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Dorchester, Boston — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Triple-deckers climb the hills above Dorchester Bay in Dorchester, the largest district of Boston, threaded end to end by Dorchester Avenue.
About Dorchester
Where to stay in Dorchester
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Dorchester covers roughly six square miles of Boston, so choosing a base in it means choosing a stop on the Red Line. Savin Hill and Fields Corner set the platforms, the shopfronts and the water within a few streets of one another. Ashmont is quieter, ranged around Peabody Square and the Gothic mass of All Saints' Church, Ashmont.
Hotel beds are thin. Most visitors book in central Boston and ride out instead, a matter of minutes from JFK/UMass station, and that suits you if you would rather sleep on a residential street than inside a hotel quarter.
About Dorchester
What are the main landmarks in Dorchester?
Dorchester keeps its best-known building on Columbia Point, where the Kennedy Presidential Library stands beside the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the Massachusetts Archives. Inland the record turns domestic. The James Blake House of 1661 is the oldest house still standing in Boston, the Clapp Houses hold the Dorchester Historical Society, and the William Monroe Trotter House crowns Jones Hill.
Ralph Adams Cram built All Saints' Church, Ashmont at Peabody Square, and Pilgrim Congregational Church stands on Columbia Road. The Franklin Park Zoo sits outside Dorchester altogether, west of the boundary in Franklin Park.
What is the history of Dorchester?
Dorchester was founded in 1630 by Puritans from Dorchester, Dorset, who crossed on the Mary and John and settled the peninsula the Massachusett called Mattapan. Independence lasted 240 years. A town meeting was held here in 1633, the first on record in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Mather School opened in 1639 as the first public elementary school in the colonies.
Annexation to Boston came in 1870, after which streetcar lines filled the old farmland with the triple-decker streets that still define Fields Corner and Savin Hill.
Where is Dorchester?
Dorchester lies south of downtown Boston, edged east by Dorchester Bay and south by the Neponset River, which divides it from Quincy and Milton.
Good for
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Updated September 2026