Urban History

U.S. in Primary Sources

This is a guide to BC's resources for urban history on the United States and specific locations around the world.

Page under Construction

This page is currently under construction and far from complete. If you notice broken links or have suggestions, please write the subject liaison e-mail.

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Broad Digital Collections

Try searching for (building* OR urban*) and other, similar terms or limiting genre/format for maps.

Digital Public Library of America
Aggregates digital collections from around the U.S. and offers excellent tools to discover and explore them. Focuses on 17th to 21st centuries.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Interface in English. Content in English or other languages.
Digitized collections from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more. Strongest between the 17th and 21st centuries. Content dating back to B.C.E.
Open Access.
Online Archive of California (OAC)
The OAC is a website that provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary source collections (artwork, manuscripts, papers, historic photographs, and so on) maintained by more than 200 libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California -- including collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.

World Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The World Digital Library is a Library of Congress project sponsored by UNESCO. Items in this digital library, including books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and sound recordings, are individually described and searchable in seven languages. Most countries and regions around the world are represented.

Sources: Law and Gov. Docs.

Search for law, court cases, law review articles, and more.

Hein Online This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is an image-based legal research database with over 50 million pages of legal information in fully-searchable PDF format, comprising over 30 separate collections including Law Journal Library, Legal Classics, U.S. Supreme Court Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, Treaties and Agreements Library and many others. Additional titles and years are added regularly.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Provides access to hearings, published and unpublished from 1824 to the present, congressional committee reports, bills, public laws, selected committee prints, congressional documents, the Congressional Record from the 99th Congress forward, Federal Register from 1980 forward, the current Code of Federal Regulations, and the current US Code.

Specific Laws

HUD.gov: Fair Housing and Related Laws
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's list of relevant statues, executive orders, and more.
Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-31)
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Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, and disability. It also requires that all federal programs relating to housing and urban development be administered in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000d-1)
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Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 – 12165)
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Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability in programs and activities provided or made available by public entities. HUD enforces Title II with respect to housing-related programs and activities of public entities, including public housing, housing assistance and housing referrals.
Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability in the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of places of public accommodations owned, leased, or operated by private entities. The Department of Justice enforces Title III of the ADA, but certain HUD recipients and private entities operating housing and community development programs are covered by Title III of the ADA.
Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. § 4151 et seq.)
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The Architectural Barriers Act requires that buildings and facilities designed, constructed, altered, or leased with certain federal funds after September 1969 must be accessible to and useable by persons with disabilities.
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. § 794)
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Section 504 prohibits discrimination based on disability in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Section 508 requires federal agencies to ensure that the electronic and information technology they develop, procure, or use allows individuals with disabilities to have ready access to and use of the information and data that is comparable to that of individuals without disabilities.
Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. § 5309)
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Section 109 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, and religion in any program or activity funded in whole or in part under Title I of the Community Development Act of 1974, which includes Community Development Block Grants.
Education Amendments Act of 1972 (20 U.S.C. §§ 1681-83, 1685-88)
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Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. HUD enforces Title IX when it relates to housing affiliated with an educational institution.

Sources: Maps

City Maps and Urban Environments (Harvard)
Explore maps of urban design and urban planning for cities around the world from the 16th century to the present.
HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure Of Segregation And Economic Inequality
Eighty years ago, a federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), created “Residential Security” maps of major American cities. These maps document how loan officers, appraisers and real estate professionals evaluated mortgage lending risk during the era immediately before the surge of suburbanization in the 1950’s.

PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
PolicyMap is a GIS tool for non-GIS users." PolicyMap is used as a data visualization tool in the social sciences, urban studies and planning, real estate and housing analysis, community and economic development, public administration and policy, public health, political science, education, environmental studies, business and finance, economics, statistics and geography, among other areas. Downloadable data.

Sanborn Maps (LOC)
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated.
CLUI Land Use Database
Land use for all fifty states showing transportation, water, cultural, industrial, mining, waste, military, nuclear/radioactive, R&D.
Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS
A clearinghouse of GIS data produced by LA County Agencies.

For more maps, visit BC Libraries' Historical Maps page.

