"If This House Could Talk..." 2010
10 Acorn Street
If this house could talk it would tell you about the abundance of wildlife this urban yard around it has harbored over the years…Hawks have used the backyard to eat their prey in peace, a snipe (a relative of the woodcock) spent a day resting under some chrysanthemums before continuing its fall migra
tion. One fall 75 monarch butterflies flew over the back yard heading southwest. Annual parades of possums, raccoons and skunks climb the grape vine and sit and eat grapes at their air conditioner “picnic table’ outside the living room window. Goldfinches hang from the stalks of cosmos and chicory eating seeds. All summer long this year, a pair of Carolina wrens, and then their fledglings, have entertained the occupants of the house with their loud, varied songs.
The wildlife, eat not only the grapes but apples, peaches, raspberries and especially, blackberries from a patch that threatens to overrun the back yard. Birds, butterflies and many varieties of bees are also attracted to the bushes and flowers that provide nectar, seeds or berries. A good urban oasis for passing and local fauna to enjoy!
Carol Boulukos
154 Auburn Street
This big old (1898) 6-family house was virtually abandoned when a group of friends bought it in 1981 for $88,000, with a determination to create affordable housing and a commitment to community. It was a long do-it-ourselves project.
Rosalie Anders
199 Auburn Street
The Cambridge Zen Center is a Zen Buddhist organization founded 35 years ago according to the teachings of the late Zen Master Seung Sahn, a Korean Zen Master, who brought his teachings here in the early 70’s. Since it’s opening, the Cambridge Zen Center provides free meditation to the public on a daily basis, Zen training, talks and retreats. This building became the home of CZC in 1982.
Please check our website at www.cambridgezen.com for schedules and details. There is an introductory session every Thursday evening at 7:00pm. Residential opportunities are available for those interested in more intensive training.
Barbara Feldman
217-219 Brookline Avenue
If this house could talk it would tell you that it was built in 1895 as a boarding house―a neighbor told us her grandmother boarded in this house as a young woman. In 2000, the house still had a dirt floor.
From 1962 to 2000, Walter and Phyllis Sullivan owned and lived in 217-219, raised 4 children and were active participants in Cambridgeport life. Walter was a founding parent of Central Baseball League and Phyllis served on the Morse School PTO as well as working as a teacher's aide. She also knit beautiful mittens and gave them away.
Current owners have found medicine bottles, a horseshoe, crumbling old oyster shells and a darning egg while digging in the backyard.
Here are fragments of the 1885 Boston Herald found in the walls of 217-219 during renovation—sadly unreadable!
Laurie Sheffield
280 Brookline Street
Fallout Shelters
Fear of a nuclear attack became very real after the then Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. In response, the U.S. Office of Civil Defense taught children to “duck and cover” in case of attack. After 1960, President John Kennedy encouraged the building of fallout shelters, where families could live presumably for weeks to protect themselves from radiation and survive. A familiar yellow and black sign marked the location of these shelters, including one on this building on the corner of Brookline and Putnam. Even in the 1950s, however, there was opposition to the civil defense drills and shelters since they in truth would have offered no real protection from such bombs.
Susan M. Reverby
72 Chestnut Street
Family lore says that local builder Clinton M. Packer built this house as a wedding gift for his wife about 130 years ago.Gail Willet
120 Chestnut Street
Until 1976, Olympic crew was only for men. The first U.S. women’s team lived at 120/126 Chestnut and got a silver award in Montreal. Carie Graves, on that team, won a gold medal in 1984 in LA. She was also longtime rowing coach at Harvard.
Henrietta Davis
159 Chestnut Street
This house would say that it was built in 1895 by the same builder as the house to the left and the three houses across the street. While they all still look similar on the outside—they are quite different on the inside.
In the 1960s and 1970s this house was owned by Dr. Ruth Barnhouse. She was a psychiatrist that lived and worked in the house. It was in this house that she treated Sylvia Plath—the poet.
Robin Shore
160 Chestnut Street
This house was one of the last to be built on this block, in about 1916. Not surprising—it was built on land that was once a tidal stream which flowed down Henry and Rockingham Streets. Nearly condemned in the mid-1980's, the tenants bought the building and turned it into a limited equity cooperative in 1988. It remains, 22 years later, a tenant run affordable housing cooperative. Rehabbed, remodeled, and still going strong.
