
02/23/2023
Photos from WardMaps LLC's post
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is dedicated to the creative educati
Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is a nonprofit organization established as a public-private partnership between the Library and philanthropist Norman Leventhal. Its mission is to use the collection of 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases for the enjoyment and education of all through exhibitions, educational programs, and a website that includes more than 3,700 digitized maps. The map
collection is global in scope, dating from the 15th century to the present, with a particular strength in maps and atlases from the New England region, American Revolutionary War period, nautical charts, and world urban centers. The Leventhal Map Center is located on the first floor of the Library’s historic McKim Building in Copley Square. It includes an exhibition gallery that features changing thematic exhibitions, a public learning center with research books, and a reading room for rare map research. Other elements include a world globe three feet in diameter and a Kids Map Club with map puzzles, books and activities. Educational programs for students in grades K to 12 are offered to school groups on site and in the classroom. More than 100 lesson plans based on national standards are available on the website, and professional development programs for teachers are scheduled regularly throughout the year. The Leventhal Map Center is ranked among the top ten in the United States for the size of its collection, the significance of its historic (pre-1900) material, and its advanced digitization program. It is unique among the major collections because it also combines these features with exceptional educational programs to advance geographic literacy among students in grades K to 12 and enhance the teaching of subjects from history to mathematics to language arts. The collection is also the second largest in the country located in a public library, ensuring unlimited access to these invaluable resources for scholars, educators, and the general public.
Operating as usual
Photos from WardMaps LLC's post
For the majority of Black Bostonians in Florida’s lifetime, especially those who had recently migrated from southern states, racism presented a formidable barrier to stable employment. Black men in Boston often worked as bootblacks, janitors, laborers, servants, waiters, and porters, while women often found work as cooks, maids, seamstresses and nursemaids. Boston’s Black entrepreneurs operated businesses that employed black laborers, organizing many of them to engage in collective political action.
The maps in this exhibition rarely show us the names of Black businesses, but we can use other kinds of sources, like city directories and newspaper advertisements, to uncover their stories. For example, Florida’s husband Ulysses A. Ridley ran his tailoring business at 212 Pleasant Street in Boston’s Park Square. Next door to Ulysses’s shop, the offices of the groundbreaking Colored American Magazine bustled as they published new African-American literature and articles protesting racial injustice.
The places where Florida worked, studied, played, and created within are woven throughout our current exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases. As visitors move through the exhibition, we invite them to look for Florida’s photo to follow her story and see how her life intersected with many other people and places in Boston and beyond: http://bit.ly/3DqKBSP
[Image description: Crop of atlas plate showing Park Square in Boston. Photograph of Florida Ruffin Ridley has been added to lower right corner.]
D. A. Sanborn, “Insurance maps of Boston volume two: plate 27,” (117 Broadway, New York: National Diagram Bureau, 1885). http://bit.ly/3lAJlq7
What was East Boston like in the 19th and 20th centuries? What schools and churches were around? Were any industries based in East Boston?
Join us on Thursday, February 23 at 6PM at East Boston Branch Library to learn about how the community has changed over time and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood.
Registration not required. Learn more at https://bit.ly/3xgtuzI
Never have we ever seen a sun so desolate ⛅
[Image description: Map excerpt showing illustrations of animals, ships and sea monsters.]
Samuel de Champlain, “Carte de la Nouvelle-France,” (Paris: Imp. Barousse, 12 Cour du Commerce, [1860]). http://bit.ly/3Ikz8XX
We’ve hit the Mother Lode! During the California Gold Rush, the Mother Lode was one of the most productive gold mining districts in the United States. Stretching through the Sierra Nevada foothills, the belt measures 150 miles long and only a few miles wide.
[Image description: Geological map of the Mother Lode region in California, covering parts of Eldorado, Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, and Mariposa Counties. Includes list of mining claims by counties.]
Harold W. Fairbanks, “Geological map of the Mother Lode region,” ([Sacramento]: California State Mining Bureau, 1896). http://bit.ly/3xlDCYa
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published in 1885. This map of “The Adventures of Mark Twain” is illustrated with “important happenings in the life” of the “river pilot, frontiersman, reporter, traveler, famous author and great American.”
[Image description: A pictorial map of the United States depicting moments in the life of Mark Twain. Includes black and white photographs along the border.]
