A Brief History of Zoning in Cambridge
By Doug Brown, 2016 Just as we have a place for everything in a well-ordered home, so we should have a place for everything in a well-regulated town. What would we think of a housewife who insisted on keeping her gas range in the parlor and her piano in the kitchen?–Cambridge Tribune, March 8, 1919…
Read More‘Quiet Courage’: Maria Baldwin and the Racial Politics of Education in Cambridge
By Beth Folsom, Program Manager, History Cambridge In her 1905 report to the parents of ten-year-old Edward Cummings, his principal Maria Baldwin described him as “a most loveable little boy, and we are glad that he is part of our little community.”[1] Nearly six decades later, when that little boy had become the celebrated American…
Read More“The Absolute Majority of the Population”: Women in Twentieth-Century Cambridge
This article was originally published as a chapter in Cambridge in the Twentieth Century, edited by Daphne Abeel, Cambridge Historical Society, 2007. Inspired by Cambridge Historical Society’s 2020 theme—Who are Cambridge Women?—the author, Eva Moseley, has reviewed the manuscript and made a few updates which are noted in the text that follows. “The Absolute Majority…
Read More100 Years Ago: Cambridge leading up to the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic
Red Cross workers make anti-influenza masks for soldiers in camp. Boston. Courtesy National Archives, photo no. 165-WW-269B-026 By Elizabeth Adams Lasser, April 2020 During the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 as we quarantine at home, we have seen many references and comparisons in the national media to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919. What was happening…
Read More1861: The Civil War Comes to Cambridge
Cornelius Gerrit Hendrick Bennick enlisted in April 1861, joining some 100 other Cambridge men in Company D, 5th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry. The unit fought in several major battles, including Gettysburg. After the war, Bennick was a member of the Common Council and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. His papers are in the Cambridge Historical Society…
Read More50 Years Later: Harvard’s 1969 Protests
In Cambridge, as in the rest of America, the late 1960s were a period of unrest and upheaval. As we consider our 2019 theme “How Does Cambridge Engage?” we benefit from looking back fifty years to the Spring of 1969. The events of April 8th-10th, 1969 were a response to the Vietnam War and the social…
Read More1905: A Year of New Beginnings
By Michael Kenney, 2015 Call 1905 “a year of new beginnings.” It marked not only the final decision on a new subway route—today’s Red Line—but also the birth of the Cambridge Historical Society. Well into the year, there was debate over whether to run a subway underground once it crossed the Charles River, or to…
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