Collections - Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

July 30, 2021
Richard Pegg

Zhuang Tingfu: Cartographic Encounters and Echoes

In the late eighteenth century, an encounter between European and Chinese cartography left clues about the diffusion of geographic knowledge

September 19, 2021
Michelle LeBlanc

“X” Marks the Spot: Searching for Pirate Treasure on Cape Cod

For international “Talk like a Pirate Day,” we use maps in our collection to examine the story of Captain Southack and his mandate to recover the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717.

November 24, 2020
Lauren Chen

What a relief

How to make a relief map in the era before 3D printing

November 15, 2023

Rachel Cole on Archiving the Past and Present of Transportation

May 19, 2023
Joshua Aldwinckle-Povey

A War of Ideology: Reading the Illustrierte Karte through the Lens of Geopolitics

One map from a midcentury series tells a story about Cold War propaganda

June 25, 2023
Patricio Pino

Visualizing Empire

Is it possible to draw out into the open the vast and very global relationships which have built the world around us?

September 19, 2022
Megan Nally

The (unrealized) Metropolitan Master Highway Plan of 1948

The Southwest Expressway and Inner Belt Highway projects were both proposed in the Master Highway Plan for the Boston Metropolitan Area in 1948. Designed to cut through densely-populated areas inside and outside of Boston, both projects were eventually halted and abandoned in the early 1970s.