the East Coast of the United States and the oldest continuously operated industrial and fishing port in the Western Hemisphere.

[202] Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund in the 1980s and has made Boston one of the top financial centers in the United States.

There is something so impossible in the immortal fame of Athens, that the very name makes everything modern shrink from comparison; but since the days of that glorious city I know of none that has approached so near in some points, distant as it may still be from that illustrious model.

'[252] From this, Boston has been called the "Athens of America" (also a nickname of Philadelphia)[253] for its literary culture, earning a reputation as "the intellectual capital of the United States".

[296] Along with the adjacent Boston Public Garden, it is part of the Emerald Necklace, a string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to run through the city.

South Station is a major intermodal transportation hub and is the terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Regional, Acela Express, and Lake Shore Limited routes, in addition to multiple MBTA services.