American physicist Jules Aarons (1921-2008) was born in New York City but spent most of his life in Boston. He was well known for his radio waves research and his street photography in Boston. Throughout his career as a scientist, he continued to develop his craft and took his camera on business trips worldwide.
He photographed Boston’s ethnically diverse West End and predominantly Italian North End neighborhoods, the late 1940s and early 1950s. Much of the West End was razed for urban renewal in the late 1950s, making Aarons’s photos of the area important as a source of historical information.
The following set of photos shows the everyday life of Boston’s streets during the 1950s.
