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By adamg - 6/2/14 - 9:58 am
Mystery man

The folks at the Boston City Archives have posted a photo of a Boston block back in the day and ask if you can figure out where it was and when the photo was taken (see it larger). Normally, I'd post a copy of the entire photo, but I was struck by this guy hanging out in the shadows of a laundry.

By adamg - 6/1/14 - 11:44 am

In October, 1921, Leslie Jones traveled down to West Roxbury to witness the end of an era: The replacement of the horses that had long pulled Engine 30's fire apparatus with one of those newfangled motorized vehicles.

Nine decades later, the firehouse is still in use and is still home to Engine 30 (along with Ladder 25).

Photo from the BPL Leslie Jones collection used under this Creative Common license.

By adamg - 5/31/14 - 12:24 pm
What if an MBTA locomotive approached the Bussey Street bridge?

Stephen McCarthy wondered what it might be like if a rogue T locomotive headed outbound and approached the scene of one of the worst train disasters in American history - the Bussey Street bridge collapse of 1887 in Roslindale - in which a poorly constructed bridge collapsed under a train heading downtown from Dedham. Fortunately, as he illustrates, the modern locomotive's brakes worked.

By adamg - 5/30/14 - 8:47 am

The caption for the original Leslie Jones photo from Jan. 29, 1937 reads:

Auto driven by Richard Kent turns over at Newbury and Berkeley.

By adamg - 5/29/14 - 7:05 pm
Milk truck in the window of a Huntington Avenue drug store

Last fall, Marc Hermann juxtaposed old crime and accident photos from the archives of the New York Daily News with photos of the scenes in modern times. The results are wicked cool.

I started thinking Boston would also lend itself to this sort of treatment. In recent days, I've been taking photos of the current scenes where news photographer Leslie Jones and the (generally) anonymous photographers enshrined in the Boston City Archives captured life in Boston back in the day.

By adamg - 5/27/14 - 2:58 pm
Kids standing around

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out when and where these kids were photographed. See it larger.

By adamg - 5/25/14 - 8:51 pm

Leonard Nimoy On Growing Up In The West End, Keeping Spock's Ears And Losing His Boston Accent

Margery Eagan and Jared Bowen interview Leonard Nimoy at WGBH.

By adamg - 5/22/14 - 11:59 pm

UPDATE: BPS says it's NOT eliminating the department. I've locked the discussion here, please go to the new story to discuss.

We're going to find out next year, now that BPS has decided history and social studies no longer deserve their own departments but instead will become a humanities subset of schools' English Language Arts departments.

By adamg - 5/22/14 - 8:39 am
Bellflower Street fire

May 22, 1964 was a nice day. A little windy, perhaps, but with temperatures in the 70s, it was a good day to open the windows or go outside and chat with a neighbor, which is what one resident was doing early that afternoon:

By adamg - 5/21/14 - 12:58 pm
Historic Boston rubble

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo. See it larger.

By adamg - 5/21/14 - 8:04 am
Missing governor at King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston

Anybody know whose name is covered up on this plaque and why?

By adamg - 5/19/14 - 11:34 am
Laying tracks in old Boston

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out when and where this photo was taken. See it larger.

By adamg - 5/17/14 - 9:59 am

the MODERN LOVERS "Modern World" 1972

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers take a spin around Boston in 1972.

Via Todd Prussman.

By adamg - 5/16/14 - 10:15 am

Live reporting from Cambridge City Hall at midnight on May 17, 2004 as the first same-sex couples applied for marriage licenses following the pioneering Goodridge decision.

By adamg - 5/13/14 - 9:30 am

Mike Dash introduces us to the strange story of James McClintock, a Confederate engineer who built the H.L. Hunley, a submarine that sank the Union ship Housatonic in 1864, and who later showed up in Boston to work with a con man on recruiting investors for a new type of naval mine. McClintock disappeared after an explosion in Boston Harbor in 1879. But did he die?

By adamg - 5/12/14 - 11:03 am
House and horse in old Boston

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out where this house was, who owned it and when the picture was taken. See it larger.

By adamg - 5/11/14 - 7:47 pm

Peter Muise takes us back to the 1640s, when some Harvard men decided to take advantage of President Henry Dunster's trip to Concord to raise some hell:

The students did succeed in raising Satan, but unfortunately were not able to control him. The Evil One proceeded to run amok on campus. In a panic, the students sent a message to Dunster that he needed to come back to campus immediately. Dunster mounted his horse and galloped back to campus to handle the rampaging demon. He was a well-trained minister and knew just what to do.

By adamg - 5/10/14 - 8:31 am

Head over to ArchBoston for a discussion about an entrance to what used to be the Mass. Ave. trolley stop that workers uncovered the other day - then promptly filled right back in. With some photos of when the station was a trolley hub (more photos).

By adamg - 5/9/14 - 1:22 pm

Craig Fitzgerald revisits May 9, 1989, when a postal worker at the South Boston postal annex murdered his ex-wife with an AK-47, then commandeered a Cessna at Beverly Airport and headed for Boston, which he buzzed for nearly three hours as he took shots at the Pru, Newbury Street and Kenmore Square.

By adamg - 5/5/14 - 11:09 am
Old Boston street scene

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo. See it larger.

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