Thank you to the Leventhal Map Center‘s Rachel Mead for joining us earlier this month for our second Lunchtime Lectures from the Cambridge Room. We had a wonderful turnout of enthusiastic people eager to learn more about the Atlascope, a tool for exploring urban maps.
The recording of Cambridge by Map is available for you to watch at your leisure. Learn how Cambridge has changed over time and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood.
Date & Time:
March 4, 2021
12:00pm – 1:00pm
REGISTER HERE
Cambridge by Map
How old is the Cambridge Public Library? What was Cambridge like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? How has the city changed, and how has it stayed the same? Join the Leventhal Map Center on a virtual walk through historic Cambridge. Using Atlascope, a tool for exploring urban maps in metropolitan Boston, the Map Center’s Public Engagement & Interpretation Coordinator Rachel Mead will take us on a trip into Cambridge historical geography. Learn how the city has changed over time, and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood. This event will be broadcast online at the Leventhal Map Center’s YouTube Live and Facebook Live channels.
Date & Time:
March 4, 2021
12:00pm – 1:00pm
REGISTER HERE
Cambridge by Map
How old is the Cambridge Public Library? What was Cambridge like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? How has the city changed, and how has it stayed the same? Join the Leventhal Map Center on a virtual walk through historic Cambridge. Using Atlascope, a tool for exploring urban maps in metropolitan Boston, the Map Center’s Public Engagement & Interpretation Coordinator Rachel Mead will take us on a trip into Cambridge historical geography. Learn how the city has changed over time, and discover how to research the history of your own house and neighborhood. This event will be broadcast online at the Leventhal Map Center’s YouTube Live and Facebook Live channels.
A map of Boston from 1871 in the Atlas Collection in the Cambridge Room.
We are pleased to announce that the Atlases, 1873-1930 Collection is now available for research.
Collection Overview
This collection contains atlases on the subjects of Cambridge, Middlesex County, and Massachusetts by various surveyors, including G. M. Hopkins, G. W. Bromley, and George H. Waker.
For those of you who love historical maps, there is a new database called Old Maps Online, that allows free access to maps in libraries around the world. Described by its creators as like Google for old maps, Old Maps Online is a central repository to a vast collection of maps across the globe. Try a search for Cambridge and see what you find.
Rare treasures from the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center, Boston Globe, 3 January 2011.
In today’s Boston Globe, there is a great article about the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center and its future plans to create a new exhibition space. The Leventhal collection houses one of the country’s best cartographic resources, including 200,000 historic maps, 5,000 atlases, over 500 aerial view maps of New England, and rare treasures, such as a Revolutionary War powder horn inscribed with a map of the Boston area, the names of its owner, a British soldier, and the words, “A Pox on rebels in their Crymes.’’
The Leventhal Map Center has made available over 3,000 maps online and will continue to add more maps over the next two years, which is a great resource for researchers worldwide.
Read the Boston Globe article here: http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/01/03/bpl_charts_modern_course_for_its_maps/?page=1.
Browse the online Leventhal map collection here: http://maps.bpl.org/.
The Seat of War in New England, by an American Volunteer, 1775, used by George Washington (Map Department, Yale University)
On Tuesday, WBUR’s Here and Now, featured a nine-minute program on George Washington’s fascination with land surveying and map making. Historian Barnet Schecter talks about his new book, George Washington’s America: A Biography Through His Maps, which is available at the Cambridge Public Library. Schecter also discusses Washington’s famous gathering of volunteers on Cambridge Common. Listen to the program and view images of Washington’s maps here: http://www.hereandnow.org/2010/11/30/george-washington-maps.
The Cambridge Room 