Somerville, Massachusetts
A Short History of Somerville
From a corner of colonial Charlestown, to the hilltop where the first flag of the united colonies flew, to one of the densest cities in the country and a brand-new subway line.
Part of Charlestown
The land that is now Somerville was settled in 1630 as part of Charlestown, and for two centuries it stayed farms and outlying neighborhoods on the far side of the river from Boston. It set off on its own and incorporated as the Town of Somerville in 1842, then grew fast enough to become a city in 1872.
The First Flag on Prospect Hill
On January 1, 1776, the Grand Union Flag, the first flag of the united colonies, was raised on Prospect Hill in what is now Somerville. The stone Prospect Hill Tower still marks the spot, a reminder that the early Revolution was fought in these hills and not only in downtown Boston.
The Powder Alarm
Two years earlier, in 1774, British troops marched to the Old Powder House, a stone tower that still stands in Nathan Tufts Park, and seized the colonists’ gunpowder stored inside. The “Powder Alarm” that followed sent thousands of militia into the streets and helped push the colonies toward open war.
Brick, Meat, and Cars
As Boston grew, Somerville became its workshop. Brickyards along the Mystic and Millers rivers came first, and the slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that followed in the 1850s grew so large that by the 1890s the North Meat Packing Plant was reputedly the largest outside Chicago. From 1926 to 1958 a Ford Motor Company plant assembled cars beside the Mystic River, giving Assembly Square its name on the ground that is now Assembly Row. The work drew immigrant families, more than a quarter of the city foreign born by 1905, who built the dense neighborhoods that still define the city. The Massachusetts Historical Commission’s 1980 survey report on Somerville and the city’s Assembly Square walking tour record this history.
The Densest Streetcar Suburb
Horsecars and then electric trolleys, running along Broadway, Highland Avenue, Somerville Avenue and Elm Street, turned Somerville into a tightly packed city of Boston commuters: builders laid out street after street of two- and three-family houses along the trolley routes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. By the early 1900s it was a densely settled city, and today, with tens of thousands of people on just over four square miles, it is the most densely populated community in New England, as the city’s FY22 Community Profile records.
The Green Line and Today
In 2022 the MBTA Green Line Extension opened across the city, adding stations and reshaping Union Square and the squares around it. Tufts University sits on the line between Somerville and Medford, and Davis Square, Union Square, and Assembly Row are the centers where the city now works, eats, and gathers.
Sources: City of Somerville; U.S. Census Bureau.
MassCivics last checked this page on October 7, 2026.
Sources
- City records: City of Somerville, About Somerville, as of October 2026.
- History and incorporation: Secretary of the Commonwealth, City and Town Incorporation and Settlement Dates, as of October 2026.