The buildersвЂ™ intention was to harness the power of the tides via sluices in the dam walls. Following the line of present-day Beacon Street, the 50-foot-wide stone dam extended a mile and a half from the foot of Beacon Hill to SewallвЂ™s Point, narrowing the Charles River and enclosing the waters of the Back Bay.

That began to change with the construction of the Mill Dam in 1814. British naval ships sailed into these waters on the night of July 31, 1775, and bombarded the revolutionaries at Fort Brookline (about where the BU Bridge is today), but most nights, and days, things were quiet hereabouts. The only residents were clams, seagulls, and other wildlife. This was when the Back Bay was in fact a bay, an area of tidal flats on the northwest side of the Neck, the isthmus connecting peninsular Boston to mainland Roxbury and Brookline. (Later in life, Sewall publicly apologized for his role in sentencing innocent women to death, became an abolitionist, and wrote a tract promoting equal rights for women.) The point was owned by Samuel Sewall, the judge who presided over the notorious 17th-century Salem witch trials. Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical SocietyД«efore urban development, all that lay here at the junction of the Charles and Muddy rivers was a spit of land, called SewallвЂ™s Point, surrounded by a saltwater marsh. Stygian morass Samuel Sewall, the judge who presided over the Salem witch trials and owner of Sewall's Point. Now that Boston University has sold its Hotel Commonwealth property, whose construction transformed the neighborhood a decade ago, BU Today takes a look back at how this iconic public space came to be what it is today. Who in Boston hasnвЂ™t passed through Kenmore Square? Hub of road and rail, misfit of the Back Bay, gateway to BU, the square has been home to baseball greats and baseball scandal, prom queens and punk rock, flooding and fine dining.

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