Oral Histories

Archibald Cox Oral Interview (Columbia)
This oral-history interview focuses on Cox's tenure as solicitor general from 1961 to 1965, when he argued many landmark civil-rights cases before the Supreme Court.

Sources: Video

Michelle Obama Opens Up About the Pain of Witnessing 'White Flight' as a Child in Chicago (TIME)
In 2019, Michelle Obama spoke candidly about her childhood at the 3rd annual Obama Foundation Summit Tuesday, saying that white families "were running from us" while she grew up on Chicago's South Side.
Race And Segregation In Chicago; ‘We Have Created It. We Engineered Segregation’ (CBS)
In 2019, CBS 2’s Vince Gerasole takes us on a tour of three of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods: Humboldt Park, Edison Park, and Chatham, to help illustrate Chicago’s struggles with segregation.

Topics: Boston

Digital Commonwealth
Something like a mini-DPLA for Massachusetts, this site draws together records from archives and historical societies all over Massachusetts. Searchable by place name, subject, title, or creator.
Map Collections at the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Community Development Department produces a wide variety of maps for its own use and as a source of information for the public. Topics range over wide area, covering everything from the locations of farmers markets to parks to zoning.
Perceptual Form of the City (MIT)
The nearly 2,000 black & white photographs, shot by Nishan Bichajian, assistant to Professor Kepes, document the Boston urban environment during the mid-1950s prior to urban renewal.
UMass Boston's Joseph P. Healey Library' Digital Collections
Includes select material from the "STANDING OUR GROUND: Collections related to housing, community development, and land use and planning activism in Boston"; Thompson's Island Collection; Sumner Tunnel (Boston), Construction Photographs, 1929-1933; and more.

For more Boston-related collections and information, visit BC Libraries' Boston History page.

Topics: Buildings, Architecture, and Blueprints

"Architectural and Engineering Drawings" (NARA)
More than 24,000 digital facsimiles of blueprints, notes, reports, and more at the U.S. National Archives.
Architecture and City Planning on ARTStor
More than 125,000 digital facsimiles of photographs, architectural plans, and more related to architecture and city planning in North America.
Blueprints (NARA)
More than 7,000 digital facsimiles or blueprints or records associated with blueprints at the National Archives.
Brief Biographies of American Architects from the Society of Architectural Historians (pdf)
Obituaries of over 1200 American architects published from 1897 to 1947 in the the American Art Annual and its successor volume Who's Who in American Art.
Chicago Architecture Center
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, written history pages, and supplemental materials from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Kidder Smith Collection of American Architecture (MIT)
Collection represents color documentation of the buildings Smith photographed in black and white for his three-volume work Architecture of the United States, (Museum of Modern Art, 1981). Covers more than 800 American buildings from the pre-Columbian period to 1978.
SAHARA (Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive)
approximately 9,000 images of architecture, landscape design, and the built environment from the SAHARA project
Society of Architectural Historians
A searchable database of buildings as well as themed essays and more.

Topics: City Collections

Try searching for (building* OR urban*) and other, similar terms.

Chicago Public Library's Digital Collections
These collections focus on African Americans, the Civil War, Harold Washington, Libraries & Education, Chicago Neighborhoods, Newspapers, Parks, and the Theater.
Digital Commonwealth
Something like a mini-DPLA for Massachusetts, this site draws together records from archives and historical societies all over Massachusetts. Searchable by place name, subject, title, or creator.
Free Library of Philadelphia's Digital Collections
More than 50,000 digitized items from the Library's extensive collections including their Automobile Reference Collection; Carson Collection on Common Law; Fine Arts Collection; Historical Images of Philadelphia; Maps; Pennsylvania German Fraktur and Manuscripts; and United States Centennial Exhibition Collection among others.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Hundreds of thousands of images digitized from rare and unique materials held by the New York Public Library.
NYC Department of Records & Information Services: Online Gallery
Online Gallery of over 1.6 million images. Selected from the world-class historical collections of the Archives, most of these unique photographs, maps, documents, motion picture and audio recordings are being made accessible for the first time.
Pictures of American Cities (NARA)
Select pictures from the Still Picture Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Picked for their aesthetic quality and historical relevance to the development of urban America and are classified under the following headings: Artists' Conceptions of 19th-Century Cities, Skylines and Streets, City Life, Urban Transportation, The City in Turmoil, and 20th-Century Art Reflecting Urban Themes.
San Francisco Public Library Digital Collections
Access to the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, including over 45,000 digitized images--and growing. Also includes access to the David Rumsey Map Collection with the 1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1938 San Francisco aerial photographs, and other materials.
Cities and Towns (LOC)
This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems.
Maps at UCLA
Includes maps of Los Angeles, California, and the United States including a set showing Racial Groups in Los Angeles (1940 US Census) as well as Tract Maps and Cadastral Maps of Southern California, 1868-1937.

