The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston's Central Business District

Gd EOGRAPHICAL contributions to the analysis of the central business districts of North American cities have tended to focus upon either their extent and internal structure or their relationships to the commercial structure of cities as a whole.1 These investigations have enlarged our conceptions of the contemporary spatial organization of the urban economy. To the historical geographer, however, the internal complexity of the central business district presents rather a different analytical challenge. M\/Jany of the functions performed within the contemporary central business district emerged during the course of the nineteenth century when those technical and organizational changes associated with the industrial revolution transformed the dimensions and complexity of all parts of western cities.2 To be sure, the central business district has experienced many changes over the past fifty