Boston,1914

I found the contents of the link below in the Norman B. Leventhal collection at the Boston Public Library. While visions of copyright infringement and lawsuits make me hesitate to actually post the image, I've made it available through the link below, which will take you directly to the BPL's website.

This link connects to a map of Boston as it was exactly one hundred years ago, 1914, the same year that the Great War was declared amongst the Great Powers in Europe. Already a bustling, industrializing city with a busy subway system, in 1914 Boston was considering adding several improvements to its subway, including a line that would run directly from the South Station to the North Station. Any readers who commute in the city today and who know that this proposal STILL hasn't taken effect, feel free to roll your eyes.

I walk through (and ride under) these streets 5 days a week, and I can tell you that the street layout has changed very little since this map was first published a century ago. Visitors who come to Boston from the Midwest and West Coast often complain that the streets are too crooked, too hard to navigate. And that's true, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

The fact that this map is so similar to the maps that you can pick up from city visitor centers today is comforting, in a way. The disconnect that many people experience when trying to visualize the past isn't quite so jarring if you're only going back a hundred years or so. Your grandparents may have been around, but if not then certainly your great-grandparents. And even though the people from that age have passed on, along with many of the buildings that they lived in, and the things that they owned and carried and used and cherished, the streets of their city remain largely the same.

If you can imagine one hundred years, you can do two hundred, and perhaps more. The Boston Public Library has opened the door, and it's up to you how far you want to step through it.