Topics: City Planning

Architecture & City Planning (Cornell)
Since the mid-1960s, the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has been actively acquiring the papers of city planners, architects, and landscape architects. Parts of those collections, including "Prescriptions for Urban Ailments: Planning Solutions of the 1920s-1940s," have been digitized.
City Planning in HathiTrust
More than 900 digital facsimiles of documents related to "city planning" from the 1870s to the 1950s produced in the United States. Topics range from classification schemes, zoning committee reports, as well as individual city plans.
Planning Atlanta - A New City in the Making 1930s - 1990s
Consist of over 1,500 maps from the City of Atlanta, Atlanta Regional Commission, MARTA, and other agencies. About half of the collection consists of sheet maps and the other half are planning maps from within the Planning Atlanta collection’s publications.
Planning Maps of Midwestern Cities in the 1920s and 1930s (UChicago)
Click on the links below to access scans of some of the government planning maps of Midwestern cities from the 1920s and 1930s that are held at the University of Chicago Library's Map Collection.
Real property--Massachusetts (Digital Commonwealth)
Several thousand digital facsimiles of maps from the 18th to the 20th century with plans, city maps, and more related to real property in Massachusetts.

Topics: Real Estate

Massachusetts State Library Real Estate Atlases
The digitized volumes, most of which date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, document the development of neighborhoods over time. They provide information about property boundaries, plot sizes, ownership, building shapes, and materials. The atlases are used by genealogists, environmental consultants, architectural historians, and the general public researching the history of their home.
New York Real Estate Brochure Collection
The collection consists of over 9,200 advertising brochures, floor plans, price lists, and related materials that document residential and commercial real estate development in the five boroughs of New York and outlying vicinities from the 1920s to the 1970s

Topics: Redlining

Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America (U of Richmond)
HOLC's documents contain a wealth of information about how government officials, lenders, and real estate interests surveyed and ensured the economic health of American cities. Includes extensive maps from across the U.S. along with other material.
Redlining (NARA)
More than 1,000 digital facsimiles of documents and maps associated with "redlining" at the National Archives.

Topics: Transportation

Minnesota Department of Transportation
Includes the Minnesota Highways Newsletters 1951-1976; Maps and Images; Repots; and more from across the 20th century.
American Public Transportation Association Research and Technical Resources
Includes Research Reports; Transit Statistics; and more regarding transportation in the U.S..
NYC Subway construction photograph collection, 1900-1950
Hundreds of photographs documenting the development of the NYC subway system in the first half of the 20th century.

Topics: Water and Aqueducts

Los Angeles Aqueduct Digital Platform
A public resource for research and information. It provides access to primary sources that document the Aqueduct’s history, as well as scholarship that investigates the Aqueduct’s impact on the development of Southern California.

For Additional Help

For additional recommendations, contact your History Liaison, Erin, at erinkate.scheopner@bc.edu or schedule an appointment.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Urban History

U.S. in Primary Sources

Page under Construction

What's on This Page

Broad Digital Collections

Sources: Law and Gov. Docs.

Specific Laws

Sources: Maps

Oral Histories

Sources: Video

Topics: Boston

Topics: Buildings, Architecture, and Blueprints

Topics: City Collections

Topics: City Planning

Topics: Real Estate

Topics: Redlining

Topics: Transportation

Topics: Water and Aqueducts

For Additional Help