The BPL's Norman Leventhal Map Center has created this really nifty thing that you should probably stop reading about right now unless you have some free time, because you're going to want to play with it right away: Atlascope Boston lets you enter a Boston-area address or location and then see what it looked like in the good old days (some of the maps date to the 1860s). Read more.
History
By adamg - 1/20/20 - 9:48 am
You can use a slider to see Scollay Square change into Government Center.
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By adamg - 1/17/20 - 9:55 am
New England Folklore recounts the story of the two elms that flank the Robert Gould Shaw memorial at Beacon and Park streets - planted by John Hancock himself before the Revolution. Turns out the memorial sits on a vault designed to protect the roots of the trees.
By adamg - 1/11/20 - 12:16 pm
J.L. Bell reports on a 1775 ordinance on Boston drivers:
Complaints have been made to the Selectmen that numbers of the Inhabitants have been greatly disturbed by the driving of Slays thro’ the Town, with the beat of Drums & other noises, at unseasonable Times of the Night; To prevent such Disorders for the future, Orders have been given the Constables of the Town Watch to stop such offenders and make Report of their Names, that they may be dealt with as the Law directs.
By adamg - 1/9/20 - 11:07 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
By adamg - 1/3/20 - 10:46 am
The Boston City Archives has a photo of a trolley running down Blue Hill Avenue on Jan. 3, 1933. Like Columbia Road and Washington Street south of West Roxbury Parkway, Blue Hill Avenue today has a median strip where the trolleys used to run.
By adamg - 1/2/20 - 10:10 am
Aline Kaplan introduces us to the history of the Calf Pasture pumping station on what is now the UMass Boston campus on Columbia Point: The pumping station was built in an era of ornateness for public buildings, even those whose function was to help pump raw sewage to Moon Island, where it would be released as the tide went out - on land that was originally used for grazing cows.
By adamg - 12/30/19 - 9:44 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
By adamg - 12/18/19 - 9:32 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
By adamg - 12/16/19 - 10:30 am
With today the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, J.L. Bell has been taking a look at some of the people involved, including a Bostonian who happened to be in London when the 1773 Tea Act was passed and so was able to secure his family one of the contracts to import East India Company tea, and some of the other Boston merchants who'd secured what they thought would be lucrative contracts as tea wholesalers.
Even before the tea party itself, though, things were going south in Boston.
By adamg - 12/12/19 - 1:50 pm
Maybe the reason Fred the Baker was always so tired wasn't because he was making donuts but because he had a second life running a corporation.
I actually found that video while looking for this one.
By adamg - 12/12/19 - 10:38 am
Today's the anniversary of the day Apple held an IPO to sell public shares in the company - except in Massachusetts, where regulators deemed the offering too risky for individual investors and so barred individuals from buying shares. The value of the stock has since risen 69,000%.
By adamg - 12/12/19 - 9:05 am
The Emerald Neclace Conservancy posted this photo, taken from Beacon Hill in 1857, that shows Beacon Street extending across the Back Bay to the rest of the continental United States. To the left of the street is a spit of land, then called Gravelly Point, that eventually became the Fenway.
By adamg - 12/9/19 - 9:00 am
Michelle Juralewicz reports:
Found this blast from Kenmore Square past at my parents' house.
They closed in December, 2001, a victim of Kenmore's BUification.
By adamg - 12/6/19 - 9:48 am
A. He has a wooden leg. The Globe's Emily Sweeney reports on the 1955 fall her grandfather took onto the tracks at what was then Park Street Under. Afterwards, he made the news around the world.
By adamg - 11/28/19 - 9:55 am
On Nov. 10, 1783, just ten months after British diplomats signed the Treaty of Paris, which recognized an independent United States, Massachusetts Gov. John Hancock issued a proclamation declaring "a day of Thanksgiving" on Dec. 11: Read more.
By adamg - 11/27/19 - 11:15 am
North End tunnel entrance all clogged up. See it larger.
After World War II, the East Boston Traffic Tunnel, also known as the Sumner Tunnel, was often gridlocked - being the only direct car route between Boston Proper and East Boston. The photo is from a 1947 report by a rapid-transit commission established by the state legislature, and has this caption: Read more
By adamg - 11/20/19 - 11:17 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
By adamg - 11/16/19 - 1:20 pm
Angelina and Sarah Grimke.
City officials and local historians and residents gathered at the former Dana Avenue Bridge in Hyde Park this morning to officially rename it as the Grimke Sisters Bridge in honor of two 19th-century sisters who fought for both the abolition of slavery and for women's rights to vote - and who on March 7, 1870 led a march of women to Hyde Park Town Hall to vote in the town elections, the first time women voted in the US - although the town then discarded their ballots. Read more.
By adamg - 11/13/19 - 9:56 am
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene in old Boston. See it larger.
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