Summer is the perfect time to explore, support wonderful independently owned local small businesses, and discover our neighborhoods’ rich and amazing history.

You can do all that with our expanded and updated Small Business/Big History Map, your guide to some incredible local small businesses and the fascinating history connected to their buildings, blocks, and vicinities. The map allows you to explore virtually, but use it as a guide to swing by each store, do some shopping, look for their “Small Business/Big History” sign and learn some fascinating background on local history from it. Find out which storefront served as inspiration for an Edward Hopper painting, which one was the site of the founding of the country’s largest bank, and which one used to have one of the 20th century’s greatest writers as an upstairs neighbor.