Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library is a special collections center in Boston, Massachusetts with research, educational, and exhibition programs relating to historical geography. It is the steward of the Boston Public Library’s map collection, consisting of approximately a quarter million geographic objects, including maps, atlases, globes, ephemera, and geographic data. It is located in the McKim Building of the Central Library in Copley Square.
The center was founded in 2004 with a $10 million endowment as a public-private partnership between the Boston Public Library and map collector and philanthropist Norman B. Leventhal.
About the collection
The center manages the geographic collections of the Boston Public Library as well as material collected by Norman B. Leventhal during his lifetime, known as the Mapping Boston Collection. Its holdings stretch chronologically from the 15th century to the present, and geographically cover the world, with a focus on Boston and New England. The center also holds depository library maps and atlases produced by federal, state, and local agencies, as well as data sets used in geographic information systems.Four named collections of distinction include:
- American Revolutionary War-Era Maps
- Boston and New England Maps
- Maritime Charts and Atlases
- Urban Maps