The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo (street name blurred out, natch). See it larger.
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History
By adamg - 4/27/22 - 1:56 pm
The Mayor's Mural Crew's usual medium is paint on cement, but to honor Frederick Law Olmsted's 200th birthday, it turned to a material he probably knew well: Moss.
The crew outfitted the gazebo at Jamaica Pond with something he wrote: Read more.
By adamg - 4/26/22 - 2:18 pm
In a new report out today, Harvard University acknowledges a history that included being run by slaveholders right from the start: Read more.
By Neal - 4/22/22 - 8:43 pm
No, not that Big Dig, an earlier one one. This one, described by some as The Incredible Ditch was completed a long, long time ago. Of course you don't remember it, no one today does, so Burlington Retro's Rob Fahey fills us in on the history of the Middlesex Canal.
By adamg - 4/18/22 - 11:38 am
Dawes and horse warm up before leaving John Eliot Square.
William Dawes returned to the First Church of Roxbury this morning, for the first time since before the start of the pandemic, to ride off to Lexington and Concord to warn the colonists that the Redcoats were on their way. Read more.
By adamg - 4/4/22 - 10:51 am
Going through her mother's stuff, Jessamyn West found the some clippings from the early to mid 1960s, when her mother won a contest to name the swanky new restaurant going into the Logan Airport control tower. Read more.
By adamg - 3/30/22 - 9:33 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can figure out where this building was (and, yes, they marked out the street name). See it larger.
Note: Because of the vagaries of the software here (specifically, the "see it larger" module), the above only shows about half the building. Here's the full photo: Read more.
By adamg - 3/21/22 - 1:49 pm
The Boston City Archives have been poring through Boston voter records from 1920, when women could legally register to vote in Boston for the first time, and tells the story of some of the women from Lower Roxbury and the South End listed on the rolls who worked as cherry pickers helping to make boxes of chocolate-covered cherries at the United Drug Co. factory on Leon Street - now part of Northeastern University's campus.
By adamg - 3/15/22 - 10:27 am
1905-1911 Centre St. rendering.
Developer Gary Martell told residents last night that if the city gives him the parking lot at Corey and Railroad streets for his latest condo proposal, he'll gladly give up the decaying old Gilmore place and the small brutalist former bank next door on Centre Street so that residents can try to turn them into a history-oriented community center. Read more.
By adamg - 3/6/22 - 12:39 pm
Peter Muise of New England Folklore reports on a trip to the Central Burying Ground on the edge of the Common along Boylston Street.
By adamg - 3/5/22 - 1:34 pm
In the 1890s, Massachusetts residents fought the caterpillars in part by burning infested trees.
The Entomological Society of America has decided to rename the tree-munching menace formerly known as "gypsy moths" as "spongy moths."
By adamg - 2/26/22 - 2:56 pm
Seymour's, maker of Nutty Buddies and other cold treats, was based at Dorchester's Port Norfolk. They're long gone (closed in the 1980s), but as Justin Thompson shows us, their sign is once again visible from at least the northbound side of the Expressway. Read more.
By adamg - 2/26/22 - 2:25 pm
Nick Elias recounts his days working at Sight and Sound, on Corinth Street and Poplar Street in Rozzie Square, at first as one of George Aymie's employees, later as a partner: Read more.
By adamg - 2/24/22 - 11:16 am
And like the Hub of the Universe it conglomerates in, it got its name from Oliver Wendell Holmes.
More from Mount Hope Cemetery, and even more from Written in Stone.
By adamg - 2/18/22 - 12:04 am
A Newton city working group has concluded its time to change the city seal, which now shows British missionary John Eliot lecturing the local Native Americans in the 1600s on why they should convert to Christianity. Read more.
By adamg - 2/9/22 - 9:09 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
By adamg - 2/3/22 - 11:46 am
The Dorchester Reporter interviews Elisa Speranza, who, as a BWSC project manager, came up with the idea of labeling storm drains with where things poured in them wind up, to try to convince people not to dump motor oil and stuff in them.
By adamg - 2/1/22 - 11:58 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives are looking for some help identifying these EMS workers at a City Hall call center during the Blizzard of '78 (this is not a quiz, they don't know who they are, and, yes, that's Kevin White with his head turned away from the camera).
By adamg - 2/1/22 - 9:33 am
Today is the anniversary of the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory fire in 1976, which completely destroyed what had once been the world's largest shoe factory, along Centre Street in Jackson Square. The Jamaica Plain Historical Society recounts the fire, started, as were so many other fires then in JP and the Fenway, by arsonists, who first disabled the complex's sprinklers, then set multiple fires in what had been converted from a factory into the home of multiple small businesses - and residents.
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