When Jacob Wirth made his own beer

When German immigrant Jacob Wirth started his eponymous restaurant in 1868, he offered both food and what we'd now probably call artisanal beer. That's Herr Wirth himself in the poster, in front of his restaurant on Eliot Street - a long-gone street across from the present location on Stuart Street.

Wirth was, of course, not alone: Lots of Germans flocked to Boston to work in the breweries of Jamaica Plain and Roxbury (and some lived in places like Germantown on the West Roxbury/Dedham line, which explains the Deutsches Altenheim on Centre Street).

The BPL has put together a collection of posters for old-time Boston breweries, which is cool to look at, but comes with a caveat: It's one of the collections at Digital Commonwealth, and if you spend time looking at the beer posters, you might be tempted to check out all the other collections they have and then you might wind up dropping everything else and just seeing what cool stuff they have and before you know it, it's dark and you've forgotten all the work you were supposed to do.