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
History Hive: Mrs. McCartney
#HCHistoryHive, you did it! We asked you to help us find the identity of a well known female mechanic who may have run a Gulf gas station in Brattle Square. This mechanical whiz was able to fix a car by hammering and/or kicking the motor. When asked if her fee was too much for simply roughing up the motor, she … Read More
Growing Up on Worcester Street
By Suzanne Revaleon Green Originally published in A City’s Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century, 2007 Introduction written by Paula Paris, a member of the Cambridge Historical Commission and a co-founding member of the Cambridge Black History Project, an all-volunteer organization of individuals with deep roots in Cambridge, committed to researching, accurately documenting, preserving, and illuminating the journeys, … Read More
Crossing Paths in Cambridge: Harriet Jacobs, Imogen Willis Eddy, and the Harvard College Observatory
By Paula Tarnapol Whitacre Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, lived in Cambridge in the 1870s. As historians have documented (including during a recent History Café presentation), the boarding houses she ran provided a home for Harvard students and faculty, as well as a sense of community for her daughter Louisa and friends. Less … Read More
A Mystery Lingers Over Huron Avenue
By Michael Kenney, 2013 Cambridge’s streets have histories and stories, just as the city itself does. And among those stories, Huron Avenue is one of the richest – and one with a bit of mystery. There are three main sources for these histories. The detailed records compiled by Lewis M. Hastings, the city engineer from 1889 to 1932, frequently identify … Read More
1986 Neighborhood Trivia Hunt
Cambridge has certainly changed over time, and our 1986 trivia hunt shows just how true that is. It serves as a kind of time capsule of our city. Take a trip back in time with this self-guided tour to see how many of these sites are still around. Which ones do you recognize? Which ones do you remember? What are … Read More
Meet Your New-Old Friend: History Cambridge
Big changes are here. So big that you’ll begin to see us in a whole new light, starting with the most fundamental of things: Our name. You’ve been watching our transformation for a while now. Now we have a new name and image that showcases our innovative mindset. Meet your new-old friend: History Cambridge. We’re still here to explore local … Read More
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 In 1919, no city understood … Read More