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    Cambridge
    Cambridge
    Cambridge
    Ebook195 pages49 minutes

    Cambridge

    By Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

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    About this ebook

    Uncover the history of Cambridge, Massachusetts through vintage images in this pictorial history.


    Settled as New Towne in 1631, Cambridge was referred to by Wood, a seventeenth-century chronicler, as "one of the neatest and best compacted towns in New England." The founding of Harvard College in 1636 was to ensure the town's notoriety, as it was the first college in the New World. Harvard gave Cambridge a cosmopolitan flavor, but the town retained its open farmland and its well-known fisheries along the Charles and Alewife Rivers for nearly two centuries. By the early nineteenth century Cambridge saw tremendous development, with industrial concerns in Cambridgeport. New residents swelled Cambridge's population so much that it became a city in 1846. These changes, which included horse-drawn streetcars and, later, the Elevated Railway that is today known as the Red Line, made Cambridge a place of convenient residence. With the large-scale development in the late nineteenth century, Cambridge became a thriving nexus of cultural diversity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 17, 1999
    ISBN9781439620441
    Cambridge
    Author

    Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

    Anthony Mitchell Sammarco is a noted historian and author of over sixty books on Boston, its neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. He lectures widely on the history and development of his native city.

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      Book preview

      Cambridge - Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

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      INTRODUCTION

      Settled in 1631, Cambridge was originally known as New Towne and was referred to by William Wood, an English chronicler of early 17th-century aspects of New England, as one of the neatest and best-compacted towns in New England, having many fair structures, with many handsome-contrived streets. The inhabitants are most of them very rich. The town was laid out in squares with the early streets, such as Creek, Marsh, Long, Crooked, Wood, Spring, and Water Streets, laid out at right angles, one square remaining open as the marketplace. In 1631, a passage was dug connecting the Charles River and South Street, the first of subsequent topographical changes. Although New Towne had been envisioned as the seat of government for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the focus eventually shifted to Boston. However, the early years of the town were important, as was evidenced by the founding in 1636 of Harvard College with 400 pounds appropriated by the general court. Endowed in 1638 with one half of the estate and the entire library of the Rev. John Harvard (1607–1638) of Charlestown, this fledgling school was to be the first college founded in the New World. It was said that "in compliment to the college, and in memory of the place where many of our fathers received their education, [the town] was now denominated Cambridge"; and so it has been known since.

      Although Cambridge was closely associated with Harvard College for the first two centuries after the town was settled, the area known as Old Cambridge was the center of town and is today the area known as Harvard Square. Considered no more than a farming village until the beginning of the 19th century, Cambridge was to attract new residents, immigrants to the New World, and thereby an individuality and a sense of urbanity which separated it from Boston. The town was to see the increased development of Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, two areas that began to flourish as residential areas in the early 19th century, with manufacturing and businesses attracting these new residents. Although Cambridge had open farmland that was well cultivated, the town was known for its fisheries along the Alewife and Charles Rivers and the various industries that brought it great renown.

      During the early 19th century, the aspect of arboretum cemeteries had been introduced to this country by those who had visited Pere La Chaise in Paris. In 1831, Sweet Auburn, a large tract of land with gently rolling hills and valleys on the Cambridge-Watertown line, was purchased and laid out as Mount Auburn Cemetery. Dedicated on September 24, 1831, Mount Auburn was laid out by Henry A.S. Dearborn with winding paths embellished with infinite varieties of tree and shrub. The sale of family lots went briskly and secured the success of Mount Auburn. Although this large tract of land was to be used as a garden for the dead, Cambridge’s rapid development ensured its incorporation as a city, which was accomplished in 1846.

      On May 4, 1846, the first city government of Cambridge assembled in the church at the corner of Norfolk and Harvard Streets and began to transact business on behalf of the city. The first mayor of Cambridge was the Rev. James D. Green who, with the support of the city council, began the mechanics of creating a city with ordinances to regulate the racing and immoderate driving of horses in the streets, keeping of swine, transporting of gunpowder, and the ‘going at large’ of domestic fowl and goats (the travails of city government!). By the mid-19th century, Cambridge had become a city of thriving enterprises, successful businesses, and well-kept houses. Transportation had increased with horse-drawn streetcars connecting Cambridge and Boston and was to be greatly improved in the early 20th century with the opening of the Cambridge subway, which connected Harvard Square and Boston. The industrial base included books and printing (the first book to be published in the New World was The Bay Psalm Book, written by Thomas Weld, Richard Mather, and John Eliot, and published in Cambridge in 1640 by Stephen Daye), bricks, confectionery, soap, furniture, tinware, glassware, musical instruments, and metal goods—all of which provided employment for the burgeoning population. The great strides made in the period between the Civil War and World War II established Cambridge as not only an attractive and convenient place for people of all walks of life and ethnic traditions to live, but also a city known throughout the country for its rich historical associations.

      Home of culture and wide learning,

      Generous to all;

      Knowledge, letters, names renowned

      Answer to her call;

      To the world she’s given all freely.

      Cambridge, honored be,

      City fair, with gifts most rare,

      Praise to thee!

      —Downs

      One

      EARLY CAMBRIDGE

      Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.

      Born there? Don’t say so? I was, too;

      Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,

      Standing still, if you must have proof.

      —Holmes

      Christ Church was designed by Peter Harrison and stands at Zero Garden Street, opposite the Cambridge Common. During the Revolution, as most of its congregation were Loyalists, the church was closed and

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