Live in East Boston
Boston publishes one residential tax rate, and in East Boston nearly half the housing is owned by somebody who does not live in it and pays that rate in full.
East Boston is five islands joined together by fill. Noddle's, Hog, Governor's, Bird and Apple were separate ground until the East Boston Company started grading and filling between them in 1833, so the flat land the neighborhood stands on was made rather than found. That history is also the flood question, because the made ground between the old islands is where water goes first, and the City has been planning against it since 2017. Today 43,066 people live here on the BPDA's 2020 census approximation, more than half of them Latin American, on a peninsula that also holds Logan International Airport and is reached from the rest of Boston only by the Blue Line, two highway tunnels or a ferry. The number that decides most purchases is none of that: of the 7,759 one to three-family and condominium parcels the City assessed here for fiscal 2026, 4,306 carry the owner-occupied flag, so about 44% of this neighborhood pays the full $12.40 rate with no residential exemption at all.
Made ground, and a tax break most owners here do not get
The peninsula across the inner harbor from the North End: Boston Harbor to the south and west, Chelsea Creek to the north, Belle Isle Inlet and the Winthrop and Revere lines to the east, with Logan International Airport occupying the southern third of the land. The BPDA publishes the polygon and says plainly that its neighborhood boundaries are approximations rather than the City's official lines.
East Boston is not a peninsula that was always there. Noddle's, Hog, Governor's, Bird and Apple were five separate islands until the East Boston Company began filling between them in 1833, and the flat blocks from Maverick Square to Day Square sit on made ground. Donald McKay was building clippers on Border Street by 1845, the ferry gave way to the 1904 East Boston Tunnel, the first underwater rapid transit tunnel in North America and the Blue Line today, and every wave of arrivals since has left the housing stock alone and changed who lives in it. Irish, then Italian, then, since the 1990s, Latin American: more than half of the 43,066 people the BPDA counts here in 2020 were Latino.
The number that decides most purchases here is the residential exemption. Boston publishes one residential rate, $12.40 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026, then takes $351,108 of assessed value off any parcel the owner lives in, worth $4,353.74 a year. A landlord with the identical three-decker next door gets none of it. That distinction bites hard here: of the 7,759 one to three-family and condominium parcels on the fiscal 2026 roll, 4,306 carry the owner-occupied flag, so about 44% of the housing on this peninsula is taxed at the full rate. The arithmetic on both sides is on the Boston hub.
The exemption has a trap in it and a spring buyer usually walks into it. You must have owned and occupied on 1 January and filed by 1 April. Close in March and you wait a full fiscal year at the landlord's number. Two other state rules travel with that one. Proposition 2 1/2 caps the levy a city may raise rather than the rate it charges, so a falling rate and a rising bill are entirely compatible. And the only tax on the sale is the deeds excise at $4.56 per $1,000, which the statute puts on the seller: Massachusetts charges a buyer nothing to take title and nothing to borrow.
Be honest about the boundary and about the water. The BPDA publishes the polygon this guide measures from and says in the dataset itself that its neighborhood lines are approximations rather than the City's official boundaries. The assessment medians above are drawn by postal East Boston, ZIP 02128, a close but different shape, so read them as a market signal and not a boundary fact. On flooding there is no per-parcel figure to quote. What the City publishes is its design standard: coastal resilience here is planned to a 1% annual chance storm with sea level rise projections for 2070, and the two Climate Ready East Boston and Charlestown reports, 2017 and 2022, map the low ground where water runs inland rather than only along the shore. Get an elevation certificate and a flood quote, which is a separate policy and in nobody's insurance estimate.
The practical position is good, and it is one-sided. Maverick is one stop and about four minutes under the harbor from State Street, the subway fare is $2.40, a monthly LinkPass is $90, and Airport station puts a free shuttle to every Logan terminal within a kilometer of most of the neighborhood. The ferry from Lewis Mall crosses to Long Wharf without touching a road. Driving is the other story: everything west goes through the Sumner, the Callahan or the Ted Williams, and the 2023 and 2024 Sumner closures, 57 days and then 31, were the demonstration.
