For the love of history: Save the Massachusetts state library!

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is at the heart of America's history, not to mention my personal family history and that of many other Americans. It is unreal to think that its state library may be in danger of closing, but that is the concern in the news this week.

According to Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, "At a press conference on Thursday, October 29, the Governor's Office announced that Governor Patrick is considering closing the State Library of Massachusetts as a cost-saving measure. This closure will have a monumental impact on the cultural heritage of the Commonwealth." Not only the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but the nation itself.

To read more about the possible closure of the Massachusetts State Library also visit Diane Haddad's Genealogy Insider article on the subject and the State Library of Massachusetts blog.

Please take time to sign the online petition to save the library. You can also help to publicize the petition by posting Thomas MacEntee's Save The State Library of Massachusetts Badge on your blog or website.

Boston Archdiocesan Archives to reopen January 2009

If you're researching your Catholic ancestors in the Boston area and are in a hurry for records from the Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston, you're out of luck. The archives will be closed temporarily while relocating from Brighton to Braintree. Limited services will resume by January 5, 2009. For updated information, see the Archdiocese of Boston Archives webpage.

"Dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books"

Don't you just love the library? It is truly irreplaceable, as Anthony Grafton mentions in his November 2007 article on The New Yorker website entitled Future Reading: Digitization and its discontents. I've written about his article and my own love for libraries on 100 Years in America within my post entitled: On libraries: "the narrower path".

As far as libraries go, the Boston Public Library is one of the best. It has an extensive number of genealogy resources not to mention its other collections.

As you may have learned if you read my "Mazes, windings and turnings": a little digression on maps, I appreciate a good diversion into the world of cartography. The Boston Public Library's Norman B. Levelthal Map Center is currently displaying an exhibit entitled Boston and Beyond: A Bird's Eye View of New England. As the BPL press release states:

As the high-flying observer looks down as though from 2,500 feet on the mapped area, the town “below” appears in a kind of historical snapshot, revealing factories, homes, parks, churches and cemeteries, and even architectural details. The story that unfolds is of the growing economic vitality and urbanization of Boston and the New England region while America matured into a late 19th century global giant. The Boston area craftsmen who made these elaborate images were the leaders of the bird’s eye view vogue and the exhibit will showcase their diaries, field sketch notes, and manuscript drawings.

Take a virtual tour of Boston and Beyond via the Norman B. Leventhal website. The city has changed alot over the years, as I mentioned in my earlier post Boston's Big Dig: another one for the history books. This map exhibit will run through June 2008. Hope you'll get a chance to visit!

Whether or not you're in the Boston area, take some time this summer to enjoy a few "dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable" written treasures from your own local libraries.

Image of the vintage Boston Public Library postcard courtesy of USGenWeb's Penny Postcards website. The site also has many more vintage Massachusetts postcards.

Boston's Big Dig: another one for the history books

After decades of work and colossal amounts of money poured into the project, Boston's Big Dig, the most expensive and complicated highway project ever undertaken in the United States, has been completed.

The project, which included the major transformation of Boston's eyesore Central Artery (circa 1950's) into the greenery of parkland, is one of a long line of changes that Boston has seen over the centuries.

I've enjoyed reading Mapping Boston, an MIT Press publication edited by Alex Krieger and David Cobb. It is a fascinating history of the city and its ever-changing features. Including maps, paintings, prints, photographs and accompanying essays on the history of the city of Boston, it is an amazing look at how far Beantown has come.

The book covers the various visionary plans for the city throughout the years: some carried out, some not.

Here's an excerpt from the section entitled Rings for the Spokes of the Hub on page 216:

Some of the most breathtaking plans for improvement came from visionary landscape architects who dreamed of rings around Boston, connecting the radial arteries and threading open spaces into the dense city. First, in the mid-1870's, the Boston park commissioners selected Frederick Law Olmstead to create what became Boston's emerald necklace - a sweeping arc of parks and parkways intended to encircle the city from the Public Garden to the mouth of the Muddy River at the other end of the Back Bay, then through Jamaica Plain and Dorchester to the ocean.

In the 1880's, as the emerald necklace was taking shape, Olmstead's ablest disciple, Charles Eliot, proposed a larger series of "public reservations" encompassing the entire metropolitan area. By the turn of the century, the 15,000-acre park system included 30 miles of river frontage, 10 miles of ocean shoreline, and 22 miles of right-of-way for parkways.

Jump ahead to 1908: just a few years after that turn of the century and one-hundred years before today's completion of the Big Dig. Below is a map from the book of the city of Boston and vicinity published in that year by George Hiram Walker.

The city of Boston has indeed come a long way.

Longtime residents know that change is nothing new. Even as they rejoice in the completion of the Big Dig, the question is at the forefront of many minds: What will be the next improvement project for the city on the Charles River?

A look at the world of a modern Irish immigrant

Live in the Boston area? Looking for some entertainment this weekend? How about a humorous yet touching glimpse into the life of a modern day immigrant from Ireland? Brendan, a production written by playwright Ronan Noone and directed by Justin Waldman, will be running through November 18. Produced by the Huntington Theater Company of Boston University, performances are being held at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, in Boston's South End.

The play is about an Irish immigrant named Brendan who has been living in Boston for five years and is about to become a citizen. While coping with the loss of his mother, Brendan struggles to overcome obstacles and earn his citizenship.

According to the Huntington Theater Company website:

"A recent Irish immigrant, Brendan now calls Boston home. He misses his family, but works hard to fit-in in his adopted country, earn his American citizenship, and find love and meaning in his new life in this funny and touching premiere..."