Mark Breneman
Chestnut & Pearl Streets
Practicing for Bombings and celebrating the end of War
During World War II there were tests to prepare Cambridge for a bombing. One involved the dropping of bags of flour, wrapped in different colors of crepe paper (red, blue, yellow) to represent each kind and size of bomb from an airplane. The spilled flour was to demonstrate how bomb fragments could spread. Cambridge residents were told when the practice run was happening and the children were prepared. A long time Cambridgeport resident remembers going past the church on Allston Street to pick up the crepe paper, seeing the spilled flour everywhere. He also recalls the hanging and burning of dummies to represent the Japanese Emperor, Hitler and Mussolini on the corner of Chestnut and Pearl.
Susan Reverby
3 Cottage Street
This cottage was built in 1835 for worker housing by local soap manufacturer Charles Valentine. Valentine's soap factory was located nearby at the corner of Valentine and Pearl Streets. Founded in 1828, it was at the time one of the largest manufacturing operations in Cambridgeport.
Jacqueline Camenisch
8 Cottage Street
Built in 1842 by Barnes Putnam, the neighborhood cooper (barrel maker).
This house is presently undergoing restoration to rebuild the front porch based on information obtained at the Historical Commission. Many of the Greek Revival details that had been removed or covered up over the years are also being restored.
Steve Fuller
10 Cottage Street
This house was built in 1878 by Warren J. Appleton. “The Appleton Family Papers “ collection is currently stored with the Massachusetts Historical Society.
And now a pug lives here.
Ken and Jen Zolot
13 Cottage Street
Built in 1868-69 by James Sparrow, "housewright." He also built 15 Cottage Street and 11 Cottage Street. The "Cambridgeport" fence was built in 2007.
Jack Wofford
14 Cottage Street
The triple-decker at the front of the lot was built between 1886 and 1892; the Greek Revival cottage in the rear was there by 1854. On April 1, 1892, the entire lot became the first purchase of the Cambridge Building Association, a group of investors organized “to purchase and improve real estate” through a fund raised “by regular monthly payments from each member.” (Cambridge Tribune, April 15, 1892). “All income from the property, with the dues of members, will be allowed to accumulate toward the purchase of more property . . . A good per cent is [already] being earned . . . “
Kit Rawlins
19 Cottage Street
Built in the late 1860s or early 1870s, this house became the parish house for the Grace Methodist Church on the corner of Perry and Magazine streets. Local lore has it that it was later a funeral parlor, and it was a commune when the present owner came here in 1971. In 1982 the top floor was converted into an apartment and the outdoor staircase added—thus 19A next door.
Jane Williams and John King
23 Cottage Street
From 1863-1886 there was a barn or carriage house on this site as part of the property of the house on the corner. In 1886 this lot was sold off and a house was built. You'll see quite a few small mansard-roofed houses in Cambridgeport.
Over the years, this house was owned by several different women—a result of the fact that in the early years women had fewer property rights. A wife or daughter 's name on the deed insured that the property would stay in the family when the husband or father died.
Penny Peters
24 Cottage Street
Built 1838. From the 1870s, the house was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Oxford (his dates are 1832-1905; she died in 1901), owners of J. M. Oxford & Co., a furniture and furniture finishing goods company, at 529 Main Street.
Abigail Barrow44 Cottage Street
This is the present day home of Charlie Allen, founder of Charlie Allen Restorations, named Boston’s Best Restoration Contractor by Boston Home Magazine. The house was built by William Page in 1840 and then sold to Charles Dudley the following year. A carriage house was added in 1912. Allen has been lovingly restoring the property since 1992. Chris Kelly
50 Cottage Street
It would tell you that there was a tax on it in 1836 for a cottage and a grove. The mystery is that we could only find evidence for it being owned in 1846 by Elijah Johnson and George Thatcher & Co.
It looks like Benjamin Gibbs might also have been an owner for the cottage in 1844. Who knows who originally owned this house? We do know that it’s on the 1854 Walling Map.
