History
Organizational category for all historical articles
Titus Sparrow: The Tennis Ace who Brought Courts Back to Boston Renowned tennis player and Boston native, Titus Sparrow (1908-1974), recognized that a city owed its residents more than just roads and bridges. During a long career in which he taught hundreds of young tennis players, Sparrow advocated for public tennis courts for all neighborhoods.…
The Brief Reign of Daniel A. Whelton, Mayor of Boston On September 14, 1905, Bostonians were shocked by the sudden death of their mayor, Patrick Collins. Collins died from an acute attack of gastritis at the Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where he had been recuperating “from the cares and toils of office.” Under…
“The Opera Ejection Case”: Sarah Parker Remond, The Old Howard, and Segregation in Antebellum Boston When abolitionist and early civil rights advocate Sarah Parker Remond (1824-1894) was kicked out of an opera at the Howard Athenaeum due to her race, she went to the courts seeking justice. Her case brought issues of segregation and discrimination…
Destruction and Disappointment: The Legacy of Boston’s Central Artery Boston’s Central Artery promised relief to the city’s traffic dilemma, but as with most major building projects of the mid-20th century, it brought demolition, displacement, and ultimately disappointment. Less than 20 years after the first automobiles hit the dirt roads of Boston, traffic congestion had become…
Boston’s Rat Day of 1917: When the West End Joined a Citywide Rodent War On February 13, 1917, Boston witnessed one of the most unusual civic experiments in its history. The Boston Women’s Municipal League declared war on the city’s rodent population, organizing the first—and as it turned out, only—Rat Day. While this peculiar event…
The West End News: Headlines in the Summer of 1926One Summer in the West End, Part Two Over the course of four months in the summer of 1926, Lou Coffee and Francis R. Whelton published a newspaper by West Enders for West Enders. These papers gave a glimpse into the diverse immigrant neighborhood facing the…
The West End News: The Editor and the PublisherOne Summer in the West End, Part One Over the course of four months in the summer of 1926, Lou Coffee and Francis R. Whelton published a newspaper by West Enders for West Enders. These papers offer a glimpse into a diverse immigrant neighborhood facing the introduction…
Edmund L. Mitchell: Photographer of a Changing Boston With over 5,700 photographs, the Edmund L. Mitchell Collection, now housed at the Boston Public Library, offers a snapshot of Boston and the West End in a period of transition. As an amateur photographer, Mitchell nonetheless captured the city as it became something new. Edmund Lombard Mitchell…
