Harvard Map Collection Digitizes Historic Cambridge and Boston Atlases

September 6, 2007 - The Harvard Map Collection's atlases of historic Cambridge have much to reveal about the city and the University's past. Looking at these oversized documents, for instance, one learns that 135 years ago, Harvard students boarded their horses in the University stables where current day John Harvard's Brew House operates and that as of 1903 the John Harvard statue sat, not outside University Hall, but by Memorial Hall. Now the Map Collection has made it easier for those researching local history to use its Boston and Cambridge atlases by digitizing these volumes and making them available online to the public.

“The two kinds of atlases we’ve recently digitized for Cambridge and Boston are called fire insurance and land ownership atlases,” says David Cobb, Curator of the Harvard Map Collection. “They’re unique and very significant, and they really provide far more detail than the regular maps of Cambridge and Boston.”