Vanessa Rodriguez
Dana Park - Willard School
In his inaugural address in January 1871, Mayor Harding noted that the city was committed to building two new schoolhouses. One, in progress, was “of brick, and will contain seat for 400 scholars. . . . The cost of this, with furniture and land, will be [approx.] $35,000. It is to be called the Willard Primary.” The school sat in the middle of what is now the Dana Park playground. A third story was added in 1873; the building stood until 1957. In 1874, 472 students were enrolled at the school, under 10 teachers, who earned between $500 and $700 a year.
Kit Rawlins
3-5 Emily Street
In May 1974 this vacant lot was occupied by a dozen urban gardeners as part of
the neighborhood effort to get community priorities for the former Simplex land
bought by MIT. The Emily Street/Simplex Community Garden has been
gardened collectively for 36 years.
Bob Cavellini
215 Erie Street
Our house, built by the Gooch family in 1869, was a single-family originally. In 1883, Joshua Gooch applied for a permit to build a stable in the back. A long-term resident remembered our barn as the place where the horses and buggies were quartered for a pre-automobile taxi fleet.
Peter, one of the owners, re-habbed the stable floors and found a pit, lined in soapstone, with a soapstone bench. Was it a stream bath? No one seems to know.
Laura Blacklow
20 Fairmont Avenue
The 1873 map of Cambridge shows the undeveloped site of this house and surrounding land as being owned by Theo Otis. An unnamed lane runs from Fairmont Street into the Otis property, which extended south to “Somerset Street” (now Allston Street). On the west side of this lane stands a single building, labeled “Soap Factory.”
In 1877 map shows the present alignment of “Creek Street”, likely named for the brook which historically ran approximately along the present rear lot lines of houses opposite this one. This brook ran to the Charles River from a pond at the present location of Hoyt Field. The pond was filled by the City in the late 1800’s to create a playground. In the 1877 map only one house is shown on this side of Creek Street, at approximately mid-block.
By 1886, a full complement of houses is shown on both sides of the street, which had by then been re-christened “Fairmont Avenue”. Nearly all of those houses, including this one, remain today.
Robb Johnson
14-16 Fairmont Street
14-16 Fairmont Street was built in 1866 and was owned as a rental property by Asa Morse (Morse School) whose primary estate was on the current site of the Woodrow Wilson Court. At various times, this land baron and businessman owned 10-12, 14-16, 15-17, 18-20 and 19 Fairmont Street houses―nearly half of the block."
Annie Howell
Fort Washington Park
In 1775, the British army occupied Boston. General George Washington, commander of the American army encamped at Cambridge, placed the city under siege and ordered his men to surround Boston with a ring of fortifications. This three-gun, “half-moon” battery—the only survivor of the Cambridge batteries—was built on the marshy shore of the Charles River, with clear views across the water.
Fort Washington Park was created by the City in 1857 and has been preserved by the efforts of generations of concerned citizens; the most recent restoration was completed just this year. Visit the park at Noon on Saturday, October 3rd, for a rededication ceremony!
Kit Rawlins
199-201 Franklin Street
If this house could talk it would say there is some mystery as to original dates and structures where I now stand.
In 1854, one house was on this site and James Phillips was taxed on it.
By 1876, the present configuration was recorded: 197 and 203 Franklin were close to the street, and this house was between and behind them, at the rear of the property. Cyrus Phillips, Jame's father, owned all three.
From 1868 to 1876, various Phillips family members lived here. They were plasterers and a mason. Charles W. Phillips, an entrepreneur, lived here before moving to his business site on Main St. at Norfolk; he owned a billiard saloon/oyster house.
Shelley Rieman
City Sprouts Garden at Morse School 15 Granite Street
During World War II, this plot of land--
the Morse School, its CitySprouts garden, and the ball field--was an enormous
VICTORY GARDEN.
During the war years, when food was often in short supply, people grew fruits and vegetables here to supplement the rationed food available in local markets.
Bill Davis, who grew up in this neighborhood --and is the father of Denise Sullivan, Morse School’s parent liaison--has vivid memories of that garden: Late one night he & some buddies got into a tomato fight, throwing ripe red tomatoes at each other
and making a big racket. A neighbor called the police, but the boys hid under a pile of cut corn stalks and managed to dodge the law....
Bill, who still lives in the neighborhood, is happy to have a garden back on this site.
Gretchen Friesinger
Morse School, 40 Granite Street
Has been a school since 1891!
The original building stood on the corner of Brookline Street and Allston Streets and was designed by Charles Fogerty.
