Posts Tagged ‘West Cambridge’
A Reservoir’s Wall on Reservoir Street
By Michael Kenney, 2013 On a summer day, the passerby on Reservoir Street will find an embankment of wildflowers and shrubs filling the slope behind a massive granite retaining wall. That wall, broken at one point by a driveway rising and turning out of sight, is what remains of the reservoir that supplied water to…
Read MoreGrowing 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…
Read MoreCambridge Trees
By Lois Lilley Howe Read January 25, 1950 This article originally appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, Volume 33, pages 94-99 In the records of The Cambridge Plant Club I find that on February 25th, 1901 “Miss Prince of Boston,” no further identified than this, read “an Interesting paper on Trees in our neighborhood.” This was…
Read MoreWhy the “Longfellow” Bridge?
By Franklin Reece, 2015 In 1905, the magnificent Longfellow Bridge was nearing completion, even as the Cambridge Historical Society came to life. And today, 110 years later, the iconic bridge is being restored, just as the society enters an exciting new stage of life. The bridge was an engineering marvel. Designed to mimic the artistic…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Cambridge and the American Revolution
This tour hopes to shed light on the Revolutionary events that occurred in Cambridge. It is intended to personify its leaders, highlighting both their strengths and their humanity. It also hopes to take the viewer back to a time before the United States was born, before the Constitution was ratified, and before an American victory was assumed.
Read MoreLife in the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House: The Emerson and Dow Years
BY STERLING DOW This paper is from the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings for the Years 1976-1979, Volume 44 A native of Portland, Maine, Sterling Dow received his undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard, where he taught Classics and the history of ancient Greece until his retirement as John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology in 1970.…
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 MoreSelf-Guided Bike Tour: Pedaling the People’s Republic, A History of Political Activism in Cambridge
The city played a central role in the American Revolution and the abolitionist movement before being named “The People’s Republic” for its role in the anti-war, civil rights, tenant’s rights, gay rights, sustainable development, and environmental movements. Pedaling the People’s Republic will take participants on a tour of past political activity from the Revolution to the grass roots movements of the 20th century.
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 MoreMemories of the Huron Village
By Susan S. Poverman, April 2007 My family moved to Fayerweather Street in 1937 and, having no garage, arranged to keep our car in the Fayerweather Garage, which was on the property that became the Fayerweather Street School and is now the home of the Lander family. Someone picked up our car every evening and…
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