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Historic neighborhood in Massachusetts

Beacon Hill is a historic neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and the hill upon which the Massachusetts State House resides. The term "Beacon Hill" is used locally as a metonym to refer to the state government or the legislature itself, much like Washington, D. C.'s Capitol Hill does at the federal level. Federal style rowhouses, narrow gaslit streets and brick sidewalks adorn the neighborhood, which is generally regarded as one of the more desirable and expensive in Boston. According to the 2010 U. S. Census, the population of Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood is 9,023.]] Like many similarly named areas, the neighborhood is named for the location of a former beacon atop the highest point in central Boston. The beacon was used to warn the residents of an invasion.

Beacon Hill is bounded by Storrow Drive, and Cambridge, Bowdoin, Park and Beacon Streets. It is about 1/6 of a square mile in size, and situated along the riverfront of the Charles River Esplanade to the west, just north of Boston Common and the Boston Public Garden. The block bound by Beacon, Tremont and Park Streets is included as well. Located in the center of the Shawmut Peninsula, the area originally had three hills, Beacon Hill and two others nearby, Charles Street was one of the new roads created from the project. Before the hill was reduced substantially, Beacon Hill was located just behind the current site of the Massachusetts State House. The racial/ethnic make up of the neighborhood's population is as follows: 86.8% of the population is white, 2% black or African American, 4.1% Hispanic or Latino, 0.1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 5.3% Asian, 0.4% some other race/ethnicity, and 1.3% two or more races/ethnicities. Of the 1,479 family households 81.6% were married couple families. 36.6% of married couple families were with related children under the age of 18 and 63.4% were with no related children under age 18. Other family types make up 18.4% of Beacon Hill's population, with 90.8% being female householders with no husband present and a majority of these households included children under 18 present.

The first European settler was William Blaxton, also spelled Blackstone. In 1625 he built a house and orchard on Beacon Hill's south slope, roughly at the location of Beacon and Spruce street. The settlement was a "preformal arrangement". In 1630 Boston was settled by the Massachusetts Bay Company. The southwestern slope was used by the city for military drills and livestock grazing. In 1634 a signal beacon was established on the top of the hill.

Beacon Street was established in 1708 from a cow path to the Boston Common.</blockquote>|group="nb"

In the 1830s, residential homes were built for wealthy people on Chestnut and Mt. Vernon Streets. Some affluent people moved, beginning in the 1870s, to Back Bay with its "French inspired boulevards and mansard roofed houses that were larger, lighter, and airier than the denser Beacon Hill." In the early 19th century, there were "fringe activities" along the Back Bay waterfront, with ropewalks along Beacon and Charles Streets. It was carefully planned for people who left densely populated areas, like the North End. Literary salons and publishing houses were founded in the 19th century. "Great thinkers" lived in the neighborhood, including Daniel Webster, Henry Thoreau and Wendell Phillips.

Development began in the early 19th century. Single family homes often had stores on the first floor for retailers, carpenters and shoemakers. Many blacks in the neighborhood attended church with the whites but did not have a vote in church affairs and sat in segregated seating. The African Meeting House was built in 1806 and by 1840 there were five black churches. The African Meeting House on Joy Street was a community center for members of the black elite. Frederick Douglass spoke there about abolition, and William Lloyd Garrison formed the New England Anti Slavery Society at the Meeting House. The Republican Party was founded by abolitionists. One of the earliest black Republican legislators in the United States was Julius Caesar Chappelle (1852–1904), who served as a legislator in Boston from 1883 to 1886 and whose district included the Beacon Hill area. Chappelle was a popular, well liked politician and was covered by many of the black newspapers in the United States. Blacks migrated to Roxbury and Boston's South End after the Civil War. Many homes built of brick and wood in the early 19th century were dilapidated by the end of the Civil War and were razed for new housing. Yellow brick townhouses were constructed, generally with arched windows on the first floor and a low ceiling on the top, fourth floor. Residential homes were also converted to boarding houses. To prevent urban renewal projects of historically significant buildings in Beacon Hill, its residents ensured that the community obtained historic district status: south slope in 1955, Flat of the Hill in 1958, and north slope in 1963. The Beacon Hill Architectural Commission was established in 1955 to monitor renovation and development projects. Beacon Hill was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1962.

Wealthy Boston families continue to live at the Flat of the Hill and south slope. Inhabitants of the north slope include Suffolk University students and professionals. The historic buildings along today's Black Heritage Trail were the homes, businesses, schools and churches of the black community. Charles Street Meeting House was built in 1807, the church had seating that segregated white and black people.

The Beacon Hill Civic Association has a long history as a community resource for the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Founded in 1922 by neighbors with the goal of preventing home building and other construction, today it continues as a volunteer advocacy organization focused on improving quality of life in the neighborhood. It was first founded to fight city plans to replace the neighborhood's brick sidewalks. Since then its efforts have been instrumental in preserving Beacon Hill as a historic district, and have expanded to include such initiatives as: working to become the first neighborhood to receive resident parking permits, streamlining trash service, and creating a virtual retirement community serving the neighborhood's elderly. The country's oldest legal organization, the Boston Bar Association, is on Beacon Street. Beacon Hill Village was the first formal Elder Village in the United States.

Religious organizations include the Vilna Shul, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, and the Unitarian Universalist Association headquarters. Church of the Advent is a Victorian Gothic Church, faced in brick with 8 massive carillon bells and a 172 foot spire. While home to a Paulist chapel, Beacon Hill is currently one of only two neighborhoods in Boston that does not contain a Catholic parish church.

Beacon Hill is predominantly residential, known for old colonial brick row houses with "beautiful doors, decorative iron work, brick sidewalks, narrow streets, and gas lamps". Restaurants and antique shops are located on Charles Street. The Harrison Gray Otis House on Cambridge Street was built in 1796. Charles Bulfinch designed this house, and two additional houses, for the businessman and politician who was instrumental in Beacon Hill's development and Boston becoming the state capital. The Nichols House "offers a rare glimpse inside [the] Brahmin life" of Rose Standish Nichols, a landscape artists.