Nearly four centuries of American history can be traced back to the muddy banks of Boston, Mass., from its humble Puritan roots to the first Tea Party, from the Curse of the Bambino to the career of Ben Affleck. In addition to this year's ASLA show (and the World Series), the Boston area is host to some of the nation's brightest educational lights and most breathtaking examples of landscape architecture, epitomized by Fredrick Law Olmsted's chain of public parks and waterways, the Emerald Necklace.

The city of Boston, Mass., predates the founding of the U.S. by nearly 150 years. Established on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan colonists from England, the city was already an important port and center of commerce when fledgling patriots threw boatloads of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

Boston continued to thrive after the American Revolution, annexing adjacent towns and neighborhoods and eventually expanding to about 90 square miles – though nearly half of that is water. More than two-thirds of inner Boston's modern land area did not exist when the city was founded, but was "made" with infill over the centuries, notably with earth from the leveling or lowering of Boston's three original hills, called the "Trimountain" by early settlers and namesake to Tremont Street. A baker's dozen of cities and towns border Beantown, making up the "Greater Boston" region, including Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, Everett and Winthrop. The Charles River separates most of Boston from the Charlestown neighborhood, and delineates the city from the majority of Cambridge. Today, Boston is the capital of Massachusetts and the largest city in New England, with an estimated population of 636,000 in 2012. Greater Boston is home to 4.5 million people, comprising the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country.

Boston's plethora of higher learning institutions has led some to refer to the area as "America's Athens." More than 100 colleges and universities populate the greater Boston area, including Harvard University in Cambridge (pictured), the first such school in the New World, founded in 1636.

While various trades and industrial concerns have come and gone over the decades, the main vocation in the Boston area has always been education. The first public school was founded in the city proper in 1635, and Harvard University, the nation's first higher learning institution, was established in Cambridge one year later. Greater Boston boasts more than 100 colleges and universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston University, Northeastern University and Boston College.

The Emerald Necklace
The fingerprints of Fredrick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, can be found throughout Boston. Beginning in 1875, Olmsted worked with Boston's park commissioners to design a linear system of parks to connect Boston Common and Public Garden to Franklin Park, which came to be known as the "Emerald Necklace" for the way the park chain appears to hang from the "neck" of the Boston peninsula.

The modern chain of parks covers 1,100 acres, linked by waterways and parkways, and is the last intact linear park system designed by Olmsted. The Emerald Necklace begins near Boston's Downtown Crossing, continues along the Boston-Brookline border, and extends into Brookline and into the Roslindale neighborhood before hooking back into Roxbury and Dorchester. The chain makes up half of the city of Boston's park acreage, with additional spaces in Brookline and areas under state jurisdiction. Olmsted spent more than 20 years working on the system, convincing the city to set aside sites in West Roxbury, Jamaica Pond, in the Back Bay and along the Charles River to link the primary parks.

The cities of Boston and Brookline have made nearly $60 million in park and waterway improvements to the Emerald Necklace over the past decade, repairing bridges, improving pathways, plantings and signage, and restoring buildings and boardwalks in the area. Groups like the Emerald Necklace Conservancy (emeraldnecklace.org) and other parks organizations lead ongoing restoration, maintenance and awareness campaigns to keep the parks thriving.

The Emerald Necklace begins at Boston Common and the Public Garden, and continues through the Back Bay Fens, Olmsted Park, Jamaica Pond and Arnold Arboretum before concluding at Franklin Park. The park system traverses about seven miles from one end to the other.

Boston Common is the starting point for Olmsted's Emerald Necklace park chain and the southern end of the Boston's Freedom Trail. The park forms the southern foot of Beacon Hill, and contains numerous notable sites, including the Boston Massacre Memorial, the Civil War Monument (pictured), the 22-foot-tall bronze Brewer Fountain, and Boylston Station, the first subway station in America.

Boston Common
"The Common," as it's known locally, is the oldest city park in the United States, dating back to 1634. Boston Common has served myriad purposes over the years, from cow pastureland to a British staging ground during the Revolutionary War to a public gallows. Today the site is open to the public, providing space for concerts, protests, softball games, and ice skating on Frog Pond.

Boston Common was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and a master plan to rehabilitate the park and Public Garden was developed the same year. Since then, the park has undergone numerous renovations, including improved pathways, new amenities, a visitor information center and restoration of Brewer Fountain, a 22-foot, 15,000-pound bronze fountain cast in Paris and installed in 1868.

Boston's Public Garden occupies a 24-acre space on the western edge of Boston Common, forming the northern terminus of the Emerald Necklace. In contrast to the Common's open spaces, the Public Garden contains a lake and large series of formal plantings maintained by the city and the Friends of the Public Garden charity organization. The bronze Equestrian Statue of George Washington, sculpted by Thomas Ball, was installed in 1864.

Public Garden
Boston's Public Garden was the first public botanical garden established in the United States. A group of horticulturalists, led by philanthropist Horace Gray, brought a petition before the Boston City Council in 1837 to set aside a swampy 24-acre site at the western edge of Boston Common for the creation of a botanic garden. After several false starts, including a fire that destroyed the original conservatory, construction began in earnest in 1859, and largely concluded in July 1869 with the dedication of a bronze statue of George Washington on the west side of the park.

The Public Garden is planted with a wide assortment of native and introduced trees, including weeping willows on the shore of the lagoon and elms that line the garden's pathways. Permanent flower plantings include numerous varieties of roses, bulbs and flowering shrubs, and the beds flanking the central pathway are replanted seasonally with flora from 14 city-operated greenhouses.

