South Boston Waterfront

This guide to Boston's South Boston Waterfront starts with pile drivers striking nine acres of parking-lot mud in 2005, then reaches back to 1836, when the Boston Wharf Company began dumping fill into these tidal flats to turn clam beds into buildable ground. It follows the district through decades of warehouses and a booming fish pier, and into the long stretch when ships and trucks moved on and the waterfront sat as little more than a seaside parking lot ringed by rotting wharves. From there it traces the deal that finally turned that empty patch, known as Fan Pier, around.