Abstract
This study examines the environmental transformations of Boston, Massachusetts, in the early nineteenth century to assess the perceived separation between urban and natural environments. Romanticism, a dominant theme of 19th century environmental thought, typically presumed a separation between cities and nature: for example nature had to be brought in to the city through parks and rural cemeteries. However, many environmental historians have found this assumed separation to be false by showing, for instance, the unexpected agency of nature in built environments or the economic dependence of cities on natural and rural hinterlands. This paper instead analyzes the problem from the angle of civic ideology. By examining the popular discourse surrounding three major issues concerning environmental change in Boston – the filling of Mill Pond, the reduction of Beacon Hill’s summit, and the proposed housing development on the mud flats at the bottom of Boston Common (now the Public Garden) – this paper finds that Boston’s residents democratically exercised common property rights to achieve the best public good. In the debates that determined how best to use this property, people who fought to preserve these places claimed that these natural areas were essential components of Boston’s civic identity, proclaiming a love of civic place premised on non-instrumental valuations of nature. These Bostonians displayed an intimate connection to nature in the city that was often couched in romantic language but fused love of nature with love of city, therefore making no presumed distinction between the two and displaying an impulse to appreciate nature that has usually been conceived as accessible only outside urban settings.