In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German restaurants and breweries were popular gathering places in Boston and other US cities. Following the 1848 revolutions and agricultural crises in Europe, German immigration to the United States increased sharply. Although…
Unidentified man seated at the Oriental Restaurant at 32 Harrison Street owned by Bun Fong Low Company, ca. 1895-1910. Courtesy of the Trustees of Boston Public Library.
Cast members of the theatrical production “One Sunday Afternoon” celebrating at the Russian Bear Restaurant on Newbury Street in December 1933, just days after the end of Prohibition. This restaurant opened a year earlier under the ownership of Mrs. L.B…
Thousands of Russian Jews came to Lynn to work in its shoe factories. The economic life of the Lynn Jewish community was inextricably linked to the shoe industry, which became the major source of the Jews’ upward economic mobility. Even…
The following account is one of the earliest oral histories with an immigrant shoeworker in Lynn. The interviewee, who is unnamed, was born in 1859 and came to the US in 1866. He was interviewed in 1938 by Jane K…
Employees of the Kaleva Cooperative Association in front of their Main Street shop, ca 1915. Photo by Geo. D. Elson, courtesy of the Maynard Historical Society.
Frank Storer plays piano to a crowded dance hall at the Intercolonial Club on Dudley Street in the 1950s. It was one of at least five dance halls that featured live music by Irish and Canadian bands in the mid-20th…
After the Vietnam war, thousands of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia were resettled in the greater Boston area. Many were traumatized by their experiences, only to face more hostility from white neighbors in their new homes. To help end this…
