Exhibition from the Harvard Map Collection
Historical & Modern Maps and City Street Directories including Historical Wards
View of Boston, July 4, 1870
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library
Historical Maps (see also Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps)
- Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is home to the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center which houses a unique collections of maps including; American Revolutionary War area maps, European Age of Discoveries maps, Colonial New England and Colonial Boston maps, Nautical charts from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, maps and atlases from the 16th to 18th century, 19th century county and town land ownership maps, various editions of some of the earliest printed maps, and MORE!
- Maps of Boston (Leventhal Center) Maps of Boston and its neighborhood on Flickr from the Norman B. Leventhal Center, Boston Public Library
- Massachusetts Real Estate Atlas Digitization Project DSpace (PDF) & Flickr State Library Collection
- Atlascope Boston, Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library a tool for exploring historic urban maps in metropolitan Boston and telling stories about how places have changed over time.
- Historical Urban Atlases of Boston @ the BPL Pinney, Hopkins, Beers, Bromley, Sanborn, and listed by date
- Historic Maps of Boston (Library of Congress) ver 100 maps mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries.
- Boston Streets: Mapping Directory Data Tufts University. Places, people, moments, cowpaths, atlases: 1874, 1898, 1928. Civil War through 20th century.
- US Geological Survey Historical and Topographic Maps of Boston Ranging in date from 1892 to present
Modern Maps
- Boston Research Map “Boston Research Map is an open source web mapping system that is an ongoing project of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) in conjunction with the WorldMap [Harvard University] team. It is intended to help faculty and their students, policymakers and practitioners, and community members to explore the neighborhoods of Boston from their computer.”
- Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) Census Tracts & Demographics, Citywide Maps, Electoral Maps, Neighborhood Maps, Zoning Maps, Historical Maps, More Resources
Specialized Maps
- African American Freedom Trail Project at Tufts University The African American Trail Project is a city-wide network and community-based archive, housed at Tufts University. Inspired by the scholarship of the late Tufts Professor Gerald R. Gill (1948-2007) on civil rights and the history of Black Boston, and driven by faculty and student research, the project maps African American public history sites, while developing collaborative, community-based public history projects across greater Boston.
- Boston: Measuring Diversity in a Changing City 2000 and the 2010 Censuses
- Boston Chinatown Atlas 1875 to the present.
- Boston Literary District Map The map shows both event and program spaces located throughout the Literary District where readings, conferences, and other literary gatherings take place, and historic literary sites. The event venues and historic literary sites are listed in separate columns.
- Boston University Maps Browse the map by campus and category using the menu bar.
- Emerald Necklace Park Map The Emerald Necklace Conservancy is a private non-profit stewardship organization founded in 1998 to maintain, restore and protect the parks of the Emerald Necklace designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for all to explore, use and enjoy.
- Immigrant Settlement in Greater Boston, 1870-2010 This animated map shows the percentage of foreign-born residents in the cities and towns of Greater Boston since 1870.
- Visualizing MBTA Data: An interactive exploration of Boston’s subway system Data collected February 2014. This project was created by Michael Barry and Brian Card for a graduate course in Data Visualization at WPI taught by Matthew Ward.
Street Directories
- The Boston Directory, 1789-1900 (The Boston Athenaeum) The Boston Directory appeared in 1789 and was published irregularly until 1825, when annual publication started. Various publishers were involved over the many decades of its existence: John Norman (1789); John West (1796-1803); Edward Cotton (1805-1818); Charles Stimpson (1820-1846); George Adams (1846-1857); Adams, Sampson & Co. (1858-1865); Sampson, Davenport & Co. (1865-1884); Sampson, Murdock & Co. (1885-1903); Sampson & Murdock Co. (1904-1930); R.L. Polk & Co. (1944-1981).
- Boston Almanac & Business Directory (Wikipedia) 1936-1894(?) not all years available
- Boston City Directories (BPL) Boston Public Library. The Boston directories, in hard copy, date from 1809 to the present; the earliest one on microfilm is dated 1789.
- Boston City Directories (Tufts) Boston Streets: Mapping Directory Data, Tufts University) database and page images of nine directories from 1845 to 1925
- The Boston Directory (Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center) Boston directories for 1820, 1827, 1832, 1836, 1838-1839, 1841-1846 Available at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Y collection (non-circulating) (F73.2 .D89 )
- The Boston Directory (Wikipedia chronological list) Includes online access sources such as Internet Archive and HathiTrust
- Boston Register and Business Directory (HathiTrust) Continues Boston Alamanac & Business Directory.
Additional Directories
Librarian
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