This building was built in 1954 – 1956 and opened September 1956. Carl Koch and Associates of Worcester, MA & The Architects Collaborative of Cambridge designed it.
This site underwent a major renovation (keeping most of the original design and adding additional spaces) between June 1997 and December 1998 overseen by The Design Partnership of Cambridge.
Has many beautiful “built-in” art pieces: Tile murals by Juliet & Gregory Kepes – throughout the building and a large brilliantly colored silk-screened mural in the main lobby by Tomie Arai.
Pat Beggy
Playground at the Morse School, 40 Granite Street
In 1971 in this playground and in the adjacent Kindergarten room, the Cambridgeport Childcare Center at 65R Chestnut Street had its earliest beginnings as a summer program called the “Tot Lot.” Two neighborhood mothers brought the idea of a parent co-operative childcare program to the Morse Community School which backed the plan. Two other neighborhood mothers volunteered to lead the program when the college work-study students didn’t take the job as planned.
With the strong support of the Community School director, this cooperative program for children from age 18 months to five years, ran for the summer with the two “directors”, a rotating group of at least three parents a day, an older Israeli woman volunteer, and an assortment of Mayor’s Program teen-agers.
Enthusiasm among the parents kept the program going through the winter with about 15 children enrolled. The “Tot Lot” met in different neighborhood homes with three parents taking turns each day. After another summer at the Morse School, this time with a hired director, and another winter meeting in houses and for a time in the VFW post of the MDC at Magazine Beach, one parent turned one floor of her house into a day care center.
After all these changes and the work of many neighborhood parents the “Tot Lot” found its permanent home at 65R Chestnut Street. One of the younger siblings of one of the original “directors” attended pre-school there in the l980’s and her grandchild in the l990’s.
P.S. Six of the original families, including those of the two “directors” have continued to get together over the years for various occasions, which now include, not only the original parents but the “Tot Lot” children and all of their children!
Carol Boulukis
51 Granite Street
It would tell you that it was built in 1906 as a Philadelphia-style two-family, with a hidden staircase leading to a second floor bedroom. Originally owned by Clara Smith, it has had only three owners in its 104 years. Built on former tidal marsh, Clara probably enjoyed unobstructed views of the river and swimming at nearby Magazine Beach.
Carol Smith Sokol
75 Hamilton Street, Good News Garage
This creaky and leaky old building has been the home of “Car Talk”’s Good News Garage since 1986. Come visit us sometime during the week. We would love to give you the tour. Maybe you’ll run into Tom or Ray working on his own jalopy!
75 Hamilton Street, DeLeo’s Auto Body
It would say I’m more of a hospital than a house, a hospital for sick, broken and hurt cars. In 1927 the Stewart Brothers opened the Emergency Room Doors for Collision Repairs and DeLeo’s Auto Body has been “Chief of Staff” since 1986.
Sadly to say, we’ve lost a few patients—due to total loss conditions. However, over 18,000 have left with a clean bill of health! Denise and Leo DeLeo
85 Hamilton Street
85 Hamilton was the home of a false teeth factory known as the Myerson Tooth Company founded in 1917 by Dr. Simon Myerson, a dentist and teacher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Now used as office space, it is occupied by Mohave Sun Power, a company currently developing a 300 megawatt solar thermal power plant in the Mohave Desert in Arizona. To this day, the building still boasts the Myerson sign and design features of the original factory.
Katherine Mella
174 Hamilton Street
The two-family house at 215 Pearl/174 Hamilton St. was built in 1858. It was built in the Greek Revival Style.
The owner who built it was Daniel U. Chamberlain, who ran a hardware business on Main St. He does not appear to have lived in this house, but on Magazine St. The house was sold to Samuel Montague, a junk dealer in 1862. A porch was added in 1900 by a new owner, T. R. Sheridan, a janitor.
Anne Lynch
198 Hamilton Street
Built in 1862 as a single family, it was later split for decades into
two apartments. From about 1960-1985, the first floor was the home of
Patrick Spinetto, the "Pat" in Pat's Tow.
