Royal Barry Wills Associates Archive
Known as the master of the Cape Cod house, Royal Barry Wills founded one of New England's most influential architecture firms. Learn More
Display sign for Squirrel Brand Butter Chews, Cambridge, Massachusetts, undated. | 
Frontispiece and title page of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley. London: A. Bell, 1773. | 
Chinatown Gate, Boston, photograph by John D. Woolf, 2017. |
Visit the Collections Access Portal to explore Historic New England’s online collections. Note, not all items in the collections are fully catalogued or digitized; if you see an icon instead of an image of the object, it means the original is not digitized. Contact us for more information.
Send your inquiry to [email protected]. Requests are answered in the order in which they are received. Depending on the complexity of your inquiry, the current volume of requests, and staffing capacity, it may take staff more than two weeks to respond to your inquiry. When submitting an inquiry, please describe your research interest specifically and share any hyperlinks or GUSN numbers found via the Collections Access Portal that may be useful to your search.
To request a reproduction and permission to use images from Historic New England’s collections, see Reproductions.
 |  |
Contact staff to schedule an appointment to view archival materials in the Library and Archives. The Library and Archives is open by appointment, Tuesday-Thursday 9:30am–4:30pm.Historic New England’s Library and Archives is a non-lending special collection, located in downtown Boston, a short walk from the North Station and Government Center MBTA stations. Parking is not available. There is limited street parking and multiple parking lots in the immediate area. Please note on arrival to the building, there are two steps leading to the doorway, main lobby area, and an elevator to the Library and Archives reading room. Researchers unable to access the Library and Archives reading room at 85 Merrimac Street owing to the building’s inaccessibility can request to see collections at Historic New England’s Center for Preservation and Collections at 151 Essex Street in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which is a fully accessible building. Some archival collections are housed at the Haverhill Center for Preservation and Collections in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Separate appointments may be required to view materials located there. For more information on preparing for your visit to the Library and Archives and handling archival materials, click here.
If you are unable to research in-person, staff may conduct free collections research on your behalf, based on staff capacity, for up to 30 minutes. Beyond that, researchers must schedule an appointment to conduct their own in-person research or arrange for research services to be provided by staff, depending on current capacity, for a fee. Fees will be determined by the length of time required to conduct the research and the complexity of the research, with no guarantee of the research results.
We appreciate offers of gifts to the Library and Archives that fall under Historic New England’s collecting plan. Please contact us to discuss potential donations.
Known as the master of the Cape Cod house, Royal Barry Wills founded one of New England's most influential architecture firms. Learn More
Known as the master of the Cape Cod house, Royal Barry Wills founded one of New England's most influential architecture firms. Learn More
2,500 original negatives and 6,000 original prints depict recreational sailing vessels and commercial vessels from the 1880s to c. 1922. Learn More
Boston was the first city in North America to build a subway. The city left us a dazzling photographic record of the monumental undertaking.
As a photographer for Life magazine, Verner Reed produced images that reflect the character of notable figures in the news. Learn More
Author Sarah Orne Jewett was a prolific writer of letters to family members and friends in the Boston literary circle of the late nineteenth century.
Approximately 1,000 drawings, paintings, sketches, and illustrations in mainly ink, pen, pencil, and watercolor, dating from the 1820s to the 1930s.
English painter and teacher Edwin Whitefield sketched hundreds of historic houses in New England to capture them before they were lost.
Sign up to our newsletter for our latest news and events