“The adventures of Mark Twain,” ([Burbank, California]: Warner Bros. Pictures, [1944]). http://bit.ly/3YBRY1W
Located at the southeastern base of Mount Vesuvius, the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii were discovered in the late 16th century; however, serious archaeological excavations did not begin at the site until the mid-18th century. The city had been "preserved in time" for nearly 1,700 years after Vesuvius exploded in 79 CE and buried the site in nearly 23 feet of volcanic debris. The 1862 map displayed here illustrates the excavations of Pompeii as they existed at that time, and lists 95 points of interest, including the Forum (65), the Triangular Forum (84) and the Amphitheatre (89).
Steeger, “Nuova pianta degli scavi di Pompei,” (Lit. Steeger, 1862). http://bit.ly/3HRMvh0
As part of her leadership for the League of Women for Community Service, Florida Ruffin Ridley was committed to celebrating and raising awareness about Black artists. She sponsored performances of amateur theater, chorales from Black colleges, and classical performances, as well as art exhibitions. The Harriet Tubman House in the South End, a settlement house founded by six Black women to provide housing for recently arrived southern Black women, hosted a series of “Musicales” organized by Florida and the League of Women for Community Service in 1919.
The places where Florida worked, studied, played, and created within are woven throughout our current exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases. As visitors move through the exhibition, we invite them to look for Florida’s photo to follow her story and see how her life intersected with many other people and places in Boston and beyond: http://bit.ly/3DqKBSP
[Image description: Crop of atlas plate showing Holyoke Street in Boston’s South End. Photograph of Florida Ruffin Ridley has been added to lower right corner.]
G. W. Bromley & Co., “Atlas of the city of Boston, Boston proper and Back Bay: plate 23,” (Philadelphia: G.W. Bromley & Co., 1938). http://bit.ly/3YBjZ9Q
The USS Maine, one of the first American battleships, sank in Havana Harbor after a massive explosion in 1898. The Maine had arrived in Cuba just a few weeks prior with orders to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban War of Independence. Although the cause of the accident had not been confirmed, U.S. newspapers were quick to place blame on the Spanish, circulating phrases like “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" to rally for action.
This of Havana was published to supplement the May 3, 1898 edition of the Boston Sunday Herald. Notice the subtle red star and accompanying label: “U.S. Battleship Maine Blown Up Feb. 15, 1898.”
[Image description: Map of Havana and Havana Harbor showing fortifications and public buildings. Includes labels and outlines of plots.]
Boston Sunday Herald, “Map of Havana and Havana Harbor showing the fortifications and public buildings,” ([Boston]; N.Y.: Boston Sunday Herald; lith. by G.H. Buek & Co., 1898). bit.ly/3QNgESu
Happy Valentine’s Day! 💘
This fictitious of a heart-shaped place called Loveland merges the sentimentality of greeting cards with standard cartographic conventions. From its decorative border to conventional map elements, the map completely commits to the theme of love. (Even the compass rose is composed of a cluster of hearts pieced by three arrows!)
[Image description: Fictitious map of a heart-shaped place called Loveland.]
Ernest Dudley Chase, “A pictorial map of loveland,” (Wi******er, Mass: Ernest Dudley Chase, [1943]). http://bit.ly/3ePPE2M
Love is in the air! 💕 Even among the and merpeople on this ~1638 of Africa.
[Image description: Excerpt of map of the African continent. Text reads Oceanus Aethiopicus. Illustrated ships, sea creatures, and merpeople surround the text.]
Hendrik Hondius, “Africae nova tabula,” (Amsterdam, [1638]). http://bit.ly/3DERgZV
In 1918, Florida, her mother, and Maria Louisa Baldwin founded the League of Women for Community Service, and soon after purchased a building at 558 Massachusetts Avenue in the South End. Initially intended to support Black soldiers during World War I, the League went on to fill many civic roles, including housing Black female students attending Boston’s universities. While attending the New England Conservatory, Coretta Scott lived in the building when dating Martin Luther King.
The places where Florida worked, studied, played, and created within are woven throughout our current exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases. As visitors move through the exhibition, we invite them to look for Florida’s photo to follow her story and see how her life intersected with many other people and places in Boston and beyond: http://bit.ly/3DqKBSP
[Image description: Crop of atlas plate of Massachusetts Avenue. Photograph of Florida Ruffin Ridley has been added to lower right corner.]
G.W. Bromley and Co., ”Atlas of the city of Boston, Boston proper and Back Bay, plate 28.” (1922).
🚴 🚴♀️ 🚴♂️ The Boston Bicycle Club was formed in 1878! The first of its kind, the club organized activities ranging from tricycle races to 100-mile rides, advocated for better roads, and was a hub for social life.
