1900-2000

By the turn of the twentieth century, Beacon Hill had already begun to lose ground to the Back Bay as the fashionable quarter in town. The rush to the suburbs in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the inner-city turmoil of the 1960s, continued to foster neighborhood instability. Though Beacon Hill suffered several reversals of fortune during these years, it never fell completely out of fashion. The establishment of the Beacon Hill Civic Association addressed a full range of neighborhood issues, including the the threat of new development and high-rise construction. A series of legislative acts in 1955, 1958, and 1963 created the Beacon Hill Historic District, prohibiting any part of a building visible from a public way from being altered without the approval of a five member commission.