Sarah Satterthwaite
202 Hamilton Street
Last Christmas my oldest brother Jon sent my son Ben a gold-colored box filled with seeds he had gathering during walks in Colorado. With it came photos of the flowers and descriptions of the plants and seeds. We planted the seeds in May, and to give them a great start, we surrounded them with our own not-quite-compost. What grew were tomatoes, squash, mellon, and even a stalk of corn. (And a scattering of zinnias, marigolds and cosmos.) Not the flower garden of our dreams, but the vegetable garden of our garbage.
Note: For mature compost, set your composter in a sunny spot and stir it weekly!
Cathie Zusy and Sam Kendall
Hamilton & Magazine Streets
This was the site of a major flood on the afternoon of Saturday, July 10, 2010 when 3.6 inches of rain fell in less than an hour. Sewers backed up into Magazine and Hamilton Streets, where the water rose to about 18”. Several residents experienced severe flooding to their basements and cars, and spent thousands of dollars to repair damages. The area was declared a disaster by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Note: We weren't the only ones to get wet! There was substantial flooding in Area 4, the Agassiz Area, Kendall Square, Harvard Square and Riverside as well.
Martha Drost
4 Hastings Square
It would tell you the previous owners, the Millers, ran a dance studio in the basement. The maple floors are still there. When we bought the house in 1979, we found hundreds of little tutus in the attic.
The Queen Anne style house was build around 1874.
Fred and Nancy Wood
92-96 Henry Street
During this past year the side yard garden was host to an Urban Homesteaders League workshop which included construction of the two lasagna-style raised beds nearest the street as well as a season extending mini-hoop house (soon to be re-erected). Children from Tot Lot (on Chestnut St.) also visited to help with planting, watering, composting and harvesting while ogling the 13’ tall sun chokes. And inside, a baby boy was born on the garden level.
*...you wouldn’t have to read this.
Robert Riman
92-96 Henry Street
Built in 1885, one of the first wave of homes on what was once the shoreline of the River estuary. Built by two sisters (and their husbands). One of the on-ramps of the Inner Belt highway would have run through this property and the park!
The original plantings displayed flowers in sequence around the house as the seasons passed.
Steven E. Miller and Sally Benbasset
12 Kenwood Street
This old house was built in 1858 as a two family or as it was called a double house. In 1863 this double house was sold along with another single-family house for $2,824. The house faced Magazine Court (where our driveway is on the left). The house originally had a third floor peaked roof that burned off in a fire. The charred posts can still be seen during renovation projects. In 1930 the orientation of the house was changed so that the front doors faced Kenwood St. Maybe this was after the fire.
12 Kenwood St. has raised many happy families over the years. We know from our 83 year old neighbor, who has lived on Kenwood St. all of her life, that a multitude of families lived here while she was growing up, including at one time in our house two families with 7 children each. We bought the house from a family with 3 children in 1977. Our two children have never lived anywhere else, until they moved away as adults. Our children played in the street, in a vacant lot and at the end of the street and they attended Cambridge Public Schools from Kindergarten through 12th grade. Our neighbor tells us, that was all typical of the many children she and her 4 children knew as they too grew up on Kenwood St.
Randy and Rosanne Stern
4 Lawrence Street
This 140 year-old Greek Revival house has been owned by women from the day it was constructed in ca. 1870. It was built by Eliza McCann, widow and abolitionist, and includes a secret stair and hidden 3rd floor closet. Then, her daughter Lucella Bates McCann inherited the house and lived here until her death in 1972. It was then owned by Lucella's companion and care-giver, Caroll Jeanette Roberts until 1986, at which point it was purchased by Margaret Farrar and her husband Andy. The Farrar's live here still: Margaret, a science teacher at CRLS; Andy, a toy maker; their two children; and their dog Max and cat Bobbie.
Andy Farrar
17-19 Lawrence Street
This house is listed at the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth as the principal address for the Cambridgeport Neighorhood Association, Inc. and the founding Articles of Organization for the Neighborhood Association were drafted and printed here, circa November 2004. The neighborhood association has met monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, since 2004, usually at the Woodrow Wilson Court community room. All are welcome! On September 27, 2010 a resident herein proposed that Cambridgeport History Day (one of the great community events of Cambridgeport) include 'Cambridgeport Future Day.'
Bill August
35 Magazine Street
Pilgrim Congregation Church was built in 1871 and design by Thomas W. Silloway. This was the first major church built on Magazine Street, which was referred to as Cambridgeport’s “church street” during the 1880s. Silloway designed almost four hundred New England church buildings.
