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Maps of Boston
An exhibition at 9th
Floor of Boston City Hall
August 31– December 31, 2013
Boston
Redevelopment
Authority
City of Boston
Thomas M. Menino, Mayor

Maps of Boston
The purpose of this exhibition is to showcase images and illustrations in our map collections that
demonstrate historic changes to the City of Boston. Our selection of maps focuses on Boston’s
regional core and three transformative neighborhoods: Roxbury, the Greenway and the South
Boston Waterfront. These maps tell the story of the changing cityscape over time and are digital
reproductions of actual historic maps. The primary goals of the exhibition are to provide examples
of the evolution of mapmaking from handmade to digital cartography; to illustrate dramatic
changes to the City of Boston; and to showcase the work of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center,
the BRA’s Office of Digital Cartography and GIS*, and the BRA’s Urban Design Technology Group.
*Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the collection of computer hardware, software,
geographic data, and staff, designed to capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and map all
forms of geographically referenced information. GIS can be linked to information relating to
economic development, planning and zoning, environmental monitoring, law enforcement, and
property management.
Contributors
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library
Beacon Capital Partners
Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism and Special Events
Boston Redevelopment Authority:
Planning;
Urban Design Technology Group;
Office of Digital Cartography and GIS;
Economic Development;
and the 9th
Floor Hallway Committee
Boston
Redevelopment
Authority
City of Boston
Thomas M. Menino, Mayor

A Plan of Boston and its environs
Date: 1775
Publisher: Dury, Andrew
This map depicts Revolutionary War Boston
and the vicinity. It was the best
contemporaneous map of the military
situation just after the Battle of Bunker
Hill and prior to the British evacuation of
the city.
Source:
Boston Public Library
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
Wall 2 1 ready to print

Boston Old and New
Date:1880
Author: Winsor, Justin
Publisher: Heliotype Printing Co.
Noted historian and librarian, Justin Winsor
created this unique map by
superimposing the outline of the original
Shawmut Peninsula onto an 1880 map
of Boston. Though drawn without the
assistance of computers or aerial
photographs, the map remains one of
the most vivid diagrams of the radical
transformation and enlargement of the
Shawmut Peninsula during the 19th
century.
Source:

Boston Old and New
Date: 1776
Boston Environs and Vicinity
With the use of computers, current streets
are overlaid on this historic shoreline
map.
Source:
Boston Redevelopment Authority
Office of Digital Cartography and GIS
Wall 2 3

Boston and its Vicinity
Date: 1819
Author: Hales, John Groves
Publisher: Hales, John Groves
The neighborhood boundaries of Boston as
depicted in 1819.
Source:

Map of Boston Vicinity
Date: 1859
Author: Walling, Henry Francis
Publisher: Baker, F. A.
• Walling, a Boston-based engineer and
surveyor, specialized in publishing
landownership maps of individual
towns, cities, and counties in New
England, but particularly Massachusetts.
One example is this extremely detailed
map of Boston and vicinity, showing
town boundaries, property owners,
roads, railroads, and topography.
• Like many of his other maps, it could be
purchased as a folded map stored in a
handsome case, or as a wall hanging
mounted on rollers. His maps varied
greatly in size, some as large as five or
six feet square. Information included in
these maps was obtained from traveling
along existing roads; direction was
determined by the surveyors compass
and distance by the odometer wheel.
Source:

Map of Boston
Date: 1876
Author: A. Williams & Co.
Publisher: A. Williams & Co.
The neighborhood boundaries of Boston as
depicted in 1876.
Source:

Boston Streets & Neighborhoods
Date: 2011
These neighborhood boundaries of Boston
are for planning purposes only, not the
official neighborhood boundaries for the
City of Boston. This map is based on
zoning neighborhood district s and zip
code boundaries.
Source:
Wall 2 7

