Fort Hill was the most easterly of the three prominent hills of the Shawmut peninsula, about 76 to 80 feet above tide water, covering the ground between Pearl, Batterymarch and Broad Streets and the harbour. First called Corn Hill, it took its name from the town's first fort, begun on it on 24 May 1632. From about 1800 a park on the summit anchored a planned residential square, called Washington Place from 1808 and Washington Square from 1837, with fashionable houses around it. By the 1850s the surrounding slopes had become a warren of alleys and crowded tenements occupied mainly by Irish immigrants, and the district was among the hardest hit by the cholera outbreak of 1849. Under a state act of 1865 Oliver Street was regraded through Washington Square, lowering it about 44 feet at its summit, and an act of 1869 authorised the city to demolish the hill entirely. Cutting began on 15 October 1866 and was finished on 31 July 1872. The work removed 547,628 cubic yards of earth at a cost of $1,575,000, and the material filled Albany Street and the Suffolk Street district and built Atlantic Avenue between Rowe's Wharf and Eastern Avenue. On 15 December 1875 the new park at the centre of the levelled square, between Oliver and High Streets, was named Fort Hill Square. A city parking garage replaced the park in the 1940s, and International Place replaced the garage in the late 1980s.
Getting there
42.3560, -71.0522
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