This bicycle of shows the city of and its Metropolitan Park System, with red-lined bicycle routes offering a means of exploring the nation’s first regional park system.
[Image description: Map excerpt of Greater Boston area. Red lines indicate bicycling routes. Shaded green areas indicate existing and proposed parks.]
Geo. H. Walker & Co., “Road map of the Boston district showing the metropolitan park system,” (Boston: Geo. H. Walker & Co., 1898). http://bit.ly/3DQMFUC
The famous Guinness Storehouse is included on this ~1921 of Dublin 🍻🍻 Sláinte!
[Image description: Excerpt of map of Dublin. Shows labelled streets and public attractions, as well as green space and the Liffey River.]
John Bartholomew and Son, “Plan of Dublin,” (Edinburgh: Bartholomew & Son, Ltd., [1921]). http://bit.ly/3HqDHyq
Still looking for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for the map-lover in your life? Check out our gift store for all your map gift needs at leventhalmap.org/store/ 💕
Displayed here is a map of San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest and one of the largest Chinatowns in North America. It is the first map made by Chinese Americans of San Francisco for the Chinese community.
[Image description: Map of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Chinese and English. Street names in English, business and place names in Chinese.]
J. P. Wong, “Meiguo Sanfan Shi hua qiao qu : xiang xi tu = Map of San Francisco Chinatown,” ([San Francisco]: J.P. Wong, 1929). http://bit.ly/3Jdve3U
Florida Ruffin Ridley grew up on the North side of Boston’s Beacon Hill. Her parents were financially well-to-do and highly educated, and so her early years were not representative of those of all Black children in the city. She attended the Grant School near her home, the same school where she would teach after receiving her credentials from the Boston Teachers College as a young woman. Though Boston schools were integrated, the Black population of the city at the time was around 5%, compared with today’s approximately 20%. As a result, there were proportionally few Black students in classrooms.
The places where Florida worked, studied, played, and created within are woven throughout our current exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases. As visitors move through the exhibition, we invite them to look for Florida’s photo to follow her story and see how her life intersected with many other people and places in Boston and beyond: http://bit.ly/3DqKBSP
[Image description: Crop of atlas plate of Beacon Hill. Photograph of Florida Ruffin Ridley has been added to upper right corner.]
G.W. Bromley & Co., ”Atlas of the city of Boston : city proper, plate E.” (1883)
We’ve just earned our 2023 Gold Seal with ! The Leventhal Map & Education Center relies on the support of our community members. We want to make sure you can confidently support our work and know that donations go directly towards our mission of bringing public geographic education to all.
Due to a facilities emergency, the Central Library Boston Public Library, including the Leventhal Map & Education Center gallery, will be closed to the public on Sunday, February 5.
This highlights year round vacation areas across the state of , with mentions of the Old Sturbridge Village, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and the Berkshires. What vacation spots would you add to the map?
[Image description: Excerpt of pictorial map of Massachusetts. Thick lines indicate major expressways. includes points of interest and color illustrations.]
Ernest Dudley Chase, “Historic Massachusetts: a travel map to help you feel at home in the Bay State,” (Boston, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Department of Commerce, 1964). http://bit.ly/3kGEwLK
Join us on Wednesday, March 1 at 6PM for an author talk with writer and journalist Laura Bliss to discuss her recent book, The Quarantine Atlas: Mapping Global Life Under COVID-19, which explores reader-submitted maps of their lives during the coronavirus pandemic.
Sculptor and graphic designer Rajiv Raman will join the conversation, which will be moderated by Garnette Cadogan, who is the Tunney Lee Distinguished Lecturer in Urbanism at the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Following the talk, there will be time for audience Q&A, and the program will conclude at 7PM with an author signing facilitated by an independent bookstore partner.
Learn more and register at http://bit.ly/3wrqBvD.
Presented in partnership with Adult Programs.
This 1944 of the Philippines includes a key to land use, vegetation, and planting including food products, to***co, subsistence farms, and forests.
[Image description: Map of the Northern Philippines. Areas are shaded by land use.]
United States. Office of Strategic Services. Research and Analysis Branch, “Northern Philippines land utilization,” ([Washington, D.C.], Reproduction Branch, OSS, 1944). http://bit.ly/400uvJA
What was it like to grow up in the Boston of times past? What challenges face young Bostonians today?
Join us for a panel conversation on Black Boston Stories: Growing Up on Thursday, February 9 at 6PM at Grove Hall Branch Library. Four long-time Boston residents will reflect on growing up in the city and lead a wider conversation with participants.