Boston Figure Ground Map
Date: 2012
A figure-ground diagram is a two-
dimensional map of an urban space that
shows the relationship between built
and unbuilt space. It is used in analysis
of urban design and planning. A figure-
ground illustrates a mass-to-void
relationship, and analysis of it identifies
a "fabric" of urban structures. This
figure-ground map of Boston shows
different urban fabrics from dense and
organic in the North End to loose and
fragmented in the South Boston
Waterfront. It also shows major open
spaces such as Emerald Necklace,
Southwest Corridor and the Greenway.
Source:
Wall 2 8

Boston Streets & Neighborhoods
Date: 2011
Boston streets and transit. This is a very
popular map which is available at the
BRA’s map counter.
Source:
Wall 2 9

1975 General Land Use Plan
Date: 1975
Originally from the 1960’s General Plan, each
color represents a land use category.
This map was the graphic representation
of all major land use policies and
recommendations set forth in the
1965/1975 General Plan for the City of
Boston and the Regional Core. Since the
Plan is a general statement of long range
development goals, this map should be
viewed as a flexible guide rather than an
unalterable commitment to new land
use development over the following
decade.
Source:
Wall 2 10

Illustrative Re-Use Site Plan for the
Regional Core
This is detailed land use from the General
Plan, done by hand.
Source:
Wall 2 11

2005 General Land Use Map
Description: Land Use in 2005
Data Source: MassGIS 2005, The Sanborn
Company
This map was created using digital data in a
Geographic Information System (GIS).
Source:

Map of City of Roxbury
Date: 1849
This map shows Roxbury as it existed as a
town in 1849. Dudley Square is visible
on the right-hand side.
Source:

Map showing Roxbury becoming a
part of Boston
Date: 1883
This map represents annexations of Roxbury,
Dorchester and West Roxbury to the
City of Boston. Roxbury was annexed to
Boston January 6, 1868.
Source: City of Boston

Dudley Square Figure Ground Maps:
1899/2011
These two figure-ground maps show the
Ferdinand building(shown in red) in its
context. Upper map is based on Bromley
Atlas of 1899—three years after the
Ferdinand building was built. The urban
fabric was much fine-grained and street
edges were well-defined then. The map
of 2011 shows a much looser urban
fabric with street edges harder to be
identified. One of the reasons for this
difference is that many institutions have
replaced traditional residential uses in
the Dudley Square area.
Source:
Urban Design Department

Transformation of Ferdinand’s
Building in Dudley Square
Built in 1896, the Ferdinand building sits,
“flanked” by Warren and Washington
Streets in Dudley Square. This is the
future headquarters for the Boston
Public Schools, continuing the
revitalization of the neighborhood.
Source:
Photo upper right -Google Maps Inc.
Photo middle right-City of Boston
Rendering lower right-Sasaki Associates, Inc.
Photo upper left-Boston Public Library, Print
Department
Photo lower left-Isabel Leon, Photographer,
Mayor’s OfficeWall 4 16 ready to print

Figure-Ground Maps of the Greenway:
1940/1990/2010
These Figure-Ground Maps of the Greenway
are re-created based on a diagram used
in Urban Design Guidelines for the
Central Artery Air Right Parcels by the
Boston Redevelopment Authority Urban
Design Department. In the 1990’s map,
the Central Artery project cut through
urban fabric of Boston. Today, the
Greenway re-knit the urban fabric with a
series of open spaces.
Source:

Greenway
2011
Source:
Boston Water & Sewer Commission

Greenway
This is a top view from Boston
Redevelopment Authority’s 3D model
showing projects under construction,
under review and future planning
around the Greenway area.
Source:

Greenway
Date: 2009 (top)
Aerial photo from Pictometry
Date: 2013 (bottom)
Matching view from Boston Redevelopment
Authority’s 3D model showing projects
under construction, under review and
future planning around the Greenway
area.
Source:
Pictometry

