Summer 2024 Atlascope Tours

This past summer, undergraduate Geohumanities & GIS interns worked at the Leventhal Center to create new layers for Atlascope by geotransforming digitized atlases and expanding the current range of cities and towns available to the public.

Two of the interns, Carlos Cueva Caro and Anna Hsu, drew on Atlascope as a narrative aid to highlight some important histories of Boston and Salem. Do you know where Henry James got off the train in Salem? Do you know about Melnea Cass’s long history of advocacy and activism in Boston that lead to the dedication of “Melnea Cass Boulevard”? Find out more about these histories in the two newest Atlascope tours: After Hawthorne’s Salem and Beyond the Boulevard.

View the Atlascope tours → 

Time Travel Back to 1906 Boston

Boston is an ever-evolving city, so it can be difficult to imagine just how different it looked and functioned over century ago. In this two-part article series, friend of the Center, Gerald A. Rosenthal, explores the history and infrastructure of Boston in 1906 and also uses the 1906 film Seeing Boston to provide a detailed tour by trolley car through the city.

Interested in historic Boston? Take a look at this curated From The Vault collections showing organized around the 1906 Seeing Boston film.

Read the article → 

2024 Druker Award & Lecture: Ted Landsmark

The Druker Award is presented annually to a speaker or speakers who has or have made outstanding and important contributions to the world of design.

This year’s awardee, Theodore (Ted) C. Landsmark, a civic planner, educator, civil rights advocate, and member of the Leventhal Center’s Board of Directors, will reflect in conversation with BPL President David Leonard on reimagining the urban public library, transformative civic spaces, and building an equitable city. Following the discussion there will be an audience Q&A. Druker Company President Ronald M. Druker will give welcoming remarks.

Register for the event → 

Virtual: Martin Brückner · Tuesday, October 22, 7 pm ET

Learn about how the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century profoundly affected people’s material lives and paved the way for other more momentous political revolutions.

In this program, Martin Brückner will discuss how maps—including some of the objects included in the American Revolutionary Geographies Online project—became popular consumer goods and how their material transfer as “cartifacts” came to shape everyday and political life in early America. Brückner is Professor of English and Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. This talk is part of the Richard H. Brown Seminar on the Historical Geography of the American Revolutionary Era.

Register for the event → 

Newsletter Trivia: Feats of 1800s Engineering

It’s time to test your map and history knowledge to win a chance of receiving three free months in our Map of the Month Club. In order to enter, make sure you follow us on Instagram or Facebook and direct message us the answer to the following question. We’ll accept answers until October 7 at 9 am ET. Correct answers will be included in a random draw—the winner will receive the next three Map of the Month club postcards for free. Congratulations to our last winner, Genna!

This crop of a 1875 map shows the “pendulum station” drilled into a mountain that’s home to one of the most impressive engineering feats of nineteenth-century Massachusetts: a 4.75-mile train tunnel that still remains in active use today! What is the name of this tunnel?

• Merrimack Tunnel
• Hoosac Tunnel
• Berkshire Tunnel
• Deerfield Tunnel

The answer to the last Newsletter Trivia question about when Boston’s Great Elm Tree fell is 1876.

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