Kit Rawlins
This church is also known for its pipe organ built by George S. Hutchings in 1886.
The First Korean Church of Cambridge has occupied this building since 1992. They have renovated interior as well as exterior."
Pastor Tae Whan Kim
42 Magazine Street
In 1834 land and building were sold by William Wiggins, carpenter, to Alvah C.Smith, trader, for $3000. It was a plain square building.
In 1879 owner Frank Barlett added a back ell and ornamentation to make it a big and quite stylish “Italianate Bracketed.”
I bought it in 1978 as a rooming house. It is now 3-family owner occupied.
When I renovated it, I found that the original house had been built with used lumber.
Carol Brown
48 Magazine Street
In 1976, Joseph Hinman (who owned #50 Magazine) built this house on the N.E. side of his lot, deeding the house and (new) lot to his wife, Elmira Hinman. Originally single-family, it was a rooming house following WWII and was later turned into apartments.
In 1976 we discovered, in the tiny attic under the front turret, a carpenter's level, apparently left there during the house's construction a century earlier.
David Peterson
56 Magazine Street
Grace Methodist Church (1886) is an exuberant example of Queen Anne shingle work combined with Gothic detail and a Queen Anne version of a thirteenth century Gothic tower. The architect, Franklin E. Kidder, was the author of two best-selling handbooks for builders.
Kit Rawlins
If this House of Worship could talk it would tell you…
I HAVE 138 YEARS OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. I WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1871 IN CENTRAL SQUARE AND MOVED TO #16-18 COTTAGE STREET AS THE COTTAGE STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL SOCIETY.
MY PRESENT EDIFICE AT 56 MAGAZINE STREET WAS BEGUN IN NOVEMBER OF 1886. I WAS DEDICATED IN JUNE OF 1887 WHEN MY NAME WAS CHANGED TO GRACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
I HAVE A HISTORY OF ADDRESSING ISSUES OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS SUCH AS: CHINESE IMMIGRANTS, IRISH AND AFRICAN AMERICAN CONCERNS, THE POOR AND THE HOMELESS, AND THE GBLT COMMUNITY.
I HAVE HOSTED IMPORTANT PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS: THE FISKE JUBILEE SINGERS ON THEIR WORLD WIDE TOUR IN 1891, REPRESENTATIVE JOHN F. KENNEDY IN THE 1950’S, REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. IN THE 1960’S,CASPAR, BOY SCOUTS,THE CHILDREN’S CLOTHING EXCHANGE, AND THE CAMBRIDGE PEACE COMMISSION.
I MERGED WITH THE VISION UMC CONGREGATION IN 2008 TO FORM GRACE VISION UNITED METHODIST CHURCH.
ED AND DIANNE RICE
56 Magazine Street, Grace Methodist Church
Eighty Plus years of Scouting:
1929
2009
Pack.Troop.Crew 56 Cambridge, Boston Minuteman Council
57-59 Magazine Street Arden Court
The Arden Court apartment building celebrates its centennial anniversary this year. Now a condominium complex, it was designed by the Cambridge architectural firm of Newhall and Blevins, which also created luxury apartment buildings in Harvard Square. Arden Court exemplifies a Mission-style multi-family building―a style rare in the Northeast.
Madeline Drexler
81 Magazine Street, Woodrow Wilson Court
This complex of 9 buildings is named after President Woodrow Wilson who was the 28th President of the United States. He was born December 28, 1856 and died February 3, 1924. He served for 2 terms from 1913 to 1921. During his presidency, the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed giving women the right to vote. To quote President Woodrow Wilson, “The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.”
Teresa Cardosi
_____
Woodrow Wilson Court was the first project in Massachusetts to use the “State Housing Act of 1949” which gave money to cities to build public housing. Woodrow Wilson Court was first occupied in 1949, with units available to veterans.
City Councilor Marjorie Decker grew up here.
Teresa Cardosi
______
Heh, this was me when I was an errand boy at the old Howard Theatre at Scollay Sq. “Ha, Ha.” I moved into #1 Woodrow Wilson Court in 2000 with little Scout, my Kitty-Kat, just above the archway brick Woodrow Wilson entrance. Later, they moved Scout and I to #8 Woodrow Wilson. We were happy there, high up on the top floor with the trees and breeze. I’d had Scout 14 years when she got a tumor and cancer. I’m now in #6 Woodrow Wilson Court, still on the top floor: like being in a tree house. Scout (R.I.P.) would love it.
