Boston

Aarons, Jules Collection

Photographs by Boston street photographer Jules Aarons taken in the neighborhoods of Boston, including the West End and North End, from 1947 to 1976. (Prints & Photographs)

Adlow Collection of Boston Legal History

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) An extensive collection of documents and judicial records from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, dating from 1711 through 1904, with a primary focus on the years 1800 through 1825. The collection contains files of the Suffolk County Justice of the Peace, Court of Common Pleas, General Sessions of the Peace, and Supreme Judicial Court. The core of the collection is comprised of nearly 23,000 writs of attachment, opens a new window and writs of execution, opens a new window, organized chronologically and under the justices who issued them. The collection also contains runs of other documentation, sometimes substantially complete, including: coroner’s records and inquests dating from 1775 through 1860; lists of prisoners; warrants, recognizances, summonses, dockets, criminal complaints, opinions and judgments, jury materials (lists of jurors, indictments, etc.), petitions, militia delinquencies, complaints to the Health Department; accounts, expenses, and miscellaneous bills; documents relating to construction of the Leverett Street Jail, opens a new window and the Suffolk County Courthouse on School Street, opens a new window; papers of individual judges, and many additional materials. Though the Adlow Collection is comprised largely of judicial records, it is also an extremely rich source for studies in the social history of Boston. Individual documents often contain specific details and narratives of events in the lives of ordinary Bostonians recorded in no other sources. The collection is named after Elijah Adlow (1896-1982), Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of Boston. In 1954, Judge Adlow was notified that, due to an immediate need for space, a collection of "rubbish" long stored in an old basement vault of the courthouse was being considered for removal and incineration. Upon inspecting the materials in question, Adlow recognized their historical significance and the urgent need for their preservation. Having halted the destruction of the entire cache, Adlow later arranged for the materials to be transferred to the Boston Public Library. Comprising approximately 40,000 items, the collection is organized into several different categories, described and processed at varying levels of detail. As of 2020, the collection is primarily accessible through a set of printed finding aids kept in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department. For further information about use and access, consult the catalog record, opens a new window. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

Anti-Slavery Collection

  The nucleus of this collection was presented to the Library in the late 1890s by the family of William Lloyd Garrison and other individuals involved in the anti-slavery movement. The collection features artifacts, books, documents, letters, and pamphlets from Boston reformer Wendell Phillips and the letters and papers of orator and abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison dating from the 1830s through the 1870s, totaling more than 16,000 items. The collection also contains daguerreotypes of noted abolitionists; the papers of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society; and the papers of Maria Weston Chapman and Deborah Weston, Amos Augustus Phelps, Lydia Maria Child, Samuel Joseph May, and John Bishop Estlin. Other items include the full run and the account books of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator; records of the American, New England, and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery societies; scrapbooks concerning Anthony Burns and John Brown; and the files of Ziba B. Oakes, a slave broker from Charleston, South Carolina.  The library also has extensive holdings of printed material relating to the anti-slavery movement. The libraries of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker are here, all rich in relevant pamphlets and broadsides. The Hunt Collection on the West Indies is another fine resource from a different perspective, as is the E.A. Phelps British Anti-Slavery Society Papers. In addition, an 89-page unpublished typed index to The Liberty Bell is available in the Rare Books Department. Online access: For more information about the collection, including its contents, history, and organization, please consult the BPL research guide, opens a new window. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

Boston Authors Club Library

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) A collection containing 2,000 titles by most of the 20th-century authors residing in the Boston metropolitan area as well as ephemeral material relating to the Club from its founding in 1887. Highlights include poetical tributes to Julia Ward Howe on her 86th birthday and to Alice Brown on her 62nd. The Club is still active and continues to contribute to this collection by forwarding books by its members to the BPL on an annual basis. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

Boston Latin School Archives

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) The Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, is the oldest educational institution in continuous existence in the United States. Comprising approximately 5,000 items, this collection documents the history of the school during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Printed materials consist of works published by and for the Boston Latin School: yearbooks, invitations, programs, student publications, periodical articles, works by classical authors, Latin and Greek grammars, and materials donated by the Boston Latin School Alumni. Manuscripts and unprinted works include mostly letters and correspondence. Highlights include orders of exercises, annual prize drills, attendance records, public declamations, books and memorabilia of the Boston Latin School Association. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

Filene’s Marketing Archives

(Archives) Founded in 1849, Filene’s presence as a major retailer in the New England area is chronicled through promotional materials for marketing campaigns, charity events, store openings, and celebrity appearances. Photographs, press clippings, and videos are among the formats included. Online access: For more information about the collection, including its contents, history, and organization, please consult the BPL research guide.

Gilbert, John Gibbs (1810-1889) Collection

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) About 470 monographs on performing arts subjects and plays collected by Boston actor-manager Gilbert. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

Jones, Leslie Collection

A collection of approximately 40,000 glass and film negatives along with several thousand photographic prints taken by Boston Herald-Traveler photographer Leslie Jones, from his personal collection. Jones was a photographer for the Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956 and took photographs documenting aviation, crime, sports, Boston scenes, fires, maritime subjects, celebrities and other newsworthy events. Online access: Digitized images from this collection are viewable at Digital Commonwealth. The Leslie Jones collection is in copyright; for permissions and requests for use, please contact specialcollections@bpl.org for more information. (Print Department) 

Jordan, Alice M. (1870-1960) Collection

(Special Collections) Alice Jordan was the first Supervisor of Children’s Services in the Boston Public Library. Historic, contemporary, and international titles are included with the complete works of authors and illustrators represented as well as various editions of fairy tales and old and new classics. The collection contains picture books, fiction, non-fiction, toy and moveable books from the infant to the teen level from the 19th century to the present day. Foreign language material from 80 countries is represented as well. Online access: Selections from the Jordan collection are accessible through the Internet Archive.

