The image is a black and white photograph depicting a street festival. Two men in the foreground are carrying a large statue of a female figure, possibly a religious icon, adorned with decorations. Other people are visible in the background, suggesting a crowd gathered for the event. The overall scene conveys a sense of community celebration.

Lessons in East Cambridge history: Reflections on two centuries of newspaper coverage

By Beth Folsom, 2025

This is the third year of History Cambridge’s Neighborhood History Center model of programming, in which we choose one of Cambridge’s 13 neighborhoods on which to focus for a calendar year. For the past six months, I have delved into the history of this year’s neighborhood, East Cambridge, by reading the nearly two centuries’ worth of articles contained in the Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection at the Cambridge Public Library. This was a daunting task at first, to say the least; a search for “East Cambridge” in the database returned more than 38,000 articles, from its earliest entries in 1846 to its most recent in 2019. Last week I reached the end of the list, having compiled a file of newspaper clippings that now numbers more than 3,000 pages.

This project has provided a fascinating window into the evolution of East Cambridge over the past 200 years, in its own right and as a piece in the larger puzzle of the city’s growth and development. Articles written about the neighborhood by residents and outside observers have spanned the area’s nearly 400 years since colonial settlement and have delved into issues as diverse as the natural and planned landscape, the rise of industry and the many different racial, ethnic and religious groups that have called the neighborhood home.

One common theme that has emerged from my research is that East Cambridge has been a perpetual underdog, often overlooked and undervalued by those in other neighborhoods. From its earliest colonial origins as “almost an island,” set apart from the rest of Cambridge by salt flats and tidal marshes, East Cambridge has maintained its own, separate identity – one that led in the 1840s to an attempt by the neighborhood to establish itself as an independent town, separate from Cambridgeport and Old Cambridge. Although the area did remain part of greater Cambridge, its sense of a unique identity persists in many ways to the present day.

The image displays a black and white newspaper clipping with the headline "BLAKE & KNOWLES STEAM PUMP COMPANY". Below the name, there's a description highlighting its significance: "Largest Individual Industry in Cambridge and Second Largest Plant of Its Kind in the Country—Nearly 1600 Men Employed". The text is clear and appears to be from an old publication. — The headline from a 1907 Cambridge Chronicle article on the Blake and Knowles Steam Pump Co. in East Cambridge. This image is used with permission of the Cambridge Public Library.

Once Andrew Craigie and his associates in the Lechmere Corp. succeeded in surveying, leveling and partitioning much of East Cambridge into residential and industrial lots, the neighborhood soon became a burgeoning center of industry. This development was further spurred by the building of a bridge between Lechmere Point and Boston in the early 19th century, allowing goods and people to move much more quickly and easily between the cities. Craigie’s success in convincing Middlesex County to move its county seat to Cambridge, and his gift of a new courthouse designed by famed architect Charles Bullfinch, made East Cambridge a site of political as well as commercial influence.

Although the neighborhood was gaining in population and industry during the 19th century, it remained an area on the “outskirts” of the city, a place for many of the sectors that everyone needs but no one wants in their backyard. The proximity of the railroad tracks made it ideal for a wide range of manufacturing ventures, from furniture production to glass-making to meat processing, whose products could easily be transported to markets throughout the country. These industries were often accompanied by loud noise and objectionable odors, but complaints by neighborhood residents were largely overlooked or dismissed as “the cost of doing business.”

Squeezed between track and factories...A melting pot of people and gardens — The headline from a 1972 Cambridge Chronicle feature on East Cambridge. This image is used with permission of the Cambridge Public Library.

What has emerged from my newspaper research is just how resilient and proactive the East Cambridge community has been over the centuries, pushing back against attempts by those in power in other areas of the city to ignore or downplay its concerns. When the John P. Squire Co. polluted the Miller’s River with the runoff from its pork processing plant to such an extent that large swaths of the river were filled in, residents took action, leading to some of the first antipollution environmental laws in Massachusetts and providing a model for public-health and environmental protection legislation nationwide. The presence of the Middlesex County jail in the neighborhood led East Cambridge to be on the forefront of prison reforms in the state, with the prison becoming a showpiece of modern penitentiary practices that was visited by officials from across the state and around the country. And the many factories and centers of production in the neighborhood led to labor actions and reforms as workers demanded fair pay and safe working conditions.

Demographically, East Cambridge has changed considerably over the course of my research, but has always been a diverse and vibrant neighborhood with a mix of residential and commercial spaces occupied by residents from many ethnic backgrounds. From the Irish immigrants fleeing potato famine to the Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Portuguese who arrived in the late 19th and 20th centuries to the Haitians, Uyghurs, and Cape Verdeans who have arrived in recent years, East Cambridge has always made room for newcomers while retaining the cultural traditions of its earlier arrivals. Churches and cultural organizations have played a major role in the life of the neighborhood, helping immigrants and their families to retain their language and culture while helping them adjust to life in Cambridge. Parades, festivals and other celebrations continue to play an important role in East Cambridge public life, drawing on tradition even as they adapt to the 21st century.

This project has allowed me to examine the “big picture” view of East Cambridge over two centuries, as well as the people, events, and issues particular to specific periods in the neighborhood’s development. It has underscored for me just how important local news coverage is to a deeper understanding of an area and its residents, and has given me the opportunity to better understand the neighborhood and its relationship to the city as a whole. What I have found is a community shaped by geography, industry, and a multitude of cultural influences – one that has been challenged and underestimated time and again, and has always risen to the occasion, not without disagreement and strife, but always with strength, resilience and a desire to honor tradition even while looking to the future.

This article originally appeared in Cambridge Day.