Map 14: A New Plan of Boston, From Actual Surveys
Osgood Carleton (1742-1816) Boston, 1800 About this Map Osgood Carleton was one of the leading cartographers in Boston… [ more ]  Main Map
About this Map Osgood Carleton was one of the leading cartographers in Boston at the end of the 1700s and beginning of the 1800s. In 1795 he surveyed a plan of Boston that was published the next year. In 1797 he published a large-scale plan of the town based on the earlier one but with more detail and different information. His 1800 plan, reproduced here, is based on the 1797 plan "with corrections, additions, and improvements," though at a somewhat smaller scale. Carleton's 1800 plan shows Boston after almost 200 years of development and makes an interesting comparison with the Bonner plan of 1722 (see Map 10). In the intervening three-quarters of a century new streets had been laid out, especially on Beacon Hill and south of the Common. More wharves had been built, particularly in South Cove-the large cove on the east side of the Neck. A piece of the "Old Wharfe," a barricade built across the Town Cove in the 1670s, had been attached to Long Wharf forming the beginning of T Wharf. New land had been made next to the Common for ropewalks and part of the Town Dock filled in, making the land on which Faneuil Hall had been built. Two new bridges provided additional connections to the mainland-one to Cambridge from Cambridge Street (now the Longfellow Bridge) and the other to Charlestown from Prince Street (now the Charlestown Bridge). Perhaps most striking, however, is the relatively little change between 1722 and 1800 -- the result of the economic stagnation, war, and depressions Boston experienced between 1740 and 1790.
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