East Boston , nicknamed Eastie , is a neighborhood of Boston , Massachusetts, United States, which was annexed by the city of Boston in The final outline of the East Boston, including Logan International Airport , was created in the s by connecting five of the inner harbor islands using land fill.
Kennedy 's great-grandfather was one of many Irish people to immigrate to East Boston, and the Kennedy family lived there for some time. From to , East Boston was the site of the East Boston Immigration Station , which served as the regional immigration hub for Boston and the surrounding area.
After the s, the neighborhood witnessed growing numbers of Latin American immigrants, who have come to make up over fifty percent of the population according to the Census data.
The landmass that is East Boston today originally comprised five islands sited east of the confluence of the Malden, Mystic, and Charles rivers, and across the harbor from the westerly city of Boston. The town of East Boston was first developed on the largest of these, Noddle's, a noted source of timber and grazing land, used for farming by English colonists throughout the eighteenth century.
As early as , William H. Sumner , who had inherited a large tract on Noddle's Island, proposed that the federal government of the United States create a turnpike to connect Massachusett's North Shore along with Sumner's property on Noddle's to Boston, arguing that such a road would create a valuable, direct route across Boston's harbor, making it easier for Boston, at the time an isolated peninsula surrounded by water, to expand: "There is no doubt but that the necessities of the town of Boston will some time require a connection with Noddle's Island.