- Ask whether the seller took the exemption, because their bill is the post-exemption number and yours will not be until you file
- Set the closing date against the 1 January ownership test and the 1 April deadline
- Get an elevation certificate and a flood quote before the offer: flood is a separate policy
- In a converted three-decker, ask for the reserve study and three years of minutes, since Massachusetts has no reserve statute
- Check which runway Logan is using when you view, because it changes what the block sounds like
How East Boston got here
- 1833William Sumner and his partners form the East Boston Company and begin filling between Noddle's, Hog, Governor's, Bird and Apple islands. The grid laid over that fill is the street plan the neighborhood still uses.
- 1845Donald McKay opens his shipyard on Border Street. The clippers built there, Flying Cloud in 1851 and Sovereign of the Seas in 1852, made East Boston briefly the fastest shipbuilding address in the world.
- 1904The East Boston Tunnel opens under the harbor, replacing the ferry and becoming the first underwater rapid transit tunnel in North America. It is the Blue Line today.
- 1923An airfield opens on filled tidal flats at Jeffries Point. It becomes Logan International Airport, and from that year the neighborhood has shared its ground with the region's airport.
- 1934The Sumner Tunnel opens to cars, followed by the Callahan in 1961. Until the Ted Williams Tunnel opened in 1995, those two carried every vehicle between East Boston and the rest of the city.
- 1969Logan's expansion takes Wood Island Park, an Olmsted-designed waterfront park, and displaces the families along Neptune Road. Where the airport ends and the neighborhood begins has been contested ever since.
- 2017The City publishes Climate Ready East Boston and Charlestown, the first coastal resilience plan for this shoreline, and a second phase follows in 2022.
- 2023The Sumner Tunnel closes for 57 days in the summer, and again for 31 days in 2024, for a restoration MassDOT says extends its life by at least 75 years. Blue Line trips were free for the duration.
Piers Park, the Greenway and Belle Isle
East Boston lost Wood Island Park to the airport in 1969 and has been getting waterfront back ever since. Piers Park at Jeffries Point has the best straight-on view of the skyline in Boston. Bremen Street Park and the East Boston Greenway run on former airport and rail land, built as Big Dig mitigation. At the far end, Belle Isle Marsh Reservation protects 152 acres of the 241-acre marsh, the last salt marsh left in the city and a flood sponge as much as a bird reserve.
What the map does not show: the open space is linear and sits on the edges, so which end you buy in decides which of it you use. Orient Heights is a walk from the marsh and a long way from Maverick. Jeffries Point is the reverse.
Elsewhere in Boston, not East Boston
20 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 20 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from a representative point in central East Boston, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model: honest ranges, not routed times. Read the downtown rows with care, because a straight line across the inner harbor is not a trip anyone can make and every one of those journeys goes through a tunnel.
Every gym within reach
The provision here is municipal rather than commercial: a City community center and pool on Paris Street, a YMCA with a pool on Bremen Street, and studios in the squares.
- The Paris Street center and pool are municipal price, and both are at the Maverick end
- The East Boston YMCA on Bremen Street is the only large membership facility with a pool
- Buying at Orient Heights, measure the trip to both before counting them as yours
- A converted three-decker has no building amenity and no association funding one
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| East Boston YMCA open | The branch on Bremen Street, with a pool, and the largest membership facility on the peninsula. | 3–4 min |
| BCYF Paris Street Community Center open | The City's own community center, with a gymnasium and programming, at municipal rather than commercial prices. | 2–4 min |
| BCYF Paris Street Pool open | The indoor City pool beside it. Boston runs pools and community centers as separate facilities, which is why they are listed separately. | 2–4 min |
The free option is the East Boston Greenway and the harborwalk through Piers Park: flat, continuous, lit, and most of the length of the neighborhood without a fare.
