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Vintage Photos Show the Beauty (and Misery) of Winter in Boston

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Circa 1930. Snowstorm in Boston. (Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

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Circa 1930. Snowstorm in Boston. (Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)

Who can forget the brutal Boston winter of the 2014-2015 season? With 64.8 inches of snow, February 2015 obliterated the previous snowiest month on record in the city.

But Bostonians know about snow--and know how winter can be both magical and miserable. A collection of images by Leslie Jones, staff photographer for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956, documented daily life in Boston, including during its snowiest days.

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From kids riding "ice cakes" at Dorchester Bay and wagon-pulling horses slipping in the snow next to Boston Common to pedestrians struggling to stay on their feet during the Valentine's Day blizzard of 1940, Jones has beautifully captured the history of Boston in the 20th century.

Modest about his abilities as a photographer, (he called himself a camera man, not a photojournalist), Jones built an unrivaled collection of photographic negatives, almost 40,000 of which were given to the Boston Public Library by his family in the early 1970s.

View the slideshow above to see some of Leslie Jones' stunning images of Boston in winter.

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