- [Nancy Seasholes] You all know part is totally artificial.

That didn't exist until the 1830 -Yes.

Okay.

- Yes.

- I'm Nancy Seasholes.

I'm the author of "Gaining Groun A History of Landmaking in Bosto Boston almost certainly has more than any other city in North Ame This is Boston, at the end of the revolution.

A little landmaking had been don around this original, very small that was connected to the mainla only by this narrow neck.

This is essentially the original Boston Peninsula.

Boston's solution for this need was to make it, and they made it by filling in the tidal platts that surrounded the original are Tidal flats being areas that are covered with water at h and exposed mud flats at low tid The way they made land in Boston was really simple.

They built a structure on the pl around the outer perimeter of an and then they just dumped in fill behind it until the level of fill was above the level of high tide.

And that's all it took.

They just collected whole cartloads of trash and dumped them in.

We find big collections of shoe or wine bottle glass, or broken glasses from taverns, things like that.

Boston was famous for having a n Most of those hills were cut down to use as fill.

It was relatively easy.

It was a And people didn't give it much t What's now the Seaport district, began as a harbor improvement to build the sea wall around the The Harbor Commissioners thought that they wer building a major port terminal with piers that would be served by railroads.

Actually, what happened was they filled this whole area with great enthusiasm, and then it lay just basically e It was the last really big, undeveloped part of Boston.

The problem was they only filled just above the level of high tid With sea levels rising, the level of high tide is a lot and therefore it's subject to fl (dramatic music) (crowd chattering) - [Announcer] I want you to say - [Crowd] Yeah!

- [Nancy] This is Faneuil Hall.

It's one of the most iconic buildings in Boston.

It's really considered one of the most important sites in revolutionary-era Boston.

This area, like most of the areas of Boston that is on made land, was only filled above level of high tide at the time.

That's all they thought they nee So all of these areas of made la are subject to flooding with sea level rise.

This whole area was a big cove.

All of this area was originally tidal flats.

In other words, where Faneuil Ha is all man-made land.

All of this was water.