Lewis, John A. Collection of early New England imprints

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) John Allen Lewis of Boston (1819-1885), was a collector of early New England imprints with a particular interest in the earliest Boston printing presses. The collection bearing his name was donated to the BPL in 1890, 5 years after his death.  The Lewis collection is particularly rich in editions from the press of John Foster, including a copy of the first book printed in Boston: Increase Mather's The Wicked Man's Portion (1675). The collection also contains several works by William Penn and more than 200 works by Increase and Cotton Mather. Additional highlights include William Hubbard’s Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians, with the "White Hills" map (1677); John Underhill’s Newes from America (1638); and the Massachusetts Psalter (1709). The Lewis collection also contains several of the issues from Benjamin Franklin’s press, including copies of the Poor Richard Almanack. Online access: A digitized version of the printed catalog of this collection, opens a new window is available through Internet Archive. (Rare Books & Manuscripts)

McGreevy, Michael T. "Nuf Ced" Collection

(Print Department) Donated by the owner of a Columbus Avenue saloon, the collection consists of photographs of professional baseball in Boston and personal scrapbooks from the 1890's to 1912. Originally displayed at McGreevy's tavern, Third Base, the photographs form the largest collection of its kind. It consists of early Boston baseball photographs dating from 1875 to 1916 and many of the most important ballplayers of the 19th and early 20th century are represented, including Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Mike "King" Kelly, Kid Nichols and many others. Also included are panoramic photos of the ballparks of the era including the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston and the Polo Grounds in New York. The centerpiece of the collection is a series of photographs related to the first World Series in 1903 between Boston and Pittsburgh. Featured are photographs of the fans of the Boston team, the "Royal Rooters" and their leader Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevy. With the passage of the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol and inaugurating the Prohibition Era, McGreevy was out of business. Always entrepreneurial, McGreevy looked to lease his bar and found a willing tenant in the Boston Public Library. The City of Boston signed a lease for $91.66 a month and in 1923 the Roxbury Crossing branch was opened. In the same year, McGreevy formally gave his collection of baseball photographs to the Boston Public Library. As a result of McGreevy's generosity, the Boston Public Library now owns one of the most important collections of early baseball images in the United States. Online access: Digitized images from this collection are available through Digital Commonwealth. 

Merrill, Richard Collection

(Print Department) In 1998, Boston Public Library acquired a collection of over 5,000 negatives taken between 1936 and 1948 by photographer Richard Merrill (1908-1997). While attending Northeastern University, Merrill developed an interest in both photography and radio broadcasting. This led to a long career as a commercial photographer, and to a major project documenting Boston-area radio broadcasting during the World War II era. Working for the Department of Defense, Merrill created an incomparable document of the role that radio played in supporting the war effort on the home front. Highlights of the collection include war bond drives, scrap collection, and national and international celebrities visiting Boston in support of the troops. In addition to his work documenting the war effort, Merrill also documented events related to the March of Dimes, the Boston Bruins, and many other institutions and organizations. He also frequently contributed photo essays to the Boston Herald-Traveler newspaper on a freelance basis. Online access: Digitized images from this collection are available through Digital Commonwealth. 

Prince, Thomas Library of the Old South Church

(Rare Books & Manuscripts) The Thomas Prince Collection and Library of the Old South Church -- usually just referred to as the Prince Collection -- is a group of approximately 3,500 books and 950 manuscripts assembled primarily by Old South pastors Thomas Prince (1687-1758) and Joseph Sewall (1688-1769). One of the few colonial American libraries to survive largely intact, the Prince Collection is a major resource for studies in the history of early New England. It is also an important resource for historians of the colonial American book. The collection preserves rare and sometimes unique pieces of evidence from the earliest presses in British North America, while contemporary inscriptions, annotations, and marginalia document the reception and circulation of texts in Boston, New England, and throughout the early modern Atlantic world. Holdings are particularly rich in early New England history and literature, along with theological works of the 17th and 18th centuries. Among other highlights, it includes the Bay Psalm Book, opens a new window (1640), and John Eliot's Indian Bible, opens a new window (1663), with many other editions representative of both the varied outputs of the early Cambridge and Boston presses, and of the intellectual life of colonial New England. Throughout the collection, evidence of book production and readerly intervention is rich and varied. Early Boston bookbinders are particularly well represented, with specimens from the workshops of Edmund Ranger and John Ratcliffe, among others. Contemporary bindings made with recycled paper preserve many fragments of early manuscripts and printed books. Many volumes, too, are annotated by successive generations of owners, while duplicate copies held throughout the collection facilitate close comparison and bibliographic study.  In addition to printed materials, the collection also contains a significant body over manuscripts, including a major collection of historical papers gathered and preserved by Prince himself. These manuscripts include papers of the Mather family, papers of the Cotton family, a group of papers relating to both the Cotton and Prince families, opens a new window, papers of the Hinckley family, and papers related to the case of Torrey v. Gardner (1734). Information and online access

• The BPL research guide for this collection contains a detailed history of the collection, information about how to search for materials, links to related BPL collections, and other useful resources.

Wheeler, Leeds Armstrong Collection

Formed by Wheeler and given by his family in his memory, this collection includes many black and white lithographs and chromolithography from the Boston firm of Armstrong and Company, active from about 1870 to 1900. Included are photographs and memorabilia of Armstrong, and pictures, documents, and notes relating to the Armstrong business, which for a time was the Lithographic Department of the Riverside Press, Cambridge, part of Houghton Mifflin & Co. (Print Department)