This conversation will be led by Klare Shaw, Helen Credle, Dart Adams, and Jerry Smart.
Food will be provided. Registration encouraged but not required at leventhalmap.org/event/
Organized as part of the Leventhal Map & Education Center’s ongoing exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases.
Image: Spencer Grant, "Black schoolchildren play recorders, Roxbury," (1971).
Florida Ruffin Ridley was born in 1861 and lived with her parents, George and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, on Charles Street at the foot of Beacon Hill. Her father was the first African-American to graduate from Harvard Law School and the first Black judge in the United States. Her mother was a well-known activist, writer, and organizer for suffrage and against racial injustice.
The places where Florida worked, studied, played, and created within are woven throughout our current exhibition, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases. As visitors move through the exhibition, we invite them to look for Florida’s photo to follow her story and see how her life intersected with many other people and places in Boston and beyond.
Florida is pictured here as part of the 1895 First National Conference of the Colored Women of America: bit.ly/3XZhP3I.
[Image description: Black and white photography of Florida Ruffin Ridley.]
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Join the Leventhal Map and Education Center with the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) for a conversation on the historic Mystic River and MyRWA’s past and present efforts to protect it. This talk will map the relationship between past land making projects and current coastal flood challenges, and what communities are doing to minimize harm. The Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) was founded in 1972 with a mission to protect and restore the Mystic River, its tributaries and watershed lands for the benefit of present and future generations and to celebrate the value, importance and great beauty of these natural resources. Their vision is a vibrant, healthy and resilient Mystic River watershed for the benefit of all our community members. To achieve this, the Mystic River Watershed Association is protecting water quality, restoring important habitat, building climate resilience, transforming parks and paths, and inspiring youth and community members. This talk is virtual, free, open to the public, and will feature a Q&A session with our speakers. This talk is part of our Continued Conversations series in conjunction with our current environmental justice exhibition, More or Less in Common: Environment and Justice in the Human Landscape.
“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of a person…” #OnThisDay in 2015, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, ruling 5-4 that same-sex marriage cannot be banned in the United States and that all same-sex marriages must be recognized nationwide. This progression from The Guardian #maps the timeline of legalization of by state, beginning with Massachusetts in 2004 to federal legalization in 2015! #pride #pridemonth #pride🌈 #lgbtq #lgbtqia [Image description: Short video clip of map the United States. As the video plays, states are filled with light blue to designate that they “allow” same-sex marriage. Text at the top reads: “States allowing same-sex marriage in [insert year].”]
The support from our community makes our work possible! This video shows the amazing things we've been able to do over the past year with the support of donors from all walks of life. Our fiscal year closes on June 30, and now is our chance to plan out what's ahead of us. Can you support us with a small donation? Visit leventhalmap.org/donate
Join us for a conversation with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) on community land trusts, sustainable development, and community resilience in Roxbury. For over 38 years, DSNI has been empowering Dudley residents to organize, plan for, create and control a vibrant, diverse and high-quality urban village. Their efforts prioritize development without displacement, community power, and collective control. DSNI’s Executive Director, John Smith, and Director of Community Organizing, René Mardones, will talk us through DSNI’s origins and current initiatives as we walk through the neighborhood’s history through maps from our collections. This talk is virtual, free, open to the public, and will feature a Q&A session with our speakers. This talk is part of our Continued Conversations series in conjunction with our current environmental justice exhibition, More or Less in Common: Environment and Justice in the Human Landscape.
Join us for a conversation with folks from the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health Study (CAFEH) on the health risks of highway pollution. We’ll sit down with Lydia Lowe of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, Doug Brugge of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and Ellin Reisner of the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership to discuss their community-based participatory research (CBPR) air pollution studies. We’ll also take a look at maps from our collection that document the local history of freeway construction during the mid-twentieth century. This talk is virtual, free, open to the public, and will feature a Q&A session with our speakers. This talk is part of our Continued Conversations series in conjunction with our current environmental justice exhibition, More or Less in Common: Environment and Justice in the Human Landscape.
