Scanned PDF files from Roslindale's past
This page contains links to various scans of printed materials from Roslindale's past.
West Roxbury & Roslindale Residential Suburbs (1904)
An excellent large format booklet from 1904, printed by the local newspapers, pitching the benefits of living in the burgeoning suburbs of West Roxbury and Roslindale a few years after the train disaster of 1887, when holders of the large sprawling estates in the area began portioning them into house lots, building streets and infrastructure, and selling the lots to prospective homeowners.
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The booklet contains descriptions of local businesses and short biographies of "prominent men" of the area. The file is searchable, though some of the names weren't recognized by our OCR software. Lots of great photos of the long-gone estate houses in the area.
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(Booklet courtesy of Josef Porteleki).
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Click here for the pdf.
The Roslindale Tercentenary (1930)
A pageant was put on at the Washington Irving High School in 1930 to celebrate 300 years of European settlement of the area. We have a program and a front-page newspaper article from the celebration.
(Program courtesy of Josef Porteleki).
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Click here for the pdf of the program.
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Click here for the pdf of the front page of The Journal from May 31st, 1930.
Special coin minted for the Tercentenary
by Henry Schuhmacher
Interview with Josef Porteleki
by Deborah Levenson-Estrada, July 11, 2016
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The owner of Ace Hardware in Roslindale, Josef (Joe) Porteleki was born in Austria in 1947. He and his family were war refugees who lived for years in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Austria before being resettled in the US. In this interview, Joe talks about growing up in the camp, coming to the US, and living in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale.
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Click here for a pdf of the interview.