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AbbreviationFinder.org:
Offers list of phrases and slangs abbreviated as MA including Massachusetts,
and other most commonly used acronyms besides
Massachusetts.
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This link below will take you to a full list of cities and complete profiles
of each in Massachusetts.
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Federated state of the Northeastern USA, 21,456 km², 6,437,193
residents (2006 estimate), 300 residents / km², capital: Boston. Borders: New
Hampshire and Vermont (N), Atlantic Ocean (E), Connecticut and Rhode
Island (S), New York (W).
State Overview
Federated state of New England whose coast is divided into Cape Ann, in
the bay of Massachusetts and in that of Cape Cod, delimited to the S and E of
the homonymous peninsula, beyond which there are the Nantucket Sound (arm of the
sea that separates the mainland from the islands of Martha's Vineyard and
Nantucket) and Buzzards bay. AW of the flat coastal strip the territory rises in
a series of reliefs belonging to the Appalachian system and that towards W form
the ridges arranged in the NS direction, among which are the Berkshire, Hoosac
and Taconic mountains. There are numerous streams; the main ones are
Connecticut, Taunton and Merrimack. The forest covers ca. 68% of the territorial
surface and supplies construction timber. The population is agglomerated in
small-sized urban centers; among these they exceed 100,000 inhabitants, in
addition to the capital, Worcester and Springfield. Important cities follow,
such as New Bedford, Cambridge, Fall
River, Lowell, Newton, Lynn, Brockton, Somerville and Quincy. Massachusetts'
main economic resources are agriculture (cereals, vegetables, fruit, tobacco,
fodder), cattle and poultry farming, fishing, forestry and especially
industry. The latter, favored by the wealth of energy (hydroelectric plants are
on Merrimack in Lawrence and Lowell and on Connecticut in South Hadley) is
particularly active in the textile, mechanical, shipbuilding, electrotechnical,
metallurgical and chemical sectors. An industry requalification was sought in
high technology sectors (IT, biogenetics, space industry). Developed commercial
activities, which revolve around the hub of Boston, and tourist activities (Cape
Cod peninsula). State University is located in Amherst, but in Massachusetts
there are some of the most prestigious universities in the United States:
Northeastern and Boston University in Boston; in Cambridge the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the most famous polytechnics in the world,
and Harvard University.
History
Massachusetts was the first settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers of
the Mayflower (1620). The colony consolidated itself decisively with the arrival
(1629) in Salem of eleven ships carrying 900 colonists, including J. Winthrop,
which owes the foundation of Boston and seven other cities. The development of
the colony was so rapid that soon a part of its inhabitants, driven also by the
desire to escape the rigid theocracy that the Puritans had implanted there, were
able to emigrate and found new colonies better suited to their ideals of freedom
and of religious tolerance (Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven, Maine, New
Hampshire). The colonists soon gained an enviable degree of prosperity. Church
and school were held in high esteem since the early years of the colony, where
in 1636 Harvard was founded, the first university on the continent; in
Massachusetts the first press (1639) of British North America was also
built. Autonomous towards Great Britain, in 1688 he successfully opposed the
attempt of James II to consolidate real power in the colonies; later he played a
leading role in the preparation and conduct of the revolution, to which he gave
some of the most eminent leaders (J. Otis, Samuel and John Adams). In
Massachusetts some of the most significant episodes of the war of independence
took place: the Boston Tea Party (1773) and the drafting of the Intolerable
Act (1774). With a Constitution in 1780, he ratified the federal statute in
1787. With the conquest of independence, the history of Massachusetts merges
with the American one, over which it also exercised an often decisive influence.
Below you will see top cities in Massachusetts. Visit
allcitypopulation to find more major cities and towns in Massachusetts listed by population.
Quincy (Massachusetts)
City (85,000 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), in the
southeastern sector of the Boston metropolitan area, on the bay of the same name
in Boston Bay. Boston's satellite port, it is home to extractive (granite),
chemical, engineering, shipbuilding and electronics industries. Airport.
Somerville
City (76,200 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), in the north
central sector of the metropolitan area of Boston, on the right of the Mystic
River. Metalworking, textile, wood, paper, tanning and food industries.