Learn about how the urban military spaces of colonial cities shaped the course of the Revolutionary War Join scholar John McCurdy as we learn about the geographies of contact between soldiers and civilians—from urban squares to barracks and lodging houses—during the Revolutionary War. McCurdy’s work examines the small-scale spaces where the everyday realities of life during an imperial conflict became personalized. John McCurdy is Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of History and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University. His publications include Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2019), Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States (Cornell University Press, 2009), and “From Fort George to the Fields: The Public Space and Military Geography of Revolutionary New York City,” (Journal of Urban History, 2018). This talk is free and open to the public. We invite questions and comments from our live audience. Part of the Richard H. Brown Seminar on the Historical Geography of the American Revolutionary Era
By the end of the nineteenth century, streetcar traffic in Boston had grown hopelessly congested. The solution? A daring new piece of urban infrastructure to house the busiest lines underground. 🚇 Explore the story map here: https://geoservices.leventhalmap.org/map-stories/#tremont-subway/1
Join critical cartographer Alex B. Hill, the creator of Detroit in 50 Maps and numerous other map and design projects, for an information conversation with the Leventhal Map & Education Center. Alex will discuss his work bringing maps and digital information to bear on the social issues of Detroit, and explain how mapping is crucial for understanding the history of cities. This program is free and open to the public.
Join LMEC Assistant Curator Ian Spangler and BPL Media & Journalism Research Specialist Erica Husting for a public workshop on media literacy in the historic and contemporary cartographic landscape. We’ll uncover inaccuracies, dive into issues of viral misinformation, and review methods of map interpretation as we head into the final week of our Bending Lines: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception exhibition. This workshop is the latest in our Thinking Spatially series. We invite questions and comments from our live audience.
Join us for a talk on redistricting, digital mapping tools, and organizing efforts on the local and national scale.
Join Assistant Curator Ian Spangler for a discussion about immigration on the South Shore with with our event partner, the Duxbury Free Library. We’ll explore the historic collections of the Leventhal Map & Education Center and the Digital Commonwealth and also look at census data over time using resources from various cultural institutions around Boston and Massachusetts.
What was the name of the building that once housed the Brighton Branch? What was Brighton like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? How has the area changed, and how has it stayed the same? Using Atlascope, the Leventhal Map & Education Center’s user-friendly portal for exploring urban atlases, we’ll dive into the historical geography of Brighton. Come learn about how the community has changed over time, and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood.
How has Ashland, Massachusetts changed over time? Where can we find the names and locations of buildings and landscapes that have now vanished? How can maps tell geographic stories? Join the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library and the Ashland Public Library for a virtual exploration of some of the best historic digital maps of Ashland and the region. We’ll look at Ashland up close, answer questions in an interactive Q&A, and offer up resources for further research with maps and geography.
East Boston is one of the city’s densest and most diverse neighborhoods. 150 years ago, however, it was still mostly tidal flats. In this rich interactive, Tess McCann shares her thesis research on how speculators “improved” environmentally marginal land. Follow Tess through maps and photographs in our collection, and explore yourself to see what other evidence of this urban transformation you can find in the historic documents. https://www.leventhalmap.org/articles/mccann-east-boston/ [Image description: screenshot video of an interactive map story, showing sections of a map of East Boston, and a photograph of the same area.]
Join scholar Kathleen DuVal as she takes us on a journey through geographies of the American Revolution that are often omitted from the popular imagination of this time period. Places like Lexington, Saratoga, and Yorktown are all famously associated with the Revolutionary period. But what about the sites where American Indians, Europeans, and Africans came into contact and conflict on the borderlands of North America?
No matter which way you flatten a globe, it's going to require some kind of distortion! That's one of the basic lessons of cartography: squashing three dimensions into two will always involve warping, bending, or ballooning. Here, we've taken the text "Bending Lines" and shown what it would look like on a globe using several common global projection systems. Which of these views of "Bending Lines" is the most "correct"? Well, that's a trick question, since none of them really are. Some projections preserve shape, others preserve area, and still others make a compromise between the two. Visit the exhibition today—and prepare to have your own perspective get warped. https://www.leventhalmap.org/exhibitions/visit/ [Image description: a video of the words "Bending Lines" traced on a global projection, animated with various projection techniques so that the letters stretch and bend.]
With flooding interrupting service on the MBTA Orange Line this morning, remember that the history of our urban landscape also contains clues for the challenges that we're likely to confront with climate change. The Orange Line follows the route of the Stony Brook through parts of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain—the namesake for that line's Stony Brook train station. In this Atlascope view, you can see the former route of this watercourse, which has now largely been buried and culverted. But during an extreme weather event, those centuries of engineering interventions aren't enough to keep the water from recalling where it originally wanted to go. Stay safe as you travel around the city today! https://atlascope.leventhalmap.org/#view:share$base:001$overlay:39999059010718$zoom:18.51$center:-7914614.259391414,5209853.688577271$mode:glass$pos:470 [Image description: a video showing an 1873 map of Roxbury laid on top of a satellite view of modern Boston, following the course of the former Stony Brook.]
