Newton, Massachusetts

Newton, Massachusetts
Official seal of Newton, Massachusetts Seal
Nickname:  The Garden City
Location in Massachusetts
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Middlesex County
Settled	1639
Incorporated	1688
Government
• Type	Mayor-council city
• Mayor	David B. Cohen (Dem)
Area
• Total	18.2 sq mi (47.1 km2)
• Land	18.1 sq mi (46.7 km2)
• Water	0.2 sq mi (0.4 km2)
Elevation	100 ft (30 m)
Population  (2000)
• Total	83,829
• Density	4,643.6/sq mi (1,792.9/km2)
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern)
ZIP code	02458, 02459, 02460, 02461, 02462, 02464, 02465, 02467, 02468, 02495
Area code	617 / 857
Website	http://www.ci.newton.ma.us/

Newton is a suburban city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts west of Boston. According to the 2000 census, the population of the city was 83,829, making it the tenth largest city in the state.

Newton does not have a single town center, but is rather a patchwork of 13 "villages", many boasting small "downtown" areas of their own. The 13 villages are: Auburndale, Chestnut Hill, Newton Centre, Newton Corner, Newton Highlands, Newton Lower Falls, Newton Upper Falls (both on the Charles River, and both once small industrial sites), Newtonville, Nonantum (also called The Lake), Oak Hill, Thompsonville, Waban, and West Newton. Although most of the villages have a post office, they have no legal definition and no firmly defined borders. See The Thirteen Villages of Newton.

History

Newton was settled in 1630 as part of Cambridge. It was incorporated as a town known as Cambridge Village in 1688. It was renamed Newtown in 1691 and finally Newton in 1766. It became a city in 1873. Newton is known as The Garden City.

Newton is home to Boston College, located in the city's historic village of Chestnut Hill, and Boston College Law School, located on a separate campus between Newton Centre and Newton Corner. There are several other institutions of higher education in the city including Andover Newton Theological School, Lasell College, Hebrew College, and Mount Ida College.

The city also has two symphony orchestras, the New Philharmonia Orchestra of Massachusetts and the Newton Symphony Orchestra.

The Newton Free Library possesses more than 500,000 volumes of print materials (2004), as well as art, both original and prints, sound recordings and videos: the largest collection in the Minuteman Library Network.

Each April, the Boston Marathon runs through the city from Wellesley onward to Boston. Heartbreak Hill rises just past Newton City Hall where residents and visitors line the race route on Commonwealth Avenue to cheer the runners.

Geography

Newton is in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, at 42°20′16″N 71°12′36″W (42.337713, -71.209936).Template:GR The city is bordered by Waltham and Watertown on the north, Needham and the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston on the south, Wellesley and Weston on the west, and Brookline and the Brighton neighborhood of Boston on the east.

From Watertown to Waltham to Needham to Dedham, Newton is bounded by the Charles River. Yankee Division Highway, designated Interstate 95 but known to the locals as Route 128, follows the Charles from Waltham to Dedham, creating a de facto land barrier. The portion of Needham which lies east of 128 and west of the Charles, known as the Needham Industrial Park has become part of a Newton commercial zone and contributes to its heavy traffic, even though the tax revenue goes to Needham.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 47.1 km² (18.2 mi²). 46.7 km² (18.0 mi²) of it is land and 0.4 km² (0.2 mi²) of it (0.82%) is water.

Demographics

As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there were 83,829 people, 31,201 households, and 20,499 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,793.2/km² (4,643.6/mi²). There were 32,112 housing units at an average density of 686.9/km² (1,778.8/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 88.07% White, 7.68% Asian, 1.97% African American, 0.07% Native American, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.71% from other races, and 1.46% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.52% of the population.

There were 31,201 households out of which 31.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.2% were married couples living together, 8.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.3% were non-families. 25.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.04.

In the city the population was spread out with 21.2% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 28.2% from 25 to 44, 25.2% from 45 to 64, and 15.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 86.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.7 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $86,052, and the median income for a family was $125,289. Males had a median income of $65,565 versus $46,885 for females. The per capita income for the city was $45,708. About 2.1% of families and 4.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.8% of those under age 18 and 5.0% of those age 65 or over.

Based on statistics reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newton was the nation's safest city during 2003, 2004 and 2005, and the fourth safest city in the nation in 2006. The designation is based on crime statistics in six categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and auto theft.

Education

Preschools

• Beth-El Pre-School, 561 Ward St
• Cabot School [4], 229 Cabot St, Newtonville
• The Teddy Bear Club Preschool, 1466 Commonwealth Ave, West Newton. A bilingual nursery school which offers an international atmosphere, with French culture and a diverse student population.
• JCC Early Learning Centers [5], 333 Nahanton St. & 125 Wells Ave.
• The Children's Cooperative Nursery School, 848 Beacon St.
• Temple Shalom Nursery School, 175 Temple St
• Walnut PK Montessori School [6], 47 Walnut Park
• Auburndale Community Nursery School, 230 Central St
• Rockwell Nursery School at Lasell College [7], 70 Studio Road

Primary and secondary education

Newton is served by the Newton Public Schools district. See also: Newton Public Schools

Newton North High School (the larger of the two) and Newton South High School are the two public high schools in Newton, the Tigers and the Lions being their mascots, respectively.

