Augustine H. Folsom owned a carpet factory in late 19th century Boston and he was also a professional photographer. He took hundreds of shots of Boston Public Schools along with many shots of various school activities and his own Roxbury neighborhood. This collection from the Boston Public Library brings together 662 of his photos. Over a 30 year period he documented Boston Latin, Boston English,...

Boston has the oldest city archive in the United States and has recently embarked on an ambitious program to digitize more photos, maps, and other pieces of visual ephemera. This site offers a number of thematic photo collections, including ones dedicated to public institutions, city landmarks, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and public celebrations. Visitors shouldn't miss the Peter H. Dreyer...

John J. Burns Library, Rare Books and Special Collections at Boston College, offers some of its collections on the Web. The largest is the Liturgy and Life Collection, approximately 1,200 artifacts selected from perhaps the "most comprehensive archive in America on the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church." Also available are Boston Gas Company photos, about 400 images from the 1880s to the 1970s,...

Born in New Hampshire in 1825, James Wallace Black came to Boston to try his hand as a painter. He soon discovered the world of photography and he became quite fascinated with taking aerial photos and experimenting with magic lanterns. One of his most notable experiments involved a photograph of downtown Boston that he took from a hot-air balloon on October 13, 1860. The Boston Public Library has...

During a long career, Leslie Jones (a self-described "camera-man") took well over 40,000 photographs documenting the city of Boston and environs. Jones was a staff photographer for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956, and he covered everything from a fox stuck in a tree on the Boston Common to Charles Lindbergh's U.S. tour after his historic crossing of the Atlantic. This remarkable...

Today, a sports bar near a professional sports venue is a given. Usually there are many sports bars, and they are loud, boisterous places decorated with photographs of celebrated players and memorabila. Back in the 1890s, one Michael T. McGreevey of Boston opened a bar that became the headquarters of the Boston Royal Rooters, the "rabid and riotous" fans of Boston's various professional baseball...

In 2007, the Boston Public Library rediscovered a rather intriguing cache of photographs from the late 19th century in their archives. While there is still some debate about the provenance of these photos, they believe that the prints were taken by photographers affiliated with the Boston Camera Club, and that this organization was responsible for coordinating this specific project. Recently, the...

How do you build a tunnel under Boston Harbor? Very carefully, of course. This remarkable digital archive from the University of Massachusetts-Boston brings together photographs that document the construction of the first Boston Harbor Tunnel, which was later renamed the Sumner Tunnel. This key part of Boston's infrastructure was constructed to handle automobile traffic from the North End of...