Aerial Photos of Boston
Date: 1860 (left)
This first aerial photo of Boston was taken by
James Wallace Black from Samuel King’s
hot air balloon “The Queen of Air.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, a poet and
professor of medicine at Harvard
University, gave the photo the name
“Boston as the Eagle and Wild Goose
See It” in an article in the Atlantic
Monthly in July, 1963. This photo
predates the fire of 1972 which razed
much of what is visible.
Date: 2010 (right)
Matching view from Google Maps
Source:
Courtesy of the Trustees of theBoston Public
Library, Print Department
Google Maps
Wall 5 22

View of Boston Harbor 1870 & 2013
Date: 1870 (top)
Author: Fuchs, F.
Publisher: Weik, John
This view of Victorian Boston portrays a
prosperous city undergoing rapid
change. Industries are beginning to
crowd portions of the waterfront.
Clipper ships brought fame to Boston in
the 1850s; the steamship subsequently
decimated New England’s wooden
shipbuilding industry; and the shipping
trade was also declining due to the
arrival of the railroads in the 1830s. This
city was now firmly in the grasp of a new
mode of transportation.
Date: 2013 (bottom)
This rendering of the City using the Boston
Redevelopment Authority’s digital 3-D
model, shows future development of
the City from a similar angle. Boston’s
economy continues to transition,
marked by new development serving
the innovation economy.
Source:

Bird’s Eye View from the North 1870 &
2013
Date: 1870 (top)
Author: Bachmann, John
Publisher: L. Prang & Co.
Date: 2013 (bottom)
This rendering of the City using the Boston
Redevelopment Authority’s digital 3-D
model, shows future development of
the City from a similar angle.
Source:

Boston
Date:
Author: Bradford, T. G. (Thomas Gamaliel)
Boston's transformation and growth from a
colonial port city originally confined to
the physical limitations of the Shawmut
Peninsula are outlined on this map.
Starting in the 1790s, bridges were built to
connect Boston to the growing urban
settlements of Cambridge, Charlestown,
South Boston and South Bay.
Bostonians began to increase the peninsula's
useable land areas by extending and
filling in between wharves, and
reclaiming the Mill Pond and tidal flats,
along the peninsula's narrow neck.
During the 1830s with the introduction
of railroads into the New England area,
Boston developed a viable
transportation alternative to ocean and
coastal shipping.
The map was engraved by G.W. Boynton,
Boston's leading engraver during the
mid-1800s.
Source:

Plan for the occupation of flats owned
by the Commonwealth in Boston
Harbor
Date: 1868
Author: Massachusetts. Board of Harbor and
Land Commissioners
Publisher: Massachusetts. Board of Harbor
and Land Commissioners
During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the land was added to
accommodate the growing town. Most
of this land was created by a process
called ‘warfing out’—extending the
wharves out from the shore and then
filling the slips or docks between them.
Warfing out was facilitated by the
Massachusetts unique riparian law
which gives shoreline property owners
the right to own the adjacent tidal flats
down to the low tide line or 1,650 feet
from the line of high tide, whichever is
closest to the shore, a law passed in the
1640’s to encourage building of the
wharfs.
Source:

Aerial Photo of South Boston
Date: 2010
Source:
Google Maps

Rendering of 3D model for South
Boston
Date: 2013
This is an aerial view from Boston
under review and future planning in the
South Boston Waterfront area.
Source:

South Boston
Date: 1994
The Ted Williams Tunnel was under
construction.
Source:

South Boston
Date: 2001
Highway and tunnel project continues.
Federal Courthouse, Seaport Hotel,
World Trade Center East and West
Offices were completed. Boston
Convention and Exhibition Center(BCEC)
site was being cleared.
Source:
MassGIS

South Boston
Date: 2005
Boston Convention and Exhibition
Center(BCEC), Institute of Contemporary
Art(ICA), Manulife Headquarters,
Channel Center and Park Lanes Seaport
were completed.
Source:
MassGIS

South Boston
Date: 2011
Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, One
Marina Drive, The Westin Boston
Waterfront Hotel and Liberty Wharf
were completed.
Source:

South Boston
Date: 2013
This is a top view from Boston
under review and future planning in the
South Boston Waterfront area.
Source:

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