• Fessenden School [8], A K-9 day and 5-9 boarding school for boys in West Newton
• Newton Country Day School [9], 785 Centre St
• Trinity Catholic High School, 575 Washington Street. See also: Trinity Catholic High School Website
• The Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston [10], A K-8 Conservative Jewish dayschool
• The Newton Montessori School 80 Crescent Ave.

Higher education

Newton is served by several colleges and universities, including:

• Andover Newton Theological School, 210 Herrick Rd
• Boston College
• Hebrew College, 160 Herrick Rd
• Mount Ida College, 777 Dedham St
• Lasell College, 1844 Commonwealth Avenue

Media

Newspapers

Residents of Newton get The Newton Tab, the city's community newspaper, delivered to them for free.

Television

Residents of Newton have free access to a state-of-the-art television production and media access center, NewTV, now located in new facilities in the University Business Center in Newton Highlands.

Transportation

Newton is best known as a bedroom community for commuters to Boston, in spite of considerable commercial and manufacturing activity of its own.

It is well-served by three modes of mass transit run by the MBTA; light rail, commuter rail, and bus service. The Green Line "D" Branch, (also known as the Riverside branch) is a light rail line running through the center of the city which makes very frequent trips to downtown Boston, 30 minutes away. The Green Line "B" Branch ends close to Boston College on Commonwealth Avenue. The commuter rail, serving the northern villages of Newton that are proximate to Waltham, offers less frequent service to Boston. It runs from every half-an-hour during peak times to every couple of hours otherwise. The northern villages are also served by frequent express buses that head to downtown Boston via the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Newton Centre, which is centered around the Newton Center MBTA Station (the T, for unknown reasons, elected to change the spelling) has been lauded as an example of transit-oriented development. See Newton Centre - A Case Study.

Newton is on the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 128, which is also Interstate 95 in Newton. Routes 30, 16 and 9 also pass through the city.

Points of interest

• The Jackson Homestead, now the Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead, is best known for its history as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It was built in 1809 as a farmhouse designed in the Federal style, and is now a museum with paintings, costumes, photographs, manuscripts, maps and historical artifacts.

• Echo Bridge is a notable 19th-century masonry arch bridge with views of the river and Hemlock Gorge in Newton Upper Falls just off Route 9.

• Newton is home to many exclusive golf courses such as Woodland Country Club, Charles River Country Club, and Brae Burn Country Club, which held the United States Open in 1919.

• Norumbega Park was located in the Auburndale section of Newton on the Charles River. Opening in 1897 as a trolley park, it was a popular amusement park through the 1950's before closing in 1963. Its Totem Pole Ballroom became a well-known dancing and entertainment venue for big bands touring during the 1940's. The park is now a popular dog-walking site with hills, meadows, woods, and access to the river.

Cemeteries

There are four cemeteries in Newton, one of which is privately owned and three which are owned by the City of Newton., as follows:

• Centre Street Cemetery (East Parish Burying Ground), public, dates from 1664
• Newton Cemetery, 391 Walnut Street, Newton Centre, , private, 155 acres, dates from 1855
• River Street Cemetery, public.
• Winchester Street Cemetery, public

Notable people buried in Newton

• Newton Cemetery
  • William Claflin, politician Massachusetts governor and U.S. congressman
  • Louis Liggett, drug store magnate
  • Alexander Hamilton Rice, politician, Massachusetts governor, U.S. congressman and Boston mayor.
  • Morrie Schwartz, educator, Brandeis philosophy professor
  • Samuel Francis Smith, Baptist minister, author of My Country, 'Tis of Thee
  • Francis Edgar Stanley, auto maker (the Stanley Steamer)

Notable residents

Academics

• David Berson neurobiologist, professor at Brown University
• Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel and former Professor at the MIT Department of Economics
• H. Robert Horvitz, MIT Professor of Biology who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002 together with Sydney Brenner and John Sulston
• Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard professor during 1980-2002, before moving to his current position of a director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
• Andrei Shleifer, economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard
• Isadore Singer, mathematician, recipient of the Abel Prize (2004) and National Medal of Science (1983), and Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at MIT
• Lawrence Summers, former Harvard President, former Secretary of the Treasury, and nephew of the Nobel Prize laureate Paul Samuelson
• Susumu Tonegawa, MIT professor who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987
• Howard Zinn, radical historian and author of A People's History of the United States

Actors and Actresses

• Priyanka Chopra, Indian actress
• Matt Damon, actor, Oscar-winning screenwriter (with Ben Affleck) for Good Will Hunting
• Bette Davis, twice Oscar-winning actress
• Kathryn Erbe, actress
• John Krasinski, actor best known for playing Jim Halpert on NBC's The Office
• Ben Kurland, actor
• Matt LeBlanc, actor, most known for role on sitcom Friends
• Jack Lemmon, Oscar-winning actor
• Robert Morse, actor, star of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and Tru
• B.J. Novak, stand-up comedian, The Office actor, writer
• Robert Preston, actor, "Professor" Harold Hill in The Music Man
• Eli Roth, film director, producer, actor

Artists

• Sidewalk Sam (Robert Guillemin), folk artist

Authors, writers, journalists, poets, etc.

