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North Cambridge History Hub

2024 is our year of North Cambridge

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In this Hub

A Brief History of North Cambridge

At the end of the last ice age – some 10,000-12,000 years ago — the area we now know as North Cambridge was under about a mile of ice. As the glaciers advanced, they ground the rock into sand and gravel and as they retreated, they left behind hills— Observatory Hill, Strawberry Hill, Avon Hill; large accumulations of rock; and vast deposits of clay. The Alewife region was the Great Swamp. Garden Street was the Great Swamp Way. These marshes acted as a giant sponge for seven square miles that included Belmont, Arlington, and Cambridge. The Massachusett People and other local Indigenous groups used the marshes for fishing and foraging.

When the colonists descended, starting in 1630, they tried to farm this area but the marshland was high in salt content, which meant that the surrounding soil did not produce very well. When they found the clay, the colonists used it for small-scale building and pottery. Two-hundred years later, in the mid-1840s, when the industrial revolution was in full-swing, there was a huge demand in New England for non-flammable building material. The problem with wood construction is that coal fires tend to burn it down. So, New Englanders turned to brick to build their factories, mills, workers housing, and new buildings for the Harvard campus.

In 1858, around 187,000 bricks were produced each day in North Cambridge. That’s a grand total of roughly 24 million bricks in one season! An average size house (around 1,200 square feet) would require somewhere around 8-9,000 bricks. That means the bricks in North Cambridge could have been used to build over 2 ½ thousand homes each and every year. Initially, a lot of small companies enjoyed success but, by World War I, most of the smaller brick companies had been consolidated into the New England Brick Company (or NEBCO for short).

Who worked in these claypits and brickyards? Certainly there were workers from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds but, as with many industries in Cambridge and beyond, the workforce tended to reflect the dominant immigrant groups of each period. In the 1840s and 1850s, the Irish immigrants arriving because of the potato famine made up the majority of the clay and brick industries. This was largely due to word-of-mouth referrals within the immigrant community — as new arrivals came to Cambridge seeking employment, they were often referred by friends or family members already working at the brickyards. Beginning in the 1870s, the Irish had started to gain a foothold in other local industries, and the new French Canadian arrivals began to fill the empty positions in brickmaking and pottery. This same pattern would repeat itself with Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Black Americans, who were migrating out of the South and the West during the Great Migration of the early 20th century.

Over the past century, North Cambridge has seen much of its large-scale industrial production taper off, but its churches, schools, and small businesses have allowed the neighborhood to retain its sense of community and character. Changing demographics and development have affected the area in both positive and negative ways, but residents’ sense of neighborhood identity remains strong.

Photo Gallery

Glacialis, Fresh Pond ca. 1890. Photo Credit: CHS Image Collection

Notre Dame de Pitie ca. 1900 — Glacialis, Fresh Pond ca. 1890. Photo Credit: CHS Image Collection

History Cambridge Articles

Native Americans thrived in the ‘Great Swamp,’ marshy headwaters that we know of as Alewife by Marjorie Hilton
What is in a name? The origins of Cambridge Public Elementary Schools’ Nomenclature by Talia Franks
Changing Tides in Cambridge Industry by Beth Folsom
‘Changing Tides in Cambridge Industry’ talk will examine wave of labor and immigration by Beth Folsom
Joyce Chen started with a 250-seat restaurant, went to 350 and only grew her empire from there by Deb Mandel
Old North Cambridge By Thomas F. O’Malley, 1929
Savoring the Legacy of Joyce Chen by Stephen Chen
Setting up a Neighborhood History Center provided a physical connection with the past by Beth Folsom
The Romance of Brick by G. Burton Long, 1971
You can pick up delicious fresh produce Thursday at what was the North Cambridge ‘Poverty Plain’ by Beth Folsom
You can treat your Valentine at one of North Cambridge’s historic businesses by Beth Folsom
Where’s the border? Debate on North Cambridge illustrates many ways to define a neighborhood by Beth Folsom
Old North Cambridge by Thomas F. O’Malley, 1929
Reader inquiry about plaque on Fresh Pond rotary rediscovers Teeven, a North Cambridge war hero by Beth Folsom
St. John the Evangelist’s embrace of newcomers turned it into a cornerstone of North Cambridge by Beth Folsom
A new year, and History Cambridge puts focus onto a new neighborhood: North Cambridge by Beth Folsom

History Cambridge Resources

VIDEO: Only a Common Piece of Clay: Exploring the Legacy of the Brickmaking Industry in North Cambridge
New England Brick Company (NEBCO) photo collection
1986 Neighborhood Trivia Hunt
History Cambridge’s North Cambridge Post Card Collection
Self-Guided Tour: Clay, Bricks, Dump, Park: A Tour of North Cambridge
Self-Guided Tour: Gold Star Memorials in North Cambridge

Cambridge Historical Commission Resources

Camp Cameron: The Civil War Boot Camp in North Cambridge by Kathleen M. Fox
Small Business Week: Raspberry Beret by Viv Williams
A Brief History of The Fresh Pond Hotel by Kathleen M. Fox
Torn Down Tuesday: Newtowne Club by Meta Partenheimer
Torn Down Tuesday: The Rand Estate by Meta Partenheimer
Torn Down Tuesday: Prest-O-Lite by Meta Partenheimer
National Inventor’s Day: Dewey & Almy Chemical Co. by Kathleen M. Fox
National Cow Appreciation Day by Kathleen M. Fox
Smallpox Inoculation – Cambridge Leads the Way by Charles Sullivan
Historic Building: 299 Concord Avenue by Meta Partenheimer
Ice Cutting at Jerry’s Pit by Charles Sullivan
St. Patrick’s Day: The Irish on Dublin Street by Kathleen M. Fox
The North Cambridge Community Church by Emily Gonzalez
Trotting Park: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 by Dan Sullivan
Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection on Digital Commonwealth
Boston Globe Cambridge Clippings Collection. Finding Aid and Inventory
Cambridge Engineering Department Collection Finding Aid and Inventory
Cambridge Ephemera Collection
Traffic Proposals and Plans Supplement to Traffic Department Collection
Cambridge Recreation Department Collection
City of Cambridge Veterans’ Graves Registration Cards Inventory
Sheila Cook Collection
Henry Deeks Collection
Friends of Alewife Reservation (FAR) Website Collection, 1999-2019
Carleton W. Patriquin Collection Finding Aid and Inventory
Daniel Shaw Papers
George “Tubber” White Collection

Books

Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: Northwest Cambridge by Cambridge Historical Commission
In Our Own Words: Stories of North Cambridge, 1900 – 1960, as told to Sarah Boyer by Cambridge Historical Commission

Maps

City of Cambridge Franklin View Company, 1877
Map of the city of Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts by HF Walling, 1854
North Cambridge, Cambridge Community Development Department, April 2016
Plan of Cambridge from Survey by John Groves Hales, 1830
Atlasscope from the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

North Cambridge-Based Partner Organizations

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