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How did the ‘town blanket’ become so popular in Massachusetts?

This living room staple is a relic of the 1990s. But why does seemingly everyone have one?

Madeline Bilis

March 20, 2025

3 minutes to read

Picture this: It’s sometime between 1990 and 2005, and you’re a kid spending the afternoon at your grandparents’ house. You plop on the living room couch and grab a blanket before the VHS version of Toy Story starts. What sort of blanket are you imagining?

Maybe you never looked at it very closely when you were younger, but this blanket is probably a two-toned throw. It’s covered in images of landmarks in your hometown. At the top? The town name and the year it was incorporated.

This living room staple is simply referred to as a “town throw blanket,” and it’s very likely your town has one. You can find Millis, Southbridge, and Chicopee town blankets on eBay. There’s a Charlton one on Poshmark. And you’ll find a Leicester blanket in both my grandmother’s house and my mother’s house.

Where, exactly, did these blankets originate? The backstory behind them is a little less exciting than their ubiquity. Many town blankets were the product of fundraisers, whether for libraries, clubs, parks, or other community-minded causes. In the early to mid-1990s, they caught on as a successful way to raise money in towns across the U.S.

That’s partly because most townspeople are more than happy to donate to a local cause, but they don’t always want to simply write a check. “The blanket with the town logo is like an American flag,” explained Tony Dean, president of the Charlton Historical Society. “It’s something they can display, something they’re proud of, and it makes them feel better about handing over some money.”

Upon seeing Charlton’s blanket for sale online, which reads “Designed exclusively for the Charlton Public Library” at the bottom of it, Dean could guess why it was made. “If it’s from the ‘90s, it would coincide with a major project that was done to totally overhaul the library,” he said.

In the case of my family’s blankets, my grandmother bought them from the Leicester Women’s Club in 1995 to support the town. I’ve been using both of them to keep warm practically since I was born—and they’ve held up quite well. “I’ve always just draped it over the couch,” my grandmother told me. “But we use it all the time.”

Donna Bottis, a former president of the Leicester Women’s Club, said the club probably noticed another organization selling similar blankets and decided to give it a try. They sold them in three different colors—green, blue, and maroon—for $40 each.

“I know that when we did it, we made a lot of money,” Bottis said. “We were one of the first ones in town to do it and we got a really great response. We kept reordering and reordering all the time, and we still have some left.”

While town blankets aren’t specific to Massachusetts, there does seem to be a proliferation of them here.

“My mother had one, and then when she passed away I got it, so now I’ve got two,” Bottis said. “And then my daughter has one. So I mean everybody’s got them, you know. It’s really a nice thing.”

The Leicester blanket features notable town buildings like the library and the circa 1723 Swan Tavern. “A lot of people had an affiliation with one of those many different things [pictured],” added Ruth Dowgielewicz, another Leicester Women’s Club member. “It was especially nice if you had a college student going away to college, and you gave them this blanket to have something to remember their hometown.”

There’s clearly a nostalgia element to the blankets that makes them worth keeping on display in living rooms—sometimes for over 30 years. Call them a 1990s status symbol, if you like. I know I will.

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Madeline Bilis

Madeline Bilis is a freelance journalist based in Boston, where she covers real estate, travel, and design. She will always defend the city’s brutalist buildings.