History

From its birth in the seventeenth century, Weston has always been tied to the sea. It was originally settled under the Massachusetts Bay charter from the British crown, the northernmost edge of that charter just outside of Salem. Due to its proximity to the harbor areas, Weston became the home of many sailors and their families. Captains and high-ranking officers were drawn to the exclusive Widow's Reach area, while their crews found easy boarding on Mercy Street. By the 1730's, the dominant industry was in supporting the Whalers out of Nantucket. The deep harbor with natural shelter made it ideal for construction, and when the reservoir was built, using a primitive lock system, construction of whaling ships became their largest industry.

During the Revolutionary War, Weston was a loyalist stronghold. As the tides began to turn towards the revolutionaries, many residents fled back to England while they were still able. The remaining residents seized their properties and a new sort started putting down stakes in Weston. With the rapid growth of whaling, so too did Weston's fortunes. And when whaling went bust in the 1890's, so too did Weston. The town appeared destined to be a footnote in history, until the Fire of 1908.

When fire broke out in both neighboring Clarkstown and in Bradford across the bay, Weston had a surge of residents and businesses seeking a place to locate in the immediate aftermath. The town was already so close to collapse, when the opportunity to join with its neighbors in the establishment of Titan City was offered, they jumped at the chance. These two factors brought with it an influx of new money into the area, which in turn lead to rapid urbanization. Mercy Street and Rose Boulevard became shining beacons of modern industry with high-class shops, restaurants and theaters filling the streets.

However, this flood of money became a trickle after the second World War, as the devastated areas had been rebuilt to grandeur. The wealthy citizens were the first to move across the harbor to Downtown or Alexandria. More and more businesses began to close or relocate. Children no longer wished to run their family's businesses and saw selling as the best route. Over the last fifty years, Weston has fallen from a high-income area to a low-income one; a shining jewel now tarnished.

Neighborhoods

• Widow’s Reach
  Easily the nicest part of Weston, Widow's Reach was once the home of ship captains and their families. The area consists of larger homes of a historic bent (nineteenth and early twentieth century construction). Some of the homes in Widow's Reach are listed on the city's register of historic buildings. There are very few businesses in Widow's Reach. Nearly all businesses in the neighborhood are in converted homes. The main exception to this rule is the Harborside Playhouse which was built in the 1890s to cater to Reach residents. The slight geographic isolation of Widow's Reach from the rest of Weston lead to it's original draw and the creation of an exclusive community, both factors in the area's survival. While most of the residents no longer hold the same amount of wealth as the original residents of Widow's Reach, it remains the wealthiest part of Weston. It also boasts the most widow's walks in Titan City to this day.
• Seafarer’s Rest
  While there are some residential parts of Seafarer's Rest, the neighborhood is dominated by the Star of the Sea Cemetery. The neighborhood truly is the resting place of many mariners who lived or sailed into Titan City over the centuries.
• Mercy Street
  Before Weston's fall, Mercy Street was a nice place to live. A middle and upper-middle class neighborhood, Mercy Street housed many families. The Mercy Women's League once operated out of the area and helped found many charitable organizations around Weston. The League was also influential in helping purchase several homes to function as retirement residences for aged sailors. These homes were the foundation of Mercy Street Hospital in the late nineteenth century, lasting until the late 1990s. With the hospital's closure, a lot of hope has died in Mercy Street. The area is still home to many families, however the houses show many signs of wear.
• Rose Boulevard
  Rose Boulevard has always been Weston's economic center and a gauge of the area's health. Originally dubbed "Main Street" in colonial times, Rose Boulevard was renamed after the historic Windrose Tavern in the mid-nineteenth century. During the 1910s and 1920s, Rose Boulevard was a glamorous, vibrant part of Titan City. Shops, theaters, clubs and speakeasies lined the main drag, with quieter tea rooms and cafes along the side streets. It was very much a haunt of the city's young, rich crowd. As Weston began to fall, Rose Boulevard was the worst hit. Business after business closed their doors, either permanently or through relocation. The anchors of Weston's past, such as the Platinum Theater were boarded up and forgotten. Only the Windrose Tavern remains, although rumor has it that the Windrose's survival is the result of the city's underside. In a strange turn of affairs for modern Weston, the opposite has occurred with the Opal Room, which reopened after several years of closure.
• Downturn Alley
  A labyrinthine nest of alleyways and small streets below Rose Boulevard, Downturn Alley is the definition of crime-ridden. The part of Weston best avoided even when the rest was safe, Downturn Alley has always called to the unsavory. It sprang to life to accommodate, and collect money from, the crews that sailed into Steward Harbor. Downturn Alley once boasted the cheapest rooms and most watered-down beer in the entire Titan City area. When the area began to prosper, Downturn Alley tried to shift as well. Some bars became cafes, hotels became homes, but it was always a glossy exterior over a rotten core. It is said that the fall of Weston spread like a disease from Downturn Alley. The Alley has strong gang presences from the Black Rose, Five Dragons and [the Storm Lords]. It is a favored haunt of the Aether Pirates. Its out-of-sight, no-questions-asked attitude has made it a perfect place for larger villain organizations to have hide-outs, as well. Police presence in Downturn Alley was a joke fifty years ago when Rose Boulevard was patrolled nightly.
• Washout City
  After you've hit rock bottom, Washout City is the next step down. Many young men who simply couldn't handle life on the high seas and had no where else to go, wound up in the western part of Weston. Several low-rent dormitories sprang up in the nineteenth century and a slew of tiny, nearly ramshackle houses were built to support the rising population. Washout City isn't somewhere anyone really wants to live, but circumstance both brings people to the area and traps them in its hopeless poverty.
• Blacksmoke Row
  A factory-ridden area to the west, Blacksmoke Row arose during the Industrial Revolution as a home for new industries. As the shipping industry began to change, Blacksmoke Row expanded with an influx of work-hunting laborers. Many of these factories have gone out of business in the intervening years -- moving to better locations within the City.
• Corrosion Park
  Corrosion Park is a sea of warehouses and shipping containers. This scarcely-inhabited area to the south of Washout City remained underdeveloped until the 1970s. Its flat, empty and, most importantly, incredibly cheap land soon became dominated by metal. The proximity to the residential Washout City has lead to some clashes between Weston residents and developers, the most prominent regarding EdenTech's Weston Cove Reclamation Plant.