Brockton
City (95,200 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 30 km S of the
capital Boston, in whose metropolitan area it is included. It is home to
footwear, mechanical, textile, rubber, wood (furniture) and musical instruments
industries.
Lynn
City (78,500 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 15 km NE
of Boston, of which the metropolitan area is part, on the bay of
Massachusetts. Active fishing port, it is home to footwear, tanning, paper,
pharmaceutical and electrotechnical industries.
Newton
City (82,600 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), on the western
outskirts of Boston. Residential center formed following the aggregation of 14
villages, it is home to the mechanical, electrical engineering, paper and rubber
industries.
Lowell
City (100,973 residents in 1996) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 40 km
NW of Boston, at the confluence of the Concord River in the Merrimack, which
forms the Pawtucket Falls (10 m) here. Textile, clothing, chemical, mechanical,
electrotechnical, publishing and leather industries.
Fall River
City (92,600 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 75 km SSW
of Boston, port at the mouth of the Taunton River, in the bay of Mount
Hope. Textile, tanning, rubber, clothing, electrotechnical and mechanical
industries. Airport.
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
City (95,300 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), included in
the northwestern section of the Boston metropolitan area, on the left of the
Charles River. Developed around the University of Harvard (1636), as a
residential and industrial center (engineering, food, chemical, wood, paper,
tanning and clothing complexes), it is home to the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and numerous colleges and libraries. Founded in 1631 under the name
of New Towne, which it kept until 1636, in 1639 the first typography of the USA
was opened there. § Cambridge is home to the Harvard University Art Museums,
which also function as a study center. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum collects
collections of Far Eastern, Islamic and Greco-Roman art; the Busch-Reisinger
Museum, founded in 1902 as a center of Germanic studies, mainly houses works of
painting and sculpture of the sec. XV-XX, notable among which are those of
German and Austrian expressionist art. The most important, and one of the
largest in the USA, is the Fogg Art Museum, with collections of medieval and
Renaissance western sculpture, of Italian painting (Simone Martini, A.
Lorenzetti, Angelico, Giovanni di Paolo Botticelli, Lotto, Tintoretto), of
French (Poussin) and Spanish (Ribera, Murillo) painting. The collection
of impressionist and postimpressionist works (Monet, Degas, Manet Van Gogh)
and Picasso and Braque are remarkable. Finally, the section of prints and
drawings is particularly important (50,000 pieces, from the 15th century to the
present day, including splendid examples of
Mantegna, Pollaiolo, Carpaccio, Michelangelo, Veronese, Guercino, Rubens).
New Bedford
City (99,900 residents) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 80 km SSE
of Boston. Fishing port on Buzzards Bay, it is home to textile (cotton, silk),
mechanical, shipbuilding, electrical engineering, rubber and glass
industries. Airport. Founded in 1640, it was an important base for whaling.
Springfield (Massachusetts)
City (149,948 residents in 1996) of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 130
km to WSW of Boston, 21 m on the left bank of the Connecticut River; with the
adjacent centers of Chicopee and Holyoke and other minors it constitutes a
metropolitan area of 576,561 residents Seat of numerous cultural institutions
(S. College, 1885), it is a node of traffic of primary importance, with textile,
mechanical, chemical, rubber, electrical engineering, wood, paper and firearms
industries. Airport.
Worcester (USA)
City (166,350 residents in 1997; 437,000 residents the metropolitan area)
of the State of Massachusetts (USA), 60 km to WSW of Boston, 150 m on the
Blackstone River. It is an important commercial and financial center, also home
to numerous engineering industries (motor vehicles, aircraft parts, turbines,
railway materials), textiles, electrical engineering, chemicals, tanning, paper
and wood. Clark University (1887). Airport.
