Observatory Hill

By Gavin W. Kleespies, 2013 The area called Observatory Hill has its center at the intersection of Concord and Huron avenues and stretches out to include the Harvard Observatory and surrounding areas. The eastern half of the neighborhood was once a part of the Vassall estate. The first of the family in Cambridge was John…

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Growing Up on Observatory Hill

By Rolf Goetze, 2013 As a youngster, I remember tricycling among the trees and bushes at the Harvard Botanical Gardens, off Linnaean Street, before they turned into Harvard apartments. Back then, in the early 1940s, I also recall sledding down Observatory Hill, cluttered by neither trees nor buildings – a site now covered by tennis…

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The History of Garden Street

By Lois Lilley Howe Read April 25, 1949 This article originally appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, Volume 33, pages 37-57 WE CANNOT think of Old Garden Street without thinking of the Common which forms one side of it. Yet our thought of the Common is just of a big open space with trees and a…

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