Three times a year, as part of our Geohumanities & GIS internship program, we welcome a group of undergraduate students to the Leventhal Center. These students georeference new layers for Atlascope, expand our current range of cities and towns available to the public, and develop creative ways to interpret historical geography and geohumanities for a broader audience.
In the Fall of 2024, two of our interns created narrative historical tours using Atlascope. These tours wander through historic Boston, using maps to show how our modern city has grown around the city’s one-of-a-kind park system. For example, what’s the origin of Franklin Park, Boston’s largest source of public green space? Was Boston always committed to the creation of public parks or was this a demand of more modern times? Idana Wilson and Ava Wilcox answer these questions and more in their Atlascope tours, bringing us along for a journey through Boston’s past and present. We invite you to read more about their Atlascope tours below.
The Gems of Boston
Boston is the second city in the United States with the incredible achievement of having a public park within 10 minutes of walking from anywhere in the city, but was the city always such a strong supporter of public green space? In this tour, Idana Wilson explores the history of Boston’s parks and the centuries of work—including the filling of Back Bay—behind Boston’s impressive park system.
Making Franklin Park
Nicknamed “Boston’s Crown Jewel”, Franklin Park boasts an array of winding paths, bucolic landscape features, and recreational structures in the middle of the city. Ava Wilcox offers a deep dive into the origins of this unique green space, which was designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, a renowned landscape architect responsible for designing some of the country’s grandest urban parks. In “Making Franklin Park,” explore the decades of planning, construction, and public feedback it took to create Boston’s largest open space.
Are you interested in making your own Atlascope tour? Reach out to learn more!
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