Here’s an example of a large telescope in a very large city:

https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/great-equatorial-tele...

100 years ago, lots of them were.

Kind of. Some on mountains near cities, but even then light polution was an issue they had to mitigate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_telesc...

In general, I'm fine with scientists needing to accommodate people more than they had to 100 years ago.

That list of telescopes only goes back to 1932, and I studied astronomy at one of the institutions in question.

As an example, why is this area named Observatory Hill? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Observatory+Hill,+Cambridg...

> In general, I'm fine with scie!tists needing to accommodate people more than they had to 100 years ago.

Indeed, that's the majority opinion.

You're right, not quite 100 years.

... it's named Observatory Hill, in the middle of Cambridge Massachusetts, quite near to downtown Boston, because it has an observatory that used to work great before light pollution.