Boston (Massachusetts)
City (555,447 residents In 1998; 5,819,100 residents The metropolitan area,
including Salem, in 2000) of the northeastern United States, capital of the
State of Massachusetts, 280 km NE of New York. Spread over a series of small
peninsulas, connected by bridges and underwater tunnels, which extend into the
well-protected bay of the same name, branching of the bay of
Massachusetts (Atlantic Ocean), to which the estuaries of the Charles and Mystic
rivers converge. It has a temperate climate, with an average rainfall of 1100
mm, well distributed between the various months of the year; abundant
snowfall. A place of considerable importance in the economy of the city is
occupied by commercial activities: the port, well protected within the bay and
connected to the dense network of urban communications, is one of the most
important among those fishing in the United States and in general, it is among
the largest in the country; main exported goods are food products, machinery,
manufactured goods; the imports mainly concern coal, iron ores, sugar, oil and
its derivatives, timber. Manufacturing activities have had an intense
development, especially with regard to the textile industries (woolen mills,
cotton mills), clothing, footwear, rubber, paper and publishing. Alongside
trade, other tertiary activities are fundamental in the city economy, in
particular the credit and insurance branches. The city is served by Logan
International Airport. Boston is also an important cultural center, home to some
universities (including the famous Harvard University, founded in 1636, Boston University,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), numerous university colleges,
museums and libraries. AS Boston's Peninsula Capo Cod, whose east coast is a
protected naturalistic oasis, represents one of the most exclusive tourist
destinations.
The city, founded in 1630 by a group of Puritan colonists who left England in
1629 under the leadership of John Winthrop, emerged from the early years of its
existence, dominated by a clerical and commercial aristocracy, as a center of
wealth and culture. From 1684 he fought a tenacious struggle with the British
government that threatened to repeal the Massachusetts Bay Card, granted at the
time to Winthrop and on which the free city institutions were based. The
contrast, which ended in 1689 with a compromise, resumed later when the
Bostonians began to directly challenge British sovereignty, highlighting
characters of national importance (Adams, Hancook, Warren, Revere). Here the
resistance to taxes imposed by the English Parliament was born and in 1770 the
city was the scene of anti-British demonstrations that resulted in the so-called
Boston massacre, when, on March 5, the citizens clashed with the troops of the
British army. In 1772 the "correspondence committees" were created to ensure the
connection between the revolutionary provinces; in 1773 the Boston tea
party signaled the insurrection against Britain and this is considered the
starting point of the war of independence. Boston, where the first provincial
convention (revolutionary assembly) arose in 1774, was occupied in 1775 and
freed by Washington troopsin 1776. In the post-independence period the city
underwent a profound evolution: growing economic prosperity was matched by a
development of conservative tendencies in politics which culminated under the
presidency of Jefferson, during which Boston, federalist and conservative,
placed himself at the opposition. In the religious field, Puritanism gave way
to rationalism and unitarianism, advocated by men such
as Freeman, Channing, Emerson and Elliott. Assumed the status of a city in 1822,
it then played a leading role at the time of the Secession war, rejecting any
compromise with southern slavery. In the first half of the century. XIX, the
phenomenon of immigration profoundly changed the sociological equilibrium of
Boston, where the introduction of largely Catholic elements (the newcomers were
mostly Irish, Russian, Italian, Balkans, Scandinavians) determined a significant
decrease in the influence of Puritanism. In the sec. XX Boston has progressively
lost its national pre-eminence and, while remaining a thriving center, equipped
with important cultural institutions, has reduced to one of the many large
cities in the United States.
Boston grew in the century. XVII modeled on medieval
London. Baroque style spread from the early eighteenth century (Old North
Church, 1723; King's Chapel by P. Harrison, 1750-58). The greatest neoclassical
architect is Ch. Bulfinch (Massachusetts State House, 1795; Tontine
Crescent). Between the second half of the century. There are numerous examples
of revivals in the 19th and early 20th centuries, from the neo-Romanesque of HH
Richardson 's Trinity Church (1877) to the neocinquecentism of the Boston Public
Library of McKim, Mead and White (1888-95; the interior is decorated by Puvis de
Chavannes, Sargent, Abbey and Elliott). Typical of the first half of the
century. XIX are the popular neighborhoods or slums (in the South End, north of
the Charles River, etc.). Only after the middle of the century was the planned
building type, typical of New England, called three decher, introduced
(balcony houses with common facilities and a room for each family). Green
spaces were built starting in 1893, while the center was joined to the suburbs
in a single metropolitan complex. Although after 1920 (when the city reached its
maximum expansion) there was a demographic contraction and in economic
activities, Boston remains, thanks to educational equipment, cultural
institutions and art collections, one of the major cultural centers of the
United States. § In the sec. XVIII-XIX the original environment underwent
profound transformations with the drying up of marshy areas, the regulation of
the course of the Charles river and the lowering of the hills to give space to
the growth of residential areas, the installation of railway lines and the
expansion of the port areas. From the morphological point of view the city began
to transform itself from the middle of the century. XIX. Adopting a very
advanced public transport policy gradually favored the formation of new
settlements in suburban areas up to a distance of 15 km from the city
center. Therefore, the move away from middle and high income classes from
central areas has been taking place for more than a century. The construction
after the Second World War of a large motorway ring (Route 128) outside the
administrative limits of the city, while giving new vigor to the location of
industrial plants in the area, did not contribute to the solution of the
problems of the urban center. This, which is the place of concentration of the
poorest classes, has been partially invested by urban renewal programs. These
programs are also due to the renovation of the representative center of the city
with buildings ofRudolph, Kahlman, TAC However, the policy of increasing private
transport at the expense of public transport adopted in the last decades of the
century. XX seems to have definitively transformed the compact structure of
Boston into the widespread structure of a vast metropolitan area, whose planning
studies were conducted by the Boston Redevelopment Autority, the Massachusetts
Transportation Commission and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.
