Do your own research (on Cambridge history)
By Michael Kuchta, 2025
As the city of Cambridge approaches its 400th anniversary and the nation its 250th, many people find themselves more interested in our collective past. You may be curious about the history of your street or neighborhood. Who built these buildings and when? Who lived and worked here? What products were made nearby?
Thankfully, there is a rich array of accessible online resources you can use to satisfy your curiosity. Following is a quick guide to “doing your own research” on Cambridge history.
One great place to start is a newly launched tool from the Cambridge Historical Commission called the Cambridge Digital Architectural Survey Project, or C-Dash for short. The site contains current and historical maps of the city. Click on a location on the map or enter a street address in the search bar and a wealth of documents related to that location will appear, including published articles, notes on ownership history and old photographs.
Another good resource for historical information on Cambridge buildings is a website called Cambridge Buildings and Architects, developed by Harvard librarian Christopher Hail beginning in 1978 for every street address in the city. Hail drew information from building permits and city tax records; the site includes dates of construction and names of builders and property owners. The site hasn’t been updated since 2002, but is still a useful place to search for information on older buildings.
If you want to learn the name of the first baby born in Cambridge in 1952 or when the Gold Star Mothers pool was dedicated, try the Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection. You can use it to search on any topic. It will return results from the Cambridge Chronicle, Cambridge Tribune and other local newspapers going back to the 1840s and including the text of advertisements. You may need a library account to download some newspapers, but it is well worth registering.
Old fire insurance maps of Cambridge can be an invaluable source of information about specific streets and neighborhoods. The Norman Leventhal Map Collection at the Boston Public Library contains an extensive collection of historic maps of the Boston area. The collection, inside the BPL’s main building on Copley Square, is worth an in-person visit, but most of its maps have also been digitized. They can be accessed on a site called Digital Commonwealth. The site hosts visual materials from libraries, historical societies and museums across Massachusetts. (The maps themselves are quite beautiful, and when downloaded and printed can make a nice gift for yourself or a Cambridge neighbor!) Digital Commonwealth is an excellent source for old photos of places and people in Massachusetts.
Speaking of photographs, the Library of Congress website contains a trove of royalty-free images of all sorts of historical subjects. If you want to know what civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks looked like when she visited Cambridge in 1984, look no further than the Library of Congress site.
Another federal government site to explore is the National Archives, which holds U.S. census records especially useful for genealogical research. Census data are available from 1790 to 1950; most of the documents have been digitized by third party sites such as Ancestry.com.
One last resource to mention: the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society (now known as History Cambridge). Established as a gathering of amateur history enthusiasts in 1905, the Society published papers regularly on topics of local historical interest. The proceedings are indexed and searchable. History Cambridge’s website is also a good place to start if you’re looking for resources on the history of the area’s indigenous communities.
If you are more of a brick-and-mortar person than a digital native, you can start your research at the Cambridge History Room on the second floor of the Cambridge Main Library, or at the Cambridge Historical Commission. For instance, the Cambridge History Room can help you find information on a family member who once lived in Cambridge or an old high school yearbook.
What are you researching? History Cambridge would love to know. Leave a comment below or contact us directly at archives@historycambridge.org.
Local history is important, and exploring it can be infectious. Start your research journey today.
This article originally appeared in Cambridge Day.