These twenty-four photographs of Boston were taken in 1934 by the modernist photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). A native of Ohio, Abbott learned her trade in Paris as a darkroom assistant for the surrealist artist Man Ray in the 1920s. After a stint as a successful portrait photographer on the Left Bank, Abbot returned to New York …
In February 1875, Eadweard Muybridge boarded a Pacific Mail Steamship Company vessel in San Francisco bound for Central America, where he would photograph the localities served by the company’s freight and passenger business. Muybridge was no stranger to such assignments, and the expectation was that the photographs, “judiciously …
This digital collection contains views of selected rare 18th century bindings from the library of George Washington, the first president of the United States. This initiative was made possible through a generous gift from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.
The volumes from George Washington’s personal library are …
The Boston and Albany Railroad Company and South Station Collection is comprised of two sets of photographs - mostly cyanotypes. The first set of 49 photographs, made by C.S. Harrington, documents the buildings and tracks of the Boston and Albany Railroad Company in Boston, Massachusetts in June 1898, prior to the alterations caused by …
This digitized collection of Edward Wells’s rare folio atlas is comprised of 40 maps. The atlas was first published in 1701, then issued several more times until 1738. The Athenæum’s copy was published in 1726.
There are most often two maps on facing pages depicting the same geographical area. This arrangement illustrated the …
This collection of 21 photographs documents the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent civil war that erupted in Paris in March of 1871 between members of the left-leaning French Commune and the newly elected monarchist government of Adolphe Thiers.
The Prussian siege of Paris during the War, the French defeat at the hands …
Alice Mason’s album of Civil War photographs is a comprehensive, personal representation of the war. The circumstances of the creation of Alice Mason’s album of Civil War photographs are unclear. There is no way of knowing whose eye and experience informed the selection of these views, whether they were chosen and arranged by Alice …
In recent years much of the creative energy devoted to the production of thoughtfully produced books has been flowing into a rapidly evolving category of diverse material grouped under the mantle of “artists’ books.” It is difficult and somewhat arbitrary to date when the first artist’s book appeared since it is obvious that many …
Born in Hingham, Massachusetts, Isaac Sprague (1811 - 1895) was a mostly self-taught ornithological, botanical, and landscape painter. He was the best-known botanical painter of his day. The Athenæum is fortunate to have seventy-four of Sprague’s watercolor paintings of birds, drawn between 1839 and 1842. These watercolors were …
The Boston Athenæum has a small but significant collection of approximately 350 daguerreotypes. The collection specializes in New England portraiture and the work of Boston photographers. As such, it provides an important record of the art of the daguerreotype in one major American city from 1840 through the 1860s. Boston was a …
The print collection contains varied examples of printmaking techniques, including engravings, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, wood cuts, and silk-screens. Nineteenth-century New England lithographs form the core of this collection with large numbers of New England city views, landscapes, portraits, advertising posters, sheet music …
Specializing in works by Boston-area photographic firms, this collection comprises a catalog of early photographic processes, including, but not limited to, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen and salted paper prints. The important role played by Boston photographers in the history of the medium in America can be traced through the collection, …
Finding aids describe what is in a manuscript collection. This allows greater detail than can be offered in the online catalog. These digitized finding aids treat Boston Athenæum materials in both its Archive and Manuscript Collections. The Archive includes records relating to the institutional history of the Boston Athenæum, such as …
The tradition of endowing named book funds began at the Boston Athenæum in 1846 with a gift from John Bromfield. Some readers have established endowments in their own names or as bequests. Others have seen a book fund as a particularly satisfying way to honor a friend or family member or to commemorate a special occasion. Each named …
In 2008, James V. Righter, Boston architect and Trustee Emeritus of the Boston Athenæum, generously presented sixty-five sketchbooks, illustrated journals and altered books to the Manuscript Collection. From 1974 through 2004, Jim took a sketchbook with him wherever he traveled. He illustrated landscapes, architecture, local color, …
The Rare Book Collection of the Boston Athenæum reflects the collecting interests of the Library as it has narrowed its focus from being encyclopedic in the 19th century to its current focus on the humanities. While there are surprising examples of early works on many subjects in the Athenæum, researchers should expect to find depth in …
This collection encompasses works of art on paper by artists such as Isaac Sprague, Thomas Edwards, Edward Clarke Cabot, Ellen Day Hale, Arthur Rotch, and Allan Rohan Crite. The work of amateur or anonymous artists is also collected and provides context for understanding the development of the graphic arts in nineteenth-century America.
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Maps, charts, atlases, and globes are an important part of the scholarly collections of the Boston Athenæum. This digital collection features representative items from the Athenæum cartographic holdings containing thousands of sheet maps, plans, and charts, and more than 600 bound atlases. They range in date from the fifteenth to …
The manuscript collection of the Boston Athenæum grew steadily from the founding of the institution, but it was not until the stewardship of Librarian Charles Knowles Bolton (ca. 1900) that efforts were first made to develop and organize this material.
Today the Athenæum is interested in donations of unpublished material that in …
This collection contains images and documents related to the conservation laboratory of the Boston Athenæum, which is dedicated to the care and repair of library holdings with inherent historic, artistic or literary value. The laboratory was founded in 1963, making it one of the oldest conservation facilities in any library in the …
The Department of Digital Programs and Preservation of the Boston Athenæum is responsible for ensuring the physical preservation of the Athenæum’s historic collection and expanding scholarly access to the collection through digitization.
These collections of digitized rare books, archival documents, photographs, maps, and works of art on paper have been described and organized by the Boston Athenæum to make them more widely accessible to researchers, students, Athenæum members, and scholars.
The Athenæum is in the process of digitizing a wide range of library materials, and will be augmenting existing collections and adding new collections frequently.
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