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.

You might also like

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Unionizing Harvard Academic Workers

Pay, child care, workplace protections at issue 

Should AI Be Scaled Down?

The case for maximizing AI models’ efficiency—not size

Most popular

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard

The president emeritus on elite universities’ academic accomplishments—and a rising tide of antagonism

The Broken Social Contract

Danielle Allen on America’s broken social contract

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy