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By adamg - 4/30/14 - 11:22 am
Old Boston el stop

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

By adamg - 4/28/14 - 11:07 am
Horses on cobblestones in Boston

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

By adamg - 4/24/14 - 11:00 am
Car stuck in the snow under trolley wires

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

By adamg - 4/23/14 - 11:09 am
R.H. Stearns in downtown Boston

Filene's, Jordan Marsh, Gilchrist's, even Woolworth, all names from downtown's past now. But don't forget R.H. Stearn's, at Tremont and Temple Place, which once rivaled Filene's and Jordan Marsh as a regional retailing company.

Its flagship ten-story building, finished in 1909, still stands at Tremont Street and Temple Place. Even the original metal awnings are still there - although somebody, for some reason, removed the "R.H." from them sometime after the store closed in 1978.

By adamg - 4/22/14 - 11:18 am
Berger Mfg.

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out when and where Berger Manufacturing manufactured their premium sheet metal. See it larger.

By adamg - 4/21/14 - 12:14 pm
Tarzan Jones in the 1939 Boston Marathon

In 1939, three years after he had bested local favorite Johnny Kelly - barefoot, and with a burst of speed at the top of what is now Heartbreak Hill - Ellison "Tarzan" Jones won his second Boston Marathon.

Leslie Jones photo from the BPL Marathon collection. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

By adamg - 4/21/14 - 11:22 am

William Dawes rides off

Paul Revere gets all the glory, but William Dawes also rode into the countryside that fateful April night to warn the colonists that the Redcoats were coming.

This morning, the National Lancers re-created Dawes' ride from the First Church in Roxbury in Eliot Square.

Reading a poem about Dawes on the front steps of the church:

By adamg - 4/19/14 - 1:40 pm

Veteran Wins Boston Marathon (1938)

1938 British Pathe newsreel on that year's Boston Marathon.

By adamg - 4/18/14 - 7:42 pm

Starting at 8, the Paul Revere House will be "livetweeting" Paul Revere's ride.

Alas, poor Dawes, never gets as much credit.

Welcome to Dot suggests:

RT if by land, Favorite if by sea.

Via Beta Boston.

By adamg - 4/18/14 - 10:16 am

J.L. Bell fires grapeshot at the notion that the Battle of Lexington supposedly started with a verbal volley in which a Redcoat commander demanded the Minutemen put down their arms in the name of George III, the sovereign king of England and a minster retorted that "We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus."

Besides the fact that none of the dozens of participants in the battle who wrote down their recollections of it ever mentioned the alleged exchange, the minister who allegedly made the retort wasn't even on the Lexington Common that morning.

By adamg - 4/18/14 - 9:24 am
Trolley at Devonshire Street in Boston

A.P. Blake reminds us that on this day in 1924, the predecessor of the MBTA shut the trolley line between downtown and East Boston for 50 hours to convert it into what we now know as the Blue Line.

The Boston Street Railway Association posted this photo of one of the old trolleys at Devonshire (late renamed State).

By adamg - 4/12/14 - 10:41 am

Calendar of Patriots Day events - some this weekend. The list is, however, missing the annual re-enactment of the rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes.

By adamg - 4/10/14 - 10:28 am
Old tracks

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 - 4/6/14 - 5:07 pm
Norumbega tower

The Norumbega tower. See it larger.

Horsford

When you're rich, people listen to you. And you get to build monuments to wacky ideas with no proof behind them.

By adamg - 4/5/14 - 3:43 pm
Old town-line sign at Needham-Dedham border.

Old town line sign. See it larger.

Get off 128 at Great Plain Avenue and head towards Dedham and you'll see what looks like a driveway just before the Dedham line.

It's actually the remains of an old road, one that now dead-ends at the soon-to-be-expanded 128. Park by the gate, and you'll see the old town-line signs. Look down toward the river and you'll see an official boundary stone (like this one). Then look at the phone poles and lines that still run along the side of the road - and continue across 128.

By adamg - 4/5/14 - 9:12 am

Today's the anniversary of the 1926 arrest of H.L. Mencken on the Common for selling a magazine considered obscene by the local group that banned things in Boston. The charges were dismissed the next day and Mencken won a lawsuit against the Watch and Ward Society. The group's influence continued through 1982, when the position of city censor was eliminated.

By adamg - 3/29/14 - 9:16 am

The East Boston Times-Free Press reports on the impending closing of Al's Shoe Store, where the Wein family has been outfitting the feet of East Boston since 1924.

By adamg - 3/28/14 - 9:12 am
Royal Arcanum in Boston

Boston is home to several insurers, but they all have pretty boring names - except for the Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum on Batterymarch Street downtown.

It sounds like some sort of fraternal organization, which, in fact, it is, but one that exists primarily to provide burial benefits and insurance to its members.

By adamg - 3/26/14 - 7:27 am

Mike the Mad Biologist ponders days of yore, when most Englishmen and their Bostonian cousins would have rhotically parked their cars in Harvard Yard, if they'd had cars to park there.

By adamg - 3/24/14 - 12:07 pm
Old classroom

The folks at the Boston City Archive wonder if you can place this photo. The date will be easy to spot if you see the larger version (and note all the other writing on the blackboards), but where?

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