Jeff Gardner, painter and musician
____
It would tell you the story of Maito Auger who came to America from Bogota, Columbia in 1970. One day when Maito was 36 and very beautiful, a friend asked her if she wanted to go to the USA. She said “sure, if you bring a limousine to my house I will go” and she laughed, thinking it was a joke. The next day a black limo carrying the President of Columbia arrived at Maito’s door. In one day the Embassy processed all paperwork permitting Maito to travel to the US. Three days later she was in Princeton, NJ, where she babysat the six-month-old son of the niece of the President of Columbia. (The niece was studying at Princeton).
Each day Maito thanks God for bringing her to America.
Maito Auger and Cathie Zusy
84 Magazine Street
Built just after the Civil War, in 1867, the house was sold in the 1880s to John Hopewell, Jr., a minor textile baron, who fancied it up and enlarged it. By 1920, it belonged to the Samourian family (see name set in the concrete walkway) who would occupy it for the next 84 years; by far the longest residents were the three unmarried Samourian sisters, all seamstresses, who filled the house with fabric and sewing machines.
Thanks to a devastating fire around 1939, in the shadow of the Great Depression, the house lost its head – that is, its original tower and Mansard-style third floor burned clean off. In 2006, it was recapitated by its current owners. The playhouse in the back, which we originally built at our former house four blocks away, arrived in October 2006 by forklift.
Today, residents include an architect/city planner, a speechwriter, an aspiring playwright, two smallish hockey players, an orange cat and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Barack Obama. We grow our own French fries from the lawn.
Martha Sieniewicz
111 Magazine Street
111 Magazine Street was built by brothers Frederick and George Vail. The prolific pair, who designed and built the house, are responsible for 18 Cambridge dwellings, all built between 1911 and 1917. In fact, several are neighbors to this one, including 265-267 and 269-271 Allston Street.
Village Grill & Seafood, 114 Magazine Street
If this restaurant could talk it would tell you that the owners traveled many thousands of miles from a country called Greece to start a business and live the American dream. Our best dishes are delicious pizza and fresh baked haddock. Fresh seafood is delivered from Georges Bank, off the coast of Nova Scotia, three times a week.
Theodore and friend
124 Magazine Street
It would tell you that it was built in the 1870s but… it has been owned and lived in by only 2 families for the last 86 years, and the Copper Beach was planted on the 1st anniversary of the first family (85 years ago).
127 Magazine Street
If this house could talk it would say I was designed by William Hovey and built by Henry Chamberlain for Daniel Chamberlain in 1855 in the Italianate-Bracketed style intended to suggest gracious villas of the Italian Lake Country. The Chamberlains were among the most successful businessmen of the Central Square of their day. When I was finished, I was one of only a few houses this close to the river and the extensive tidal marshes that reached to not far below where Chestnut Street is now.
In 1885 a carriage house was added in the back yard, large enough for two carriages and four horses. It has a slate roof from the long-closed Monson quarries in Maine, said to be among the best black slate in the world. It has been completely renovated as a single-family rental property and won Cambridge’s Renovation of the Year award in 1998.
Nowadays almost 4,000 flowers bloom in my yard in the spring. I hope that you will come back to see them.
Jay Shetterly
127 Magazine Street
If this house could talk it would say I was designed by William Hovey and built by Henry Chamberlain for Daniel Chamberlain in 1855 in the Italianate-Bracketed style intended to suggest gracious villas of the Italian Lake Country. The Chamberlains were among the most successful businessmen of the Central Square of their day. When I was finished, I was one of only a few houses this close to the river and the extensive tidal marshes that reached to not far below where Chestnut Street is now.
In 1885 a carriage house was added in the back yard, large enough for two carriages and four horses. It has a slate roof from the long-closed Monson quarries in Maine, said to be among the best black slate in the world. It has been completely renovated as a single-family rental property and won Cambridge’s Renovation of the Year award in 1998.
Nowadays almost 4,000 flowers bloom in my yard in the spring. I hope that you will come back to see them.
Jay Shetterly
129 Magazine Street, The London
Hello