The Many Faces of Boston

Advertising trade cards from the 1850s to the 1910s depict Irish immigrants’ social and economic climb from the laboring classes…
 …to civil-service jobs.

Boston Public Library
Through August 22
View the website

The ancestors of most Bostonians may have hailed from Ireland and Italy, but the current top two immigrant groups are from China and the Dominican Republic, according to City of Neighborhoods: The Changing Face of Boston, an exhibit at the Boston Public Library through August 22. Overall, about 27 percent of city residents were born abroad, a quarter of them in Asia. Nearly half of East Boston’s inhabitants are foreign-born, the majority from Latin and South America. Boston also has the third-largest Haitian population in the country (after New York City and Florida), and a growing Cape Verdean community. These dramatic trends are illustrated through maps, U.S. Census data, photographs, and drawings that make clear that this ever-changing population influences the city’s physical landscapes and culture in countless ways—and always has.

Click here for the July-August 2014 issue table of contents

You might also like

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Doctors for Change

Countway Library exhibit explores historic anti-nuclear activism

Rendering Dreams in Art

South Korean artist’s socially themed photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum

Most popular

Why Taxi Drivers Don’t Die of Alzheimer’s

Explaining taxi and ambulance drivers’ protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

Explore More From Current Issue

Children's Books from Ann Kim Ha

Ann Kim Ha’s poignant children’s books

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life

Harvard Wireless club

Student ham enthusiasts turn back time.