Boston Marathon Temporary Memorial Collection (Boston City Archives Collection) Collection
Almost immediately after the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon, a makeshift memorial began to take shape at the police barriers blocking off Boylston Street. Neighbors and visitors left flowers, cards, posters, stuffed animals, and, most notably, sneakers. Only three days after the bombing, Greg Zanis of Illinois built three crosses with the names of Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi, and Krystle Campbell . He drove over 1,000 miles to Boston to place them at the memorial. After the death of Sean Collier on April 18, Kevin Brown, of Brockton, Massachusetts made a fourth cross and brought it to the memorial. On April 22, 2013 immediately before Boylston Street was re-opened, city workers moved the majority of the memorial items to Copley Square, but took some fragile paper items to City Hall to protect them from the elements. Over the next two months, thousands of people added their messages to the continually growing and evolving memorial. In the Spring of 2013, the Boston City Archives gathered these items in order to preserve the historical record of this unprecedented outpouring of support. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of its staff, as well as a generous donation of time and resources made by Iron Mountain, the Boston City Archives has digitized these items. In the Spring of 2014, Our Marathon staff created metadata records for these items and added them to the project's collections.
