What the bird saw (and saw again, and again)

What are the largest buildings in Massachusetts? What do all the Capitol buildings in the country look like? While we were building our Insizeor tool, which allows you to see the relative size of (large) objects in any location in the world, we discovered how fun it can be to clip out images from an aerial map and compare them next to one another. That led to our latest map visualization, Bird’s Eye Cards. In this essay and accompanying Bird’s Eye Cards interactive, discover what you can learn from seeing repetitive patterns in the landscape arranged next to each other.

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In-person event: Preserving Roxbury’s Housing Through Adaptive Reuse · June 15, 4pm ET

Join us in-person next Wednesday at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library for a talk by LMEC 2021-22 Public Research Fellow Madeline Webster looking at adaptive reuse of buildings in the Roxbury neighborhood. Webster will discuss how Black Bostonians converted upper Roxbury’s Victorian-era single-family houses into multi-family homes in the postwar era, and how this additional income from rent allowed owner-occupants to build equity and maintain their houses despite exclusion from traditional funding sources.

Register for free → 

In-person: Environmental Justice Teachers Workshop · July 11-13

Are you an educator who wants to learn more about integrating discussions of environmental justice into your teaching? LMEC’s Education team and the Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell are running a three-day summer workshop for teachers on this topic. Hear from activists and educators about how to support student-led civics projects, and develop your own lessons and activities. LMEC educators will present three lessons created as part of the current exhibition: A Tale of Two Bays, Near and Far: Oil, and Visualizing Environmental Justice Activism.

Register online → 

In-person: Olmsted Trivia Night · June 23, 6pm ET

Join LMEC, the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, and Friends of Fairsted for four rounds of Olmsted-related trivia on Thursday, June 23 at 6pm in the Newsfeed Café at the Central Library. Bring your friends and compete for map-related prizes (and geographic bragging rights). We’ll have questions featuring a historical scavenger hunt with Atlascope and more traditional trivia testing your knowledge of Olmsted and his now infamous parks. Drinks and food will be available for purchase.

Register for free → 

Summer 2022 Writing Group for Geography & History

Are you worried the lazy, hazy days of summer might leave you with writer’s block? Need a quiet space to focus that isn’t your kitchen table? We’re reserving our reading room on six Tuesday mornings this summer for a writer’s group open to anyone working on an academic project. Join us for coffee and tea, a quiet workspace, and a space to share progress on your work.

Register for free → 

Building Futures in Boston for Community Land Trusts

What can community control of development and housing look like and how can it change a neighborhood over time? Our conversation with René Mardones and Minnie McMahon of Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) focused on the challenges in preserving and creating affordable housing in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston and provided history and background to the community land trust movement within the city.

Watch the discussion → 

Request a printed map for free!

Are you part of a cultural, educational, or environmental nonprofit that could use high-quality reproduction of a map in our collection? Are you a teacher who wants a reproduction for your classroom? We’re taking requests for low-cost and free reproductions of digitized maps in our collection for organizations that plan to display the reproductions in a public or classroom setting, such as a trailhead kiosk, neighborhood bulletin board, or classroom table. You can request a specific map, or else ask us to pick one out that fits a certain topic or geography.

Request a reproduction online →