Boston’s original marathon bombing memorial lives a quiet afterlife in a West Roxbury archive

In the days after the Boston Marathon bombings, people flocked to the scene of the attacks and left behind thousands of items as tokens of grief and solidarity, converting Boylston Street and then Copley Square into an impromptu shrine.

Among the objects deposited was a green apron from a nearby Starbucks, covered with handwritten messages that showed people struggling to find an emotional path forward. “Forgive but never forget,” one message read. “Don’t let hate live in your heart. We are a strong and powerful city.”

The attacks on the marathon have become an indelible part of Boston history, and two permanent markers now stand at the blast sites. But that apron, and the other items that were once part of the temporary memorial, have, in fact, been largely forgotten — even though they’ve been preserved in perpetuity and are accessible to the general public.

A few weeks after the bombings, in June 2013, the temporary memorial was taken down. Since then, a huge swath of the objects that used to make up the memorial have been kept at the Boston City Archives in West Roxbury, a low-slung, nondescript building located near a Home Depot by Boston’s southwestern border.