Outdoor Skating in Cambridge

By Annette LaMond, 2026

Bring Back Outdoor Skating in Cambridge:
Let’s Revive the Tradition of Skating in the Parks¹

The winter of the 2024–25 was a classic for outdoor skating – cold temperatures with little snow. One-
hundred years ago, even sixty years ago, such weather would have been enjoyed by skaters in parks across Cambridge. The city created the first playground rink – on six acres at Cambridge (now Donnelly) Field – in 1895. Over the years, the city created rinks at more than a dozen Cambridge sites – playgrounds, fields, school grounds, vacant city-owned lots, even the public works yard on Norfolk Street. Particular favorites were the Cambridge Common, Cambridge (Donnelly), Fresh Pond (Glacken), Mill Pond (Hoyt), Russell, and Thorndike (Ahern). At some venues, in some years, there were also hockey rinks – boarded or banked with loam – for schoolboys, for example, at Rindge, Russell, and Captain’s Island (Magazine Beach). (See end of paper for historical images and a map showing parks with rinks.)

But now only the oldest Cantabrigians will remember winters when the city’s park and recreation departments set up outdoor skating rinks. This paper is written to refresh the historical memory, and to spark interest in reviving the tradition of ice skating in the city’s parks and perhaps at a new outdoor refrigerated rink (or two), possibly at one of the Central Square parking lots or in the Alewife Quad (once home to a popular skating pond).

It wouldn’t be difficult for the DPW to set up rinks in a least a few parks when a frigid air mass is on the way between December and early February. Although climate change is a concern for outdoor skating aficionados, the winters still offer stretches of cold days, and if you google “DIY backyard ice rinks,” you will see that there is a lot of how-to information online. When the weather forecast promises a polar vortex, the city’s park staff could create pop-up rinks. A number of tennis courts in the city’s parks would be good candidates for winter skating use.² The costs would be modest, and the benefits great.

As for a refrigerated rink, other towns and cities have enlivened their outdoor spaces with conveniently located rinks.³ Perhaps, a public-private partnership could make a refrigerated outdoor rink in Cambridge possible. There is a successful one in Jamaica Plain. Indeed, Cambridge has had a popular privately operated rink by the Kendall Square Canal for the past 10 years. The Frog Pond on the Boston Common – managed for the city by the Skating Club of Boston – lends beauty and animation to its surroundings. Why not a “Central Square Pond Rink” in Cambridge?

Where Cambridge People Skated in the 1800s

In the 1800s, Cambridge, with its glaciated landscape, offered plenty of natural skating. The 155-acre Fresh Pond, where ice harvesting regularly produced new black ice, could accommodate thousands of skaters, including some notable practitioners of the sport, like young Harvard student Theodore Roosevelt. There were also small ponds throughout the city that attracted skaters. The now lost Harvard Botanic garden had two pretty ponds ideal for young children. Today, it’s difficult to imagine a pond on Inman Street, but there was one, and it was a popular, if rowdy, scene.⁴ Similarly, the tidal “Mill Pond,” between River Street and Western Avenue provided skating. So apparently did a sizable empty lot known as the Foundry Field in East Cambridge. Typically the earliest skating of the season was found at the Glacialis (also known as Artificial Pond or “Arti”) – a large shallow pond north of Fresh Pond, dug courtesy of an ice entrepreneur in the 1840s. Occasionally, sudden cold weather even provided skating in ditches and streets, at least until horse hooves and cartwheels put an end to it.

Skating Is Banned at Fresh Pond

Over time, the small ponds were lost as the city’s population grew and houses filled in the fields, but there was always Fresh Pond. That is, until 1899, when the City banned skating on the pond-turned-reservoir. The ban, which followed a decade-long debate between the city’s skaters and the water board, turned on a question of science, namely, the risks of skater-borne disease and pollution. The prohibition was only imposed after three aldermen were convinced that the water board “was going to do its share in providing skating places [that is, supply water] to take the place of Fresh Pond.”⁵ Although the Cambridge Chronicle editorialized on the importance of facilities for skating, it pointed out that the provision of “skating parks” should be the responsibility of the park commission. The editorial writer noted that it was “as important to furnish facilities for skating, as to furnish facilities for bathing.”⁶ The question was where would the alternate skating venues be located.

Where Skaters Found Ice after the Ban

One of the existing places where the water board expected skating to continue was at Glacialis on Concord Avenue north of Fresh Pond. It was large – some six acres – so many skaters could be accommodated, including the city’s high school hockey teams and Harvard’s, too.⁷ Early on, a proposal was made to use this marshland to create a “great natural park of lake and meadow scenery” to be improved for boating, swimming, and skating along with baseball and football fields. A visionary proposal, but it did not advance.⁸ Indeed, the City’s failure to buy Artificial Pond and its surroundings was one of the lost opportunities in the history of Cambridge parks. This area, bounded on the east by Alewife Brook Parkway, is now home to a mix of stores and offices, new apartment buildings, parking lots, and low-rise industrial buildings waiting to be redeveloped. Perhaps a skating rink could be incorporated into Healthpeak’s proposal for the development of its 46 acres in the Alewife Quad.⁹

Another existing destination for skaters was the Foundry Field on Cambridge Street near the Boston & Albany rail line. During the Fresh Pond debate, it was transformed into an Olmsted-designed park with a commodious shelter. Surprisingly, while the skating debate was raging in City Hall in the 1890s, there was little reference to the fact that Cambridge was engaged in a great park-making campaign. In 1893, a newly created park commission developed a plan to reclaim the degraded banks of the Charles River. This plan – still well-known today – was an extraordinary benefit to the entire city. Less well known in the annals of city history, the commission also pressed forward with plans to acquire land for “interior reservations” that would serve the city’s neighborhoods, including with skating rinks.

The largest of the “inland” parks, Cambridge Field, was sited on the old Foundry Field – a 12-acre expanse bordered by Cambridge, Berkshire, Willow, and York streets – in the most densely populated area of the city. The work of filling, grading, drainage, and water supply began in 1894, and proceeded briskly through 1895, with installation of curbs, paths, plantings, lights and a commodious shelter (designed by Andrews, Jacques & Rantoul). Provision for skating was visualized from the beginning (the field house had accommodations for skate sharpening). The six-acre “rink,” which opened during the winter of 1895–96, was well patronized from the beginning.¹⁰ One annual park report noted, “[D]uring the skating season, men, women and children come from every direction to enjoy the skating.”¹¹ The field (renamed in 1935 in memory of John F. Donnelly, a long-serving superintendent of parks) was a winter attraction for decades. One sad chapter in the history of the city’s parks is that, in 1959, the beautiful field house at Donnelly Field was razed and a sizable portion of the grounds taken over for the building of a new public school.

Work on the second of the “inland” parks envisioned in 1893 proceeded more slowly. Located in then less populated North Cambridge, Rindge Field was 11 acres bounded by Rindge, Yerxa, Groveland (now Haskell), and Pemberton streets. Like Cambridge Field, it was designed by a landscape architect. However, it was not until the winter of 1903–04 that a skating rink was added to the field. The park department encountered some problems with sandy soil, but they were resolved, and Rindge became a popular skating spot. Within a decade, a second rink was added for hockey.¹²

Slower to be realized was a skating rink at a more central location – the Cambridge Common. Although the park department built a rink on the Common early in the winter of 1903–04, the water board declined to allow flooding on account of the “scarcity” of water in Fresh Pond. High school hockey players were vocal in their displeasure, but the board did not back down.¹³ Finally, four years later, the Cambridge Tribune reported that, thanks to “the request of many school boys,” two municipal skating rinks had been created – one at the northwestern end of Cambridge Common, and the other on the Captain’s Island ball ground [now part of Magazine Beach Park].¹⁴ The rink on the Common was boarded and the latter banked up with loam, and the department promised nightly flooding to maintain the ice.

Another large field was added to the Cambridge park system in 1912 – Russell Field with an enclosed seven acres, including football gridiron, two baseball fields, quarter-mile track and runs, and two grandstands accommodating 8,000 people, primarily for the use of Rindge and Latin Schools.¹⁵ In 1916–17, a rink was added for the schools’ hockey teams. (Outside the enclosed area, the city owned an additional 22 acres for expanded facilities.) Around the same time, the Park Department added two new playgrounds with skating rinks: Thorndike Field (later renamed for park commissioner John J. Ahern) in East Cambridge and Mill Pond (renamed for Cpl. Russell E. Hoyt) in the Riverside neighborhood.

By the 1920s, there were skating and hockey rinks throughout the city, and three fields (Hoyt, Rindge and Cambridge) had been illuminated for nighttime skating. News articles also reported that attendance at the ice rinks was great, so much so that the school department of physical education arranged a grammar school hockey tournament.¹⁶ A likely encouragement to the interest in hockey: in 1924–25, the Boston Bruins became the first American team in the National Hockey League.

Reports of the rinks – when and where – were a feature of the winter newpapers. For example, in mid-December 1926, the Chronicle announced, “Hockey rinks have already been set up for lovers of skating at Cambridge field, Cambridge common, Thorndike [Ahern], and Russell Hoyt playgrounds, and at Rindge field. There will also be skating, but no [hockey] rinks, at the Roberts and Merrill schools.” It was reported that the recreation department also hoped to set up hockey rinks at Raymond Street Park and Fresh Pond, if sufficient funds were available.¹⁷

Skating Through the Depression

The City continued to set up skating rinks in parks, through the Depression, and even added to their number. One park commissioner, who advocated for skating rinks in the parks, asserted, “[R]ecreation is the most important investment the city can make, and…keeps down the work of the health and police departments.”¹⁸

In 1931, Cambridge’s Unemployment Relief Committee used funds to construct a permanent rink for the high school at Russell Field, as well as a second rink for the children of North Cambridge.¹⁹ After the federal Works Progress Administration was established in 1935, the program was tapped to fund flooding and supervision at seven fields and playgrounds, including Cambridge, Ahern, Corcoran [Raymond Park], Rindge, Callahan, and Hoyt. Early in January 1936, an article in the Cambridge Tribune reported, “Youths and adults alike have been enjoying skating at the municipal playgrounds during the cold weather which followed the Christmas holiday. Nearly 2,500 have daily, including the evening, filled the flooded rinks. The largest number, about 700 a day, have been skating at Cambridge common.”²⁰

Skating After World War II

In 1944, after years of lobbying, a skating area was finally provided at Fresh Pond – on the three tennis courts near the golf course clubhouse. In his annual report for the year, the City Manager said, “I think it is not at all boastful to say that Cambridge now has the most attractive skating rink around Boston.”²¹ It soon became a social hub.²² Over the next years, reports in the Cambridge Chronicle indicated that nine rinks were winter regulars – along with a toboggan slide at Fresh Pond.²³

In the 1950s, the Metropolitan District Commission entered the picture. In 1957, the state agency [now the Department of Conservation & Recreation] opened a refrigerated rink on the Concord Turnpike (aka Route 2) near Lake Street at the edge of the Alewife Reservation where the Cambridge, Belmont, and Arlington town lines meet. It was intended to benefit the people of Arlington, Belmont, and north and west sections of Cambridge. (One of the advocates for the rink was a state representative from West Cambridge.) Older Cantabrigians remember skating at the Route 2 rink, but ice management at the MDC outpost seems to have been a challenge. There is no record of the town governments lending assistance, and some time before 1990, the rink ceased to operate. This is another sad note in the story of where Cambridge people skated. The MDC, with best intentions, built an outdoor rink in a great location, but its budget was tight. If only the three towns – Arlington, Belmont and Cambridge – had stepped forward to support the rink that benefited their residents.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge park and recreation departments continued to flood and maintain areas for outdoor skating, as the weather permitted, with locations varying from year to year. The Chronicle reported that five skating areas were expanded in 1958. In 1968, the city provided skating on three fields (Cambridge Common, Hoyt between Western Avenue and River Street, and Ahern on Fulkerson Street), as well as on the tennis court sites (Rindge by Pemberton Street and Glacken close to the Fresh Pond golf course club house). There was even a city-organized skate swap at the beginning of the season.²⁴ During the winter of 1968–69, 29 days of ice skating were recorded. ²⁵ As late as 1972, skating areas were maintained at Glacken, Rindge, Cambridge Common, Donnelly (Berkshire and York streets), Edward Sennott (Broadway and Norfolk Street) and Corporal Burns (Memorial Drive and Flagg Street). ²⁶

Then the reports of outdoor skating in the newspapers largely end – a change that followed closely upon the opening of another MDC ice rink – the indoor Gore Street rink (named in honor of Rev. Romano Simoni) during the winter of 1970–71.²⁷ Indeed, subsequent articles about skating rinks then focused on the possible construction of a second Cambridge MDC rink at the other end of the city – candidate sites being St. Peter’s Field or New Street. The news reports do not indicate why plans for a second rink did not proceed.²⁸ Hockey players moved indoors, and a new generation of children learned to skate indoors. And these trends accelerated as more MDC rinks were opened over the next decade.

Back to the Future

Let’s renew the outdoor skating tradition in Cambridge. Over the past two years, the City has introduced initiatives to build community and get Cantabrigians outdoors with block parties, dance parties, bike rides, park family days, and movie nights. But these have been warm-weather events. I urge the City Council and the City Manager to take advantage of the city’s beautiful parks in the winter, especially on the frigid days that come our way. Interest in skating programs – learn-to-skate, figure skating, youth hockey (boys and girls) and adult hockey has been growing. With new outdoor skating rinks, the tradition of skating in the parks would bounce back very quickly.

With winter approaching, this is the time to look at Cambridge history and identify two or three parks where outdoor rinks are feasible, so that they can be made ready for skaters on the first days of subfreezing cold.²⁹ At the same time, let’s consider where a refrigerated ice rink or two might be located and mobilize support. Planning and fundraising for a significant refrigerated rink would rally people across the city.

Annette LaMond is an avid skater who enjoys both indoor and outdoor ice. She is the historian of the
Cambridge Skating Club, and served as its president for nine years.

List of Parks with Skating*

• Broadway Common (Broadway and Norfolk) (renamed in honor of City Councillor Edward J. Sennott)
• Cambridge Common
• Cambridge Field (Cambridge Street, Berkshire, Willow and York) (renamed in honor of Superintendent of Parks John F. Donnelly)
• Captain’s Island Field [now part of Magazine Beach Park]
• Corporal Burns Park (Memorial Drive and Flagg Street)
• Father Callahan Playground (Concord Avenue)
• Fresh Pond (on tennis courts by the golf course clubhouse)
• Mill Pond (between River Street and Western Avenue) (named in 1924 for WWI soldier Russell E. Hoyt)
• Raymond Street Playground (renamed in 1931 for WWI sailor Timothy F. Corcoran)
• Rindge Field (Rindge, Yerxa, Groveland [now Haskell], Pemberton)
• Thorndike Field (Fulkerson Street) (renamed in 1926 for Park Commissioner John J. Ahern)

*Includes locations where skating was provided over many years.

1. This overview of the history of skating in the Cambridge parks is based on a compilation of articles in the Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Newspaper Collection and Park Department annual reports. The compilation of newspaper articles includes companion notes on skating, the water board, and the parks, and is available upon request. ↩︎
2. Candidate tennis courts include: Glacken Field (with the advantages of a nearby parking lot and golf course clubhouse that could be used as a comfort station), Green-Rose Heritage Park, Hoyt, Pemberton, Rafferty Park, and Riverside Press Park. ↩︎
3. In addition to the Frog Pond on Boston Common, some locations with refrigerated rinks include: Falmouth, ME (Lee Twombley Pond); Portsmouth, NH (Strawbery Banke’s Puddle Dock Pond); Brookline (Jack Kirrane Ice Skating Rink); Jamaica Plain (DCR Kelly Outdoor Rink); Worcester, MA (Worcester Common Oval); and Providence, RI (BankNewport City Center). ↩︎
4. It is interesting to note the locations of ponds shown in the G.M. Hopkins & Co. Atlas of the City of Cambridge for 1886. Some locations of now disappeared ponds: between Larch [Street] and Fresh Pond Lane; on Brattle Street (between the Longfellow House and the Worcester House); in the Harvard Botanic Garden at Raymond and Linnaean; and on Strawberry Hill. ↩︎
5. “The Skating Ordinance,” Cambridge Chronicle, October 28, 1899, p.11. ↩︎
6. “Providing for the Skaters” Cambridge Chronicle, October 28, 1899, p.2. ↩︎
7. Cambridge Chronicle, December 25, 1897, p.5. ↩︎
8. “The Fresh Pond Marshes,” Cambridge Tribune, March 21, 1903, p.4. ↩︎
9. Healthpeak, a real estate investment trust, began acquiring properties in the Alewife area in the late 2010s, and is now developing mixed-use proposals. ↩︎
10. “During the winter the playfield was flooded, and for the most of the season kept free of snow. There were 35 days of skating, and during this time many thousands enjoyed the sport. The order was excellent, and the rule established by the board prohibiting sticks and sleds from the ice was strictly observed, although it was contrary to the custom of the skaters who used to frequent the old Foundry Field.” Annual Report of the Park Commission, 1896, p.15. ↩︎
11. Annual Report of the Park Commission, 1903, p.16. According to the previous year’s annual report, an estimated 24,800 people enjoyed the ice during a skating season of 43 days. ↩︎
12. Cambridge Sentinel, February 24, 1912, p.5. ↩︎
13. “No Place to Skate,” Cambridge Chronicle, January 30, 1904, p.9, and “That Skating Rink on the Common,” Cambridge Tribune, February 6, 1904, p.10. ↩︎
14. “Municipal Skating Rinks,” Cambridge Tribune, January 25, 1908, p.10. ↩︎
15. “Russell Field,” Report of Board of Park Commissioners to the City Council, May 31, 1913, pp.552–554. ↩︎
16. Cambridge Sentinel, February 2, 1924, p. 5. ↩︎
17. “Winter Activities of Recreation Department,” Cambridge Chronicle, December 17, 1926, p. 16. In their annual report for 1927, park department stated its intention of creating a rink at the Neighborhood Ten [Raymond] park. In the 1939 annual report, the superintendent noted, “The ice-skating conditions at this field have been so good that hundreds of children and adults have patronized the rink during the past few winters.” A letter to the Chronicle in January 1954 requests that a “small area of the park flooded-for the exclusive use of the younger children.” (Cambridge Chronicle, January 21, 1954, p.10) There were regular calls for a rink at Fresh Pond, but it was not until 1944 that the park department created a rink on the tennis courts at Glacken Field. ↩︎
18. “Mayor Urged to Appropriate More for Playgrounds,” Cambridge Tribune, December 9, 1932, p.1. ↩︎
19. “Unemployment Fund to Start a Second Rink,” Cambridge Tribune, December 26, 1931, p.1. ↩︎
20. “Playgrounds Rinks Flooded for Skating,” Cambridge Tribune, January 3, 1936, p. 3. ↩︎
21. Cambridge Chronicle, January 18, 1945, p.1. ↩︎
22. “Plan Big Skating Carnival at Fresh Pond Rink Soon,” Cambridge Chronicle, January 24, 1946, p.8. Speaking of friendships formed on the ice, the author has a friend whose parents met as college students while skating on the Cambridge Common. ↩︎
23. Cambridge Chronicle, June 5, 1947, p.24, and Cambridge Chronicle, December 25, 1952, p.18. ↩︎
24. “City Floods Several Fields,” Cambridge Chronicle, February 8, 1968, p.8. ↩︎
25. Cambridge Chronicle, January 1, 1970, p.29. ↩︎
26. “Recreation Department Offers Activities for All Ages,” Cambridge Chronicle, October 11, 1973, p.41. ↩︎
27. Articles on the Gore Street rink in the Chronicle indicated that the new MDC skating facility was not well maintained. As was case with the Route 2, the local government (Cambridge) did not seem to involve itself with the management of the rink. Indeed, a vandalism-caused fire required a long shutdown of the rink in 1977. Indeed, this story of poor maintenance from the 1970s into the 2000s played out in MDC facilities throughout the city. Fortunately, over the past 20 years, Cambridge people have worked for the improvement of the city’s DCR properties – e.g., Magazine Beach Park, Hell’s Half Acre, Lowell Memorial Park, and Blair Pond, to name some. ↩︎
28. One reason may have been that, for safety, neighborhood residents called for a pedestrian bridge over the nearby rail tracks, but the City did not act. Calls for a pedestrian bridge have continued since the 1970s. ↩︎
29. The ice committee of the Cambridge Skating Club – which has 128 years of ice-making experience – could offer expertise on flooding strategies, ice maintenance routines, and equipment. ↩︎