Atlascope is a digital tool for exploring urban history in Boston and other Massachusetts cities and towns. Fire insurance and real estate atlases are some of the most import historical documents for researching urban history between 1860 and 1940. However, these physical atlases can be cumbersome to use, especially when comparing a single location across multiple volumes. In the Atlascope project, the Leventhal Center has geotransformed over 145 atlases of towns and cities across Massachusetts, making these historic documents function like a modern web map. Atlascope can be used for research on local history, genealogy, urban development, and general discovery.
Many urban atlases are still under copyright protection, which shields them from digital reproduction for 90 years after their date of publication. As such, we cannot legally digitize and transform these atlases for free online access. The Boston Public Library does own many Boston-area atlases dating into the 1960s, but they are only available through in-person research visits at the Leventhal Center. To schedule an in-person visit, see our information about research appoinments.
The "Search places" feature on Atlascope uses modern address data. This means that if a street name has been altered in the past, you must use the current street name to find the location.
Atlascope cannot search:
Former street names
Former house numbers
While the majority of our coverage is focused on the Boston metropolitan area, we are actively expanding Atlascope to more locations in Massachusetts. From the Atlascope homepage, click the "Coverage includes ..." menu to see an alphabetical list of cities and towns with coverage.
The newest added layers are shown at the top of the list, and new layers are regularly being added. If you would like to help support our work and help us expand Atlascope to more of Massachusetts, please consider sponsoring an atlas.
Atlascope's search functions rely on modern data and cannot "read" text on the historic maps. This means that you cannot search by property owner or other labels that appear on the atlas layers.
However, we are in the early stages of processing historic atlas data to open up possibilities including search-by-text. If you’d like to learn more about this work, please contact our Associate Curator.
The oldest layer available for any part of the city is the Clough atlas, which depicts downtown Boston in 1798. Created in the early twentieth century by the historian Samuel Chester Clough, this atlas draws on a wide range of sources, including deed books, John Winthrop's journal, and William Aspinwall's notes and city surveys. You can read more about this unique research document on our website.