Chestnut Hill is a wealthy [1][2] New England village located six miles (10 km) west of downtown Boston, Massachusetts, United States.

While most of Chestnut Hill remained farmland well into the early 20th century, the area around the reservoir was developed in 1870 by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park in New York City and of the Emerald Necklace in Boston and Brookline.

The mixed and conifer woodlands reveal colonial stone walls, a red maple swamp with century-old trees, and a sensitive fern marsh.

[9] The Chestnut Hill Reservation embraces 120 acres adjacent to the Boston College campus, including a 1.5 mile walking trail around a reservoir.

[10] The Reservation was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s son and constructed in the late 1860s to give Boston clean drinking water and a rural park.

Just outside the park proper, the Boston Waterworks with its three gatehouses at water’s edge and three majestic pump houses on Beacon Street is considered a masterpiece of 19th century engineering and landscape design.