There is no assigned school here, there is a list
East Boston addresses fall under Boston Public Schools, which for kindergarten through grade eight assigns no neighborhood school at all. It builds a list from your address, starting with every school within a mile and adding option and citywide schools until it holds roughly 10 to 14, and then an algorithm close to a lottery assigns from the choices you rank. Living opposite a school is not a place at it. High schools are citywide options, so East Boston High is open to you and so is a school eight miles away.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| East Boston High School | Boston Public Schools | The neighborhood high school on White Street. Boston's high schools are citywide options rather than assignments by address, so living here neither entitles you to a seat nor excludes you from one across the city. |
| Umana Academy | Boston Public Schools | A K-8 on Border Street. For kindergarten through grade eight Boston builds a list from your home address rather than assigning one school, so what matters is which schools land on the list your address generates. |
| Guild Elementary School | Boston Public Schools | On Leyden Street in Orient Heights, and typically on the list for addresses at the eastern end of the neighborhood rather than at Maverick. |
| Otis Elementary School | Boston Public Schools | On Marion Street, and one of several elementaries close enough to central East Boston to appear on most lists drawn here. |
| Excel Academy Charter Schools | Massachusetts Commonwealth charter | A charter network that started in East Boston and runs middle and high school seats. Charter admission is a separate statewide lottery rather than part of the Boston Public Schools process, and your address does not decide it. |
Run your exact address through the district's own tool, because two addresses three streets apart here can generate different lists. Charter schools, including the Excel Academy network that started in East Boston, are a separate statewide lottery that your address does not affect.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Highs near 3 °C and lows around -5 °C at Logan, with 36 cm of snow in an average January
- Logan is the weather station the whole city is measured by, and it sits inside this neighborhood
- A declared snow emergency clears one side of most streets, and a resident permit does not exempt you
- Marginally the snowiest month, at 37 cm on the 1991 to 2020 normal
- Winter storms arrive as nor'easters, and a nor'easter at high tide is the flood scenario the City plans for
- The quietest month for viewings, and the easiest time to see a unit without competition
- Highs near 8 °C, with 23 cm of snow still normal for the month
- The spring market starts listing, and a closing after 1 January means the residential exemption waits a year
- Freeze and thaw is what moves old brick and wood siding, so ask when the exterior was last worked on
- Highs near 14 °C and only trace snow: the first month you use the waterfront
- 1 April is the filing deadline for the residential exemption, and missing it costs the whole year
- Marathon Monday closes much of the city, though not much of this side of the harbor
- Highs near 19 °C, and the ferry becomes the pleasant way to commute rather than the slow one
- Piers Park sailing and the Greenway both come back into use
- Peak listing season, and the month with the most competition on an offer
- Highs near 25 °C, and sunset after eight across the harbor from the skyline
- Constitution Beach opens with lifeguards for the season
- Aircraft noise is at its most obvious with the windows open, and the runway in use changes with the wind
- Highs near 28 °C and lows near 19 °C, the warmest normals of the year
- The fiscal year turns on 1 July, and the first bill of the new assessment cycle follows
- The harbor moderates the heat here more than it does three miles inland
- Boston's leases turn over on 1 September, and the last week of August is the worst traffic of the year
- Tropical systems reach New England in August and September, usually as heavy rain rather than wind
- The best month to test a unit for heat, since almost nothing here was built with cooling
- Highs near 23 °C, low humidity, and the clearest stretch of the year
- Peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, which on this shoreline means surge on top of an already high tide
- Ferry and Greenway use is at its highest
- Highs near 17 °C, and the wettest month on the normals at 102 mm
- The autumn king tides are when residents photograph the water where it does not belong
- Heating systems get their first real test, and most of the stock is steam or oil
- Highs near 11 °C, with the first snow normal of the season at under 2 cm
- Coastal storms start arriving, and the ones that flood here come in on a spring tide
- The market goes quiet, which is the argument for buying now rather than in May
- Highs near 6 °C and 23 cm of snow on the normal
- You must own and occupy on 1 January to qualify for the next year's residential exemption, so a December closing beats a February one by a full year
- Short days, and long tunnel queues on either side of the holidays
7 more photographs of the community and its surroundings
All freely licensed, via Wikimedia Commons. Filter by category.
Showing 1–7 of 7 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near East Boston, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Boston library.