Back Bay Fens
The Emerald Necklace continues south to the Back Bay Fens, the first park within the system and designed by Olmsted himself. Originally a saltwater marsh connected to the Charles River, Back Bay Fens was created by a series of land reclamation projects initiated by the city of Boston in 1820 that lasted eight decades. Olmsted combined the burgeoning field of landscape architecture with sanitary engineering techniques that transformed the stagnant marsh into a scenic pool with wooded banks that would be flushed twice daily by the tides. When the Charles River was dammed in 1910, the Fens became a freshwater lagoon that was regularly refreshed by stormwater from the Charles River Basin.

Features of the Fens include the Richard D. Parker Victory Gardens, established in 1942 and one of only two victory gardens still active in the U.S. that date back to World War II. Additional highlights include eight bridges designed by architect and Olmsted collaborator Henry Hobson Richardson, the Kelleher Rose Garden, and the Japanese temple bell, cast in 1675 and presented to the city of Boston by Japanese officials in 1953 as a symbol of postwar peace.

Olmsted Park was established as a link in the Emerald Necklace, connecting the Back Bay Fens to Jamaica Pond with a new pond system created by the redirection of the Muddy River. To help draw wildlife, Olmsted built two islands in Leverett Pond to provide shelter for nesting birds.

Olmsted Park
Olmsted Park links the Back Bay Fens and Jamaica Pond within the Emerald Necklace. Originally named Leverett Park, Olmsted's plans to redirect the Muddy River led to the creation of the three ponds that became the park's defining elements. Leverett's Pond is the largest, and connects to the smaller Willow Pond and Ward's Pond. The park was renamed in 1900 to honor its designer.

Twentieth century improvements to the park included the addition of two ball fields and the construction of Kelly Rink, a skating rink added in 1965. A master plan drafted to preserve the parks in the late 1980s led to a new bike path, pedestrian path improvements, installation of a boardwalk at Ward's Pond, shoreline rehabilitation and improved parking. Olmsted Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

Jamaica Pond
Unlike the designed parks above, the 68-acre, 53-foot deep Jamaica Pond was formed by glacial movement and is fed by natural springs, making it the largest freshwater body in the Emerald Necklace. Olmsted enhanced the space with a 1.5-mile pedestrian way that surrounds the pond, and the Jamaicaway, originally a drive for carriage traffic that connects to the Riverway and Arborway parkways within the Necklace.

Renovations to Jamaica Pond, specified by a new master plan for the Emerald Parks in the 1980s, include rehabilitation of a boathouse and bandstand for local use, an environmental education area, shoreline repair, planting improvements and removal of invasive vegetation. Pinebank Mansion, built on a hill overlooking the pond in 1868 and retained by Olmsted in the Emerald Necklace design, was declared unsalvageable and demolished in 2007 over local protests, the last original structure remaining at the site.

Originally called West Roxbury Park, Franklin Park was renamed for Benjamin Franklin in 1885. That same year, Olmsted's landscape architecture firm completed the "General Plan of Franklin Park," considered the crown jewel of the Emerald Necklace and Greater Boston. The design called for active recreational uses and large open spaces in the park, which today includes more than 20 combined miles of roads, pedestrian walkways and bridal paths.

Arnold Arboretum
The Arnold Arboretum is another National Historic Landmark along the Emerald Necklace, established in 1872 as the first public arboretum in the United States. Designed by Olmsted and Charles Sprague Sargent, the site's 281 acres includes ponds, forest and meadows that are home to more than 15,000 living plants. Today, the arboretum is owned by the city of Boston and managed by Harvard University under a 1,000-year lease signed in 1882.

The Arboretum is open to the public from sunrise to sunset, and tours led by Harvard staff are also free for visitors.

The Arboretum's research into plant evolution and biology includes ongoing studies in integrated pest management, applied horticulture, plant pathology and gene evolution at the molecular level. Collections of genera include Acer, Fagus, Carya, Pinus, Lonicera, Magnoila, Quercus, Rhododendron, Paulownia, Gleditsia and Tsuga. Arboretum researchers maintain a database of plant history, DNA materials, specimens and digital images.

The Franklin Park Zoo occupies 72 of the park's 527 acres, and contains more than 220 animal species in 10 distinct exhibit areas. Featured animals include tigers, lions, gorillas, ostriches, giraffes, kangaroos, wildebeest and zebras. A three-acre children's area with ducks, prairie dogs and a farmyard exhibit is one of the zoo's biggest attractions.

Franklin Park
The Emerald Necklace terminates at Franklin Park, the last component created under Olmsted's direction. The 527-acre space is the largest park in the Necklace and was designed for recreation, with multiple sport courts and ball fields, six miles of roads, 15 miles of pedestrian and bridle paths and the 18-hole William J. Devine golf course.

Seventy-two acres of the park belong to the Franklin Park Zoo, open to the public since October 1912. (Unlike many other Boston landmarks, the Franklin Park Zoo was not America's first – the Philadelphia Zoo and New York's Central Park Zoo, among others, predate the Beantown menagerie.) While Olmsted's original plans for the park called for a naturalistic space for native animals, a redesign by Arthur Shurtleff brought a more traditional infrastructure and exotic fare to the site. Multiple ownership changes and renovations over the past century led to the creation of 10 distinct exhibit areas today, featuring more than 220 species of animals from tropical forests, the Serengeti, the Outback and the African savannah.

Additional attractions at Franklin Park include the Long Crouch Woods, an open-air playhouse, and Schoolmaster Hill, which once inspired a local schoolteacher named Ralph Waldo Emerson to pick up his pen and write about the beauties of nature. The city of Boston has been providing similar inspiration to millions of residents and countless visitors for centuries, and its vibrancy today shows no signs of waning.