Boston’s Little Syria

Supported by the Leventhal Center’s Small Grants for Early Career Digital Publications, Chloe Bordewich and Lydia Harrington dive into the history of Boston’s historic Little Syria and demonstrate the longstanding presence of Americans of Arab origin in and around Boston and their contributions to communal life in the city.

Boston’s first Arabic-speaking community was made up of immigrants from Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria who began arriving in the late 1880s. By the early years of the twentieth century, the city was home to a thriving “Little Syria,” also called Syriantown and the Syrian Colony. Today, few visible traces of this neighborhood remain. The Boston Little Syria Project has sought to document its history in collaboration with former residents and their descendants.

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Touring Boston on the Boston Elevated

A newly digitized collection of posters created by the Boston Elevated Railway is the perfect end to our exhibition Getting Around Town, which closed April 27 after an eight-month run. These early twentieth-century posters, full of vivid color and charming illustrations, advertise sightseeing locations throughout Boston—all of which were accessible on public transit! Take a tour with us through the poster collection as we follow along on a map of Boston’s public transit from 1927.

View the interactive tour → 

From The Vault: April Highlights

From The Vault is a biweekly event series featuring collections objects selected by Leventhal Center staff. Each program revolves around a theme to explore in the collection, and objects are on display in our Learning Center for the afternoon. No registration is required!

In April, we hosted two From The Vault events focused on the Boston Marathon and “Maps as Art.” The former was in collaboration with Boston Public Library’s Special Collections Department and our most popular From The Vault event so far, with 600 visitors over two days. Take a look at what we pulled from the collections in these roundup articles.

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Saying Goodbye to Getting Around Town

It’s time to say “Goodbye!” to Getting Around Town: Four Centuries of Mapping Boston in Transit. The exhibition opened in September 2023 and tens of thousands patrons have visited in person, drawn their own personal transit maps of Boston and beyond, helped track patron commuter data, and listened to the tantalizing tale of Charlie on the MTA.

Though leaving the gallery, the digital exhibition of Getting Around Town, with dozens of high-resolution maps, will remain available on our website.

See the digital exhibition → 

Virtual: Dr. Alexandra Montgomery on the 1778 Hutchins Map · Friday, May 10, 12 PM ET

Join Dr. Alexandra Montgomery from the Washington Library at Mount Vernon for a virtual lunch lecture to learn more about George Washington’s relationship to the American West. Dr. Montgomery will focus on one of the maps he used most frequently during the American Revolution: Thomas Hutchins’ A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina (1778). This event is part of the American Revolutionary Geographies Online (ARGO) project.

Register for the event → 

Final Featured Visitor Maps from Getting Around Town

If you’ve made an in-person visit to Getting Around Town, you may have seen our invitation to make your own maps of Boston or other parts of the world. Over the course of this exhibit, we’ve gotten to see how creative and detailed our patrons have been. We’d like to thank all of the patrons that participated in creating over 1,250 maps over the course of the show!

Now that Getting Around Town has closed, our final staff member, Garrett Dash Nelson, our President & Head Curator, has chosen these maps as his favorite:

Commute From Ruggles by Vicky

Around the City by Jojo

Visit the digital exhibition →