Boston grows dramatically through annexation.

The annexations of Brighton, Charlestown, and West Roxbury (which includes Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) add more than 11,000 acres and more than 90,000 residents to the city and are the last until Hyde Park is annexed in 1912. Despite the unwillingness of other suburbs to formally become part of Boston, Edward Bacon writes in 1883 that, “all this territory is geographically a part of the city, although not politically; and looking suburban wards from any eminence in the city proper, so continuously does the sea of houses spread away, – rolling off over the hills like populous billows, – that it is impossible to tell where the city ends and the suburbs begin.”