In his new book East Boston Through Time, Anthony Sammarco outlines a
neighborhood of the city of Boston which was once known as Noddle's
Island, one of five islands that had been used for grazing of livestock
since the 1630s. Development of the two larger islands-Noddle's and
Breed's Islands-began in the 1830s under the direction of the East
Boston Company, making this one of the city of Boston's first
neighborhoods to utilize a formal urban plan. East Boston's harbor
location also enabled it to become a center for shipbuilding and some of
America's most famous clipper ships were built here. As a port with many
employment opportunities, the neighborhood grew rapidly during the age
of large-scale immigration. East Boston's immigrants literally came in
waves--Canadians in the 1840s, the Irish in the 1850s, Russian and
Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the 1890s, and in the first years
of the twentieth century, the neighborhood had what may have been the
largest Jewish community in New England, as well as Italian immigrants
that would dominate the community in the twentieth century. Today with
Columbians, San Salvadorans, and other Latinos, it is a community
equally diverse and rich in its new traditions.
East Boston is more than just Logan International Airport, one of the
earliest municipal airports in the country. It is a thriving and
engaging community composed of people from all walks of like, a
veritable thriving nexus of cultures, and East Boston proudly continues
this long tradition of diversity.