Boston's "skinny house" or "spite house" went up for sale this week for $1.2 million. Located at 44 Hull Street in the North End, this diminutive house boasts 1,165 sq. ft. over 4 floors and is 6.2 feet at its narrowest. Although the history is murky, legend has it that two brothers inherited their father's property when he died. While one was off serving in the Civil War, the other built a house that took up most of the lot. When the other brother returned, he built a skinny dwelling in the narrow lot remaining to spite his brother, blocking his view and light. The exact date of construction is unclear, but you can see the property evolve in this Atlascope view between 1867 and 1888. [Image Description: A short video shows the change over time from an 1867 atlas to an 1888 atlas of 44 Hull Street. A photograph shows the "skinny house" in Boston's North End.]
Join scholar Michele Navakas as she explores the “liquid landscapes” of places like Florida in the eighteenth century, helping us reframe our understanding of the American Revolutionary period through cartography and landscape history. Navakas examines a rich archive of historical documents that show how diverse groups of people met, struggled, and mixed in regions where boundaries themselves were hard to define.
Earlier this week, an oversized truck crashed into the Roosevelt Circle bridge on I-93 in Medford, leading to emergency repairs and tangled traffic. In Massachusetts, some of our bridges date back more than a century. Here, we've taken GIS data about bridges from MassDOT and animated it by the year of construction. There are hundreds of bridges that were first built in the 1800s! This animation also shows how infrastructure and residential development changed over time in Massachusetts. In the 1920s and 30s, you can see an explosion of new bridges on state highways. Then, in the late 1950s, notice how the interstate highway system's bridges all get put up in a short amount of time in corridors throughout the state. The very oldest bridge in the data set goes back to 1764! Do you know where it is? Check out our Instagram story for the answer at https://www.instagram.com/bplmaps [Image description: a video with point icons showing bridges in Massachusetts, beginning in 1850 and running until 2019.]
Join the LMEC and the Public Library of Brookline for a dive into the historical geography of Brookline, and using maps for research!
In this conversation series, we talk with experts about why we should be careful about geographic information in modern data. How is data collected, and how does it get fixed into categories and numbers? Who gets to own data sets, and who gets to make decisions using them? What sorts of public responsibilities should shape the social lives of data? Brian Jefferson is an associate professor of geography at the University of Illinois whose work explores capitalism, digital technology, and the state in urban contexts.
Join the Leventhal Map and Education Center for a virtual session on historical geography! Bring your lunch, map questions, and enthusiasm.
In this conversation series, we talk with experts about why we should be careful about geographic information in modern data. How is data collected, and how does it get fixed into categories and numbers? Who gets to own data sets, and who gets to make decisions using them? What sorts of public responsibilities should shape the social lives of data? Morgan Currie is a lecturer in data and society at the University of Edinburgh whose work focuses on open data, automation in social services, activists’ data practices, civil society and democracy, participatory mapping, and social justice among other topics.
In this conversation series, we talk with experts about why we should be careful about geographic information in modern data. How is data collected, and how does it get fixed into categories and numbers? Who gets to own data sets, and who gets to make decisions using them? What sorts of public responsibilities should shape the social lives of data? Luis Alvarez León is an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College whose work focuses on the political economy of geospatial data, media and technologies.
In this conversation series, we take a critical look at how geospatial data can warp our world. Matt Bui is an assistant professor and faculty fellow at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology who examines the intersections of digital, data, and racial justice in everyday life.
Come learn about how the Newton community has changed over time, and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood.
Join the Leventhal Map and Education Center for a virtual session on historical geography! Bring your lunch, map questions, and enthusiasm.
This week's #TeachingwithMaps tool is this fun interactive from our Bending Lines exhibition that lets you and your students experiment with a human head projected multiple ways. The idea of distortion on maps can be hard to understand until you see this guy's forehead and chin stretch out on a Mercator projection. Try it out: https://www.leventhalmap.org/digital-exhibitions/bending-lines/interactives/projection-face/ [Image description: A video cycles through multiple images of an illustration of a human head projected on four different maps to illustrate how the head is distorted differently on each one.]
Tiffany Windows Education Center at Arlington
Arlington StreetMassachusetts Historical Society
Boylston StreetJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Muse
Columbia PointYoung Audiences of Massachusetts
South Street