Posts Tagged ‘architecture’
POSTPONED 2020 Spring Benefit
The Cambridge Historical Society is closely monitoring the recent outbreak of COVID-19. We continue to evaluate all measures in response to available information from the Cambridge Public Health Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Any changes to our event schedule will be communicated via our website, email, and social media. If you have further…
Read MoreOpposition House
By Susan Chasen, 2012 Tucked away on a short spur off Hancock Street stands a quiet, historic home that has been known — if not well known — for most of its two hundred and five years as Opposition House. The name suggests a headquarters for political activity or resistance. But it was the house…
Read MoreMr. Foxcroft and His Street
By Michael Kenney, 2012 Along Cambridge Street one can spot a solid 1920s brick residence, now condominiums, known as Fox Croft Manor. The name, despite its fractured appearance, most likely refers to the Foxcroft family, Tory grandees who owned some120 acres of fields and orchards stretching beyond the present Kirkland Street to Shady Hill. Little…
Read MoreThe Old Hooper-Lee House by Thomas Coffin Amory
From the Proceedings, Volume 16, p. 21-25 [The following is taken, by permission, from the little-known article by Thomas Coffin Amory (H. C. 1830) entitled “Old Cambridge and New,” in the Register of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society for July, 1871. It gives an interesting picture of the house some sixty years ago — very…
Read MoreLois Lilley Howe by Elizabeth W. Reinhardt
Lois Lilley Howe, F.A.I.A. (1864-1964) by Elizabeth W. Reinhardt Read December 7, 1975 This article appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings for the years 1973-1975 (Volume 43) Miss LOIS LILLEY HOWE, one of the first women to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s architectural program, the organizer of the only all-woman architectural firm in…
Read MoreTouching History; Harvard Square, The Bank and The Tasty Diner [video]
The closing of the beloved Harvard Square restaurant The Tasty in the late 1990s was a source of tension in Cambridge. Filmmaker Federico Muchnik documented the controversy in his short film, “Touching History; Harvard Square, The Bank and The Tasty Diner.” From the filmmaker: “Touching History tells the story of the re-development of Harvard Square’s…
Read MoreRecap of 5/16/19 Book Talk with Heli Meltsner: Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts
Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts focuses on the state’s Arts and Crafts domestic architecture and is the only book to include an illustrated field guide.
Read MoreThe History of 74 Rear Fayerweather Street, Cambridge
By Heli Meltsner, 2007 In the six decades after 1852 the use of this property changed utterly: an unused field became a garage, elementary school and finally a private residence. When William G. Stearns bought forty acres of the Ruggles-Fayerweather estate he hired the prolific local surveyor Alexander Wadsworth to lay out a residential subdivision.…
Read MoreThe Huron Avenue Area: Development of a Streetcar Suburb
By Charles M. Sullivan, 2007 Huron Avenue is one of the newest neighborhoods in Cambridge, but it is intimately connected with one of the oldest. It is the sole example of the classic 19th century streetcar suburb in Cambridge, and owes its existence to another neighborhood’s rejection of that mode of transportation. The development of…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Huron Village’s Modern Houses
Although Huron Village is dominated by houses dating from after the Civil War to the first quarter of the twentieth century, it is actually well furnished with what are still called “modern houses.” We say “Modern,” although the four following examples were built nearly a half century to three quarters of a century ago. Three were built as the architect’s own house or for his parents, a time-tested method of introducing a difficult new style into a neighborhood.
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