History
Kevin White's funeral
By adamg - 2/1/12 - 3:29 pmWGBH provides the audio from today's funeral - you can listen to the whole thing or to specific speakers.
You've just won $24 million for being offended by the state seal - so what do you replace it with?
By adamg - 2/1/12 - 11:38 am
The original Massachusetts seal, embedded in the Old State House.
We already have one proposal - a giant hole - but could we do better? What would best represent our fair commonwealth on the state flag, official state letterheads and tie clasps?
Two sides of Kevin White
By adamg - 1/30/12 - 1:32 pm
The City of Boston Archives has posted some photos of Kevin White, including one of him talking with John Kenneth Galbraith at a birthday party for Arthur Fiedler in 1977 (as John Silber stares into the distance) and another of him shooting some pool sometime in the early 1970s.
Posted under this Creative Commons license.
Boston does it old school
By adamg - 1/30/12 - 10:36 amThe City of Boston Archives has put up an exhibit of books and photos from the school department archives dating back to 1815.
Also see its photos of Boston schools.
Boston's string of five great mayors
By adamg - 1/28/12 - 5:01 pmJay Fitzgerald credits our past five mayors - and above all Kevin White - for making Boston what it is today and keeping us from becoming another Detroit or Philadelphia:
Simply put, Kevin White was mayor of Boston at a pivotal point in the city's history, when the city could have easily lurched in either direction, back toward the "old Boston" or forward toward a "new Boston." He chose the latter.
Kevin H. White, dead at 82
By adamg - 1/27/12 - 11:05 pm
Photo by Peter E. Lee. Used under this Creative Commons license.
Former Mayor Kevin White died at home tonight, surrounded by his family, Associated Press reports.
In his 16 years in office, "the loner in love with his city" presided over a Boston undergoing dramatic, often painful change, from the rebirth of large parts of downtown to the 1974 busing crisis.
White also famously helped forestall rioting after the death of Martin Luther King by convincing (and paying) James Brown to not cancel a scheduled concert at the Garden the night after King's assassination in 1968 - and by having it shown live on TV. Four years later, he again forestalled rioting by helping to bail out Mick Jagger and Keith Richards after they'd been arrested for a fight at TF Green Airport before a concert at the Garden.
Too many Benedict Arnolds
By adamg - 1/9/12 - 9:35 amJ.L. Bell reports that while the widow of Benedict Arnold died in Uxbridge, she was not the widow of that Benedict Arnold. Seems Benedict was a popular name back then.
Creative re-use of Boston's oldest firehouse
By adamg - 12/17/11 - 1:21 pmAnulfo Baez introduces us to Roxbury's Eustis Street firehouse, which, after 40 years of just sitting thee, now serves as the headquarters for Historic Boston, Inc.
Turning to traffic, Kenmore Square is at a complete standstill outbound
By adamg - 12/16/11 - 8:17 am
Kenmore Square, 1928.
Complaints about traffic in Boston are nothing new. Even in the 1920s, news photographer Leslie Jones was capturing local traffic jams - and the accidents that often caused them. Here are some from the Boston Public Library's Leslie Jones collection (click on photos to see larger versions).
In 1924, the SS Leviathan moored at a South Boston pier. People flocked to see it; Jones reported "an angry crowd" of jammed motorists:
When Atlantic Avenue had an el
By adamg - 12/12/11 - 11:40 amSome photos from the good ol' days, back when there was a direct rail link between South and North stations.
Fans of absurd disasters, of course, recall that the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 took out part of the el on Commercial Street.
