August 7, 2023
A New History of Urban Renewal
“Maps were not just an end of urban renewal planning, but a means to that end and the active tool through which residents—notably Black residents in a majority white city—could participate in governance and shape their neighborhood,” writes Claire Dunning, author of Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State, in this new essay reflecting on Freedom House and citizen participation in Boston’s urban renewal. This digital work is part of the Leventhal Center’s Small Grants for Early Career Digital Publications program.
Virtual: Kelly Erby on Restaurant Republic · August 14, 12:00 pm ET
How did the rise of commercial dining deepen social fragmentation in nineteenth-century Boston? Join us on Monday, August 14 at 12:00 pm ET with Dr. Kelly Erby for a virtual talk on her book, Restaurant Republic: The Rise of Public Dining in Boston. Restaurant Republic sheds light on how commercial dining both reflected and helped shape growing fragmentation along lines of race, class, and gender—from the elite Tremont House, which served fashionable French cuisine, to such plebeian and ethnic venues as oyster saloons and Chinese chop suey houses.
Divergent Meanings of Place in Mapping Japan
When a French captain sailed past Japan in the late eighteenth century, a guess about toponyms set off a century of cartographic confusion. The Map Chat below, written by Radu Leca, examines the tension between how Europeans interpreted the island that they saw from a distance and the entirely different understandings which existed within a Japanese cultural and geographical context.
K-12 Educators Explore Geographies of Boston’s Black Women Activists
Last month, we hosted a group of Boston area K-12 educators for the workshop Lifting as we Climb: Black Women’s Activism in Turn-of-the-20th-Century Boston. Connected to the Center’s Building Blocks exhibition and funded by a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region grant, this 3-day workshop was designed to expand educators’ knowledge of the role and impact of women in Boston’s Black history and to explore geographies of Black Boston in the past and present. Learn more about the workshop and what the educators were up to in this recap article.
In Person: From The Vault Collections Showing with Ben Cosgrove · August 11, 2:00 pm ET
Join us for an afternoon of close map looking! This special edition of From The Vault will be curated by Ben Cosgrove, a traveling composer-performer whose “compelling and beautiful” instrumental music explores themes of landscape, place, and environment. Ben’s music will be performed live on Friday, August 11 at 12:30 pm as part of the Boston Public Library’s Concerts in the Courtyard Series. We’re thrilled to host Ben following the performance to talk through a handful of collections objects that relate to his work and themes of landscape, geography, and place.
New Additions to Atlascope
We’re excited to announce that four new Atlascope layers are hot off the georeferencing presses! Now, you can take a tour through the winding roads of 1916 Watertown. When you’re done, check out out the industrial landscape of turn-of-the-century Malden. Afterwards, head to Salem and explore how the city evolved between 1874 and 1911. Want to see your city or town in Atlascope? Reach out to learn more about our Sponsor an Atlas program!
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