• Isaac Asimov, prolific science fiction and non-fiction writer
• Katharine Lee Bates, author of "America the Beautiful"
• Alex Beam, columnist for the Boston Globe
• Thomas Bulfinch, author of Bulfinch's Mythology
• Anita Diamant, author of fiction and non-fiction books
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, lecturer, philosopher
• Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance
• David Mamet, playwright, screenwriter and film director
• Alex McNeil, author of Total Television
• Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States
• Anne Sexton, poet, writer

Business and industry

• Roger Berkowitz, owner of Legal Sea Foods
• Richard B. Carter head of Carter's Ink Company from 1905-1949
• Jim Davis, CEO of New Balance Athletic Shoe
• James Koch, founder and president of the Boston Beer Company who introduced the Samuel Adams beer brand
• Louis Liggett, drug store magnate

Colonial figures

• Waban, 17th Century American Indian tribal chief lived in Nonantum
• Ephraim Williams, Colonel in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War and benefactor of Williams College

Environmentalists

• Francis P. Farquhar, president of the Sierra Club, pioneering mountain climber

Government, education and politics

• Benigno Aquino, Jr., Filipino public intellectual and political figure
• Joseph Healy, United States Representative from New Hampshire
• Horace Mann, public educator, college president (Antioch College) and United States Representative from Massachusetts
• Cyrus Peirce, public educator, college president (Framingham State College, which was once located in West Newton). The Peirce School in West Newton is named for him.
• Roger Sherman, the only person to have signed all four basic documents of American sovereignty: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution
• Nguyen Van Thieu, exiled President of South Vietnam

Music

• Osvaldo Golijov, Grammy award-winning composer of classical music
• Vaughn Monroe, singer, trumpeter and big band leader
• Seiji Ozawa, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Laureate
• Richard Pittman, music director of Boston Musica Viva
• Mark Sandman, lead singer of the alternative rock band Morphine

Philosophy, religion and spirituality

• Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert), philosophic and religious "guru"
• Samuel Francis Smith, Baptist minister and author of the lyrics to My Country, 'Tis of Thee, also known as "America."

Psychologists

• Julian Jaynes, psychologist
• Kurt Lewin, "the father of social psychology"

Radio, television and motion pictures

• Bill Lichtenstein, journalist, filmmaker, radio producer
• Maria Lopez, former judge, TV court show host

Science, medicine and technology

• Charles Stark Draper, inventor of the aircraft internal guidance system, and founder of MIT's Draper Labs
• Atul Gawande, surgeon, writer for The New Yorker
• Jonathan Mann, head of the World Health Organization's global AIDS project
• Frank E. Winsor, civil engineer and chief engineer of the Quabbin Reservoir project
• Francis Edgar and Freelan O. Stanley, twin brothers who invented the famous steam-powered automobile known as the Stanley Steamer

Sports

Baseball

• The following current and former players of the Boston Red Sox:
  • Matt Clement (current)
  • Jim Corsi (former player of the Boston Red Sox, Florida Marlins, Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and Houston Astros)
  • JD Drew (current)
  • Mark Loretta (former)
  • Doug Mirabelli (current)
  • Trot Nixon (formerr)
  • David Ortiz (current)
  • Wily Mo Pena (former)
  • Jimmy Piersall (former)
  • Jason Varitek (current)
  • Ted Williams (former)

Basketball

• Larry Bird, former Boston Celtics basketball player

Trivia

• The Fig Newton cookie is named after the city. In 1991, Newton and Nabisco hosted a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Fig Newton. A 100-inch Fig Newton was served and Juice Newton performed.
• The only Melkite Greek Catholic eparchy in America, the Eparchy of Newton, is named for Newton although its cathedral, headquarters and exarchial residence are located in the Roslindale section of Boston.

External links

• City of Newton official website
• Newton Free Library
• City of Newton Info
• The Garden City: A Newton Community Blog
• Newton Citizens (general info)
• Newton/Needham Chamber of Commerce
• Newton Tab (Newspaper)
• Newton Symphony Orchestra (established 1965)
• New Philharmonia Orchestra of Massachusetts
• NewTV (local cable access)
• Newton School Committee (links to schools and school committee website)