The folks at the Boston City Archives say the BRA took this photo inside a church in Charlestown in 1967 and wonder which church it was. This isn't one of those historic puzzlers where they will tell us the answer later - they really aren't sure and are seeking help identifying the church. See it larger - or see it gigantic.
The Boston Architectural College posted a copy of a 1950 postcard showing what the lights atop the old Hancock Building mean, in the days when a) the building wasn't "old" (since there was no "new" Hancock) and b) they had yet to come up with the mnemonic rhyme nobody can remember.
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo (yes, part of the photo is whited out so you don't just see the street name written on it). See it larger.
The Portland, drawn in 1890 by Samuel Ward Stanton, who later died on the Titanic.
Today marks the 123rd anniversary of the start of the Steamship Portland's final voyage - which ended with its sinking and the death of all onboard in a nor'easter that exploded over the ocean not long after it left Boston Harbor's India Wharf for what was supposed to be a routine night voyage to its home port in Maine. Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter reports the Boston Landmark Commission recently voted to make the Massachusetts Tribe's Mattapan Rhyolite Quarry, behind St. Angela’s Church along Babson and Cookson streets, a "pending landmark." The tribe used the spot to dig out rhyolite, "an ancient volcanic stone prized for its banded maroon color and ideal qualities for making stone tools."
Richard Auffrey details the background behind the sign on Hudson Street for the China Pavilion, a restaurant that hasn't been open since 1990.
Also see:
Scotch 'n Sirloin | Sahara Syrian Restaurant.
New England Folklore reviews the record of supposed vampires in Plymouth in the early part of the 19th century - Bram Stoker would not have fit in at all with that crowd.
Reuters reports that Feuerstein, who became famous for continuing to pay his 1,400 workers after his Lawrence fleece factory burned down in 1995, died from complications related to a fall at his Brookline home last week.
The folks at the Boston City Archives posted this photo of a time in the 1980s when Ray Flynn had Ed Koch over for some tea at Boston City Hall - and wonder if you can identify any of the non-mayor people.
Intrepid fact finder Richard Auffrey, though, finds the facts to dismiss the claim by the long gone Bob Lee's Islander on Tyler Street.
The Department of Environmental Protection ruled today that Sprague Pond is no longer just OK - it's officially great. Read more.
Hamilton's warning to Lafayette.
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that a South Carolina family that had long owned a letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de Lafayette about the military situation in Rhode Island in 1780 has no rights to the missive and that it needs to be returned to the Massachusetts state archives, from which it had been stolen more than seven decades ago. Read more.
Roving UHub photographer Greta Gaffin (yes, the former UHub copy desk) spotted these signs today in the back of the BU College of Arts and Sciences. Boston Edison and "despatcher" alone are enough to date them, but also notice one of the phone numbers: Andrew 8-1633. Read more.
Cambridge Day takes us back to the days when cargo ships actually docked in Cambridge.
The Crimson recounts the history of Muddy Pond, which used to be in the "wild" side of the Arnold Arboretum, between South Street and Washington Street, which kept proving a death trap and which Harvard only finally did something about when the city started talking about taking the land by eminent domain to fix the problem.
Workers used cranks at the bottom to adjust semaphores in Grout's system. From Swan.
South Boston's Telegraph Hill is where Washington ordered the placement of the cannons that drove the British out of Boston in 1776. You can't miss it - there's a monument there at the top of the hill. And yet the hill and the surrounding neighborhood is named for a failed business that barely survived for six years before its owner gave up and moved to Philadelphia. Read more.
Mark Bavis's name on World Trade Center memorial. Photoby Tim West.
2,996 people were murdered 20 years ago today. More than 200 were from or had ties to Massachusetts, including Mark Bavis, a Los Angeles Kings scout who grew up in Roslindale and who was returning to Los Angeles on United flight 175, and Gerard Dewan, a West Roxbury native who worked as a Green Line trolley driver before moving to New York to become a firefighter. Read more.
On Sept. 6, 1886, Boston held its first Labor Day parade: Several thousand cigar makers, carpenters, painters, roofers, sheet-metal workers, mechanics, hat makers, newspaper pressmen and other workers started marching at 9:30 a.m. through Park Square and other parts of Boston Proper, ending up on Atlantic Avenue, where they boarded steamers for the ride to Downer Landing in Hingham - sort of the Salem Willows of its day - for a daylong picnic. Read more.
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
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