The Museum of Fine Arts, one of the most important in the United States,
houses several departments. The sections dedicated to Chinese, Japanese, Korean
and Indian and Islamic art are very important. Remarkable are the departments of
classical art (which cover all sectors of Greek, Roman, Etruscan art), Egyptian
art and decorative arts (silver, ivory, porcelain, furniture) and sculpture. But
the painting department is undoubtedly one of the most significant in the
museum: the section of French art imposes itself between the end of the
century. XIX and sec. XX (Delacroix, Courbet, Corot and
the impressionists Monet, Renoir, Sisley, etc.). Equally important is the
section of American art of the century. XIX
(romantic and realistic painting, Homer, Whistler, Mary Cassatt). For Europeans
well represented are the Spanish (portraits of El Greco and Velázquez), Venetian
(masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and the great eighteenth-century
masters such as Canaletto, Guardi, Tiepolo), Dutch and Flemish (it is preserved
here the masterpiece of R. van der Weyden San Luca paints the Virgin). There
are also examples of baroque and rococo quality in France
(Poussin, Lorrain, Boucher) and the great English portraitists of the
century. XVIII (Gainsborough, Romney, Reynolds). Finally, the sector of European
art of the century should be mentioned. XX (Picasso, Braque,
the German expressionists) and the department of prints and drawings. The
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, housed in a Venetian Gothic building and open
to the public since 1925, preserves the works collected by Isabella Gardner with
the advice of the critic B. Berenson. Naturally Italian painters from the 15th
century dominate here. XIV to the sec. XVI (Beato Angelico, Gentile and Giovanni
Bellini, Botticelli, Pollaiolo, Raffaello, Tintoretto and Tiziano), but there
are also important works by other European painters (such as, for
example, Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velázquez). Finally, the modern
construction of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, with its museum, dedicated
to the president assassinated in 1963, originally from Massachusetts.
The affirmation of the arts of the scene was long and difficult in this
stronghold of Puritanism. The shows were banned from 1750 to 1793, because
judged as a source of immorality and only the repeal of the so-called blue
law changed the situation: within a few decades several public theaters
were built, the first and most important of which were the Federal Street
Theater, inaugurated in 1794 and demolished in 1852, and the Haymarket, active
from 1796 to 1803: the latter was entirely dedicated to opera and ballet, while
the former was also open to prose companies. The great theaters of the
nineteenth century were however the Boston Theater (1854-1926) for the opera,
the Tremont (1827-43) for the prose and above all the Boston Museum (still a
Puritan echo in the name, 1847-93), who had his own company in which nationally
renowned actors joined as guests (Booth made his debut there and W. Warren jr.
made his career). In the nineteenth century Boston was the most important
American center in the field of symphonic music, inspired by the great models of
German romanticism; the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1881), which was led by
eminent American and European musicians, was the first permanent American
orchestra. With the new century, with the theatrical activity concentrated on
Broadway, the theaters in Boston became gyms for testing new comedies or arenas
for capillary exploitation of successful shows. The activity of the Boston Opera
(inaugurated in 1909) and above all of the Symphony Hall was important and still
is. Finally, there are some attempts at repertoire theater with local forces,
such as the Toy Theater opened in 1911.
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