GoogleCenter of the Hub

Boston, the Hub of the Universe. Though claims are made by Goldsboro, Md. to be the Hub they’ve been rebuffed by local netters. Wired ran a story yesterday letting us know all about the GoogleCenter of America. Google sets the default not in the Hub but in the middle of a corn field in Coffeyville, Kan. Gothamaist and Chicagoist subsequently found out where the centers of their cities were, Bostonist is also curious where GoogleCenter of the Hub of the Universe sits.

If you type in “Boston” (yeah, we roll without a state identifier, ‘cause we’re cocky like that) and then zoom all the way in, you find the GoogleCenter of Boston is One Beacon Street. We actually think this is a pretty fair approximation of the center of the city. If you look at the civic side of it One Beacon Street sits pretty much equidistant from the State House, the Old State House, and City Hall. We even checked and it’s a near estimation of the spot in the center of all the MBTA lines as they run through downtown. We like thinking of this as the GoogleCenter of Boston but to be quite honest it’s not nearly the geographic center of Boston.

The City claims that the Boston Police Department’s new headquarters at 1 Schroeder Plaza sits “nearly” at the geographic center of Boston. Seems fair, from Eastie’s north east tip down to West Roxbury and Hyde Park skewed a bit by the long arm of Allston-Brighton it seems perhaps BPD HQ is near the geographic center. Google may get confused because we’re still tied to all these neighborhood names like Jamaica Plain, Charlestown, and Mattapan when we’re really talking about Boston. In fact each neighborhood will return its own GoogleCenter. However, Bostonist is calling still going to call bullshit on “The Point” as the geographic center of Boston, they’re not even the GoogleCenter of Boston. At best “The Point” is near the center.