14 Best Vintage Photos From Boston In The 1970s

The 1970s was a tumultuous decade in Boston. Vietnam War protests were held across the country – 50,000 people attended one such event in April 1970 in Boston. On a local level, the Boston school desegregation conflict dominated the whole decade. The John Hancock Building went up – and down – after a 1973 storm sent some of its glass panels crashing to the ground. And, in 1978, a massive blizzard struck Boston.

Thankfully, this decade wasn’t just about war, inequality, conflict, and disasters. Corita Kent’s Rainbow Swash mural went up, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup and the Celtics secured multiple NBA Championship titles and, in 1979, radiologists at Mass General figured out how to use MRIs as a diagnostic tool.

Most of these images reflect everyday scenes in people’s lives during the 1970s, while a few reflect the way in which our city – and country – was changing.