By Elizabeth af Jochnick Before Ten Ten was Ten Ten, it was an in-patient infirmary for Harvard students, located next to Mount Auburn Hospital, known as the Stillman Infirmatory. When the University moved its student health facilities to Harvard Square, they put the Infirmary up for sale. Harvard offered to sell the building and the land surrounding it, to the … Read More
Grendel’s Den: 50 years of Stories to Tell
By Daniel Berger-Jones, Company Leader, President, Cambridge Historical Tours, Inc. Grendel’s Den is one of the most iconically Cantabrigian bars there is. Founded in 1971 by Herb and Sue Kuelzer, it’s now on its second generation of family ownership in the hands of their daughter Kari. And at 50 years old, the bar is not only going strong, but has … Read More
Gold Star Memorials in North Cambridge
By Marion Severynse Veterans Day is an appropriate time to pay homage to the role that North Cambridge and its residents have played in the military history of Massachuestts and the United States. There are nine Memorial Pole and Dedication Markers commemorating Gold Star service members in the area bounded by Rindge Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, and Alewife Brook Parkway. In … Read More
A Lost Park: Longfellow’s Parklands
By Annette LaMond | S.M., MIT Sloan School of Management | Ph.D., Yale University There are various lenses through which to view the history of a city, and the treatment of open space and development of parks may be as revealing as any other. This is particularly true in Cambridge – one of the most densely populated small cities in … Read More
Apply to Become a History Cambridge Fellow
Make history with History Cambridge! We are seeking a storyteller Fellow to help identify, gather, interpret, and amplify the experiences of what it’s like to grow up in our city. Help us share the “Who, What, Where, When, and Why” of Cambridge teens. Who are the people who have influenced you – in your family, your school, your neighborhood? What … Read More
Call To Artists: Tory Row’s Hidden Black History Project
About the Project History Cambridge intends to install temporary public art on the front lawn of Hooper-Lee-Nichols House (HLN) in the Spring of 2022 to raise awareness of Black history in West Cambridge. Massachusetts was a center of slave trading in New England as early as 1688 when African people were kidnapped by Massachusetts ship owners and traders to be … Read More
History Hive: Harvard Square Police Kiosks
#HCHistoryHive, we’ve got another mystery for you to solve! This one’s from Pat P. of Naples, FL. Share your memories of this time and place…. “I am writing an essay about a trip to the Boston area in 1963. My buddy and I went there to see a friend who was attending Harvard. When we drove into Harvard Square we … Read More
Cambridge and the Smallpox Epidemic, 1893-1903
By Beth Folsom In our current era of COVID-19, heated discussions of vaccine mandates and the class and racial tensions inherent in these conversations may seem like a contemporary dilema, but an examination of Cambridge at the turn of the 20th century reveals that the city engaged in similar debates around the issue of smallpox vaccination and public accommodation more … Read More
History Cambridge Continues Anti-Racism Work With Two New Grants from Mass Humanities
Mass Humanities has awarded two grants to History Cambridge that will help us continue our anti-racism work that we began in earnest in 2020 with our new Strategic Plan. The first is a Black History grant in the amount of $11,726 that will help us bring Untold Stories of Black Cambridge to the community in four programs that will take … Read More
R. Buckminster Fuller in Cambridge
By Richard Lingner, 2011 If you’ve read anything about Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), you probably know that Fuller was kicked out of Harvard College. And not just once, but twice. He never graduated. You may not know, however, about some of his more positive experiences in Cambridge, including a stint as a visiting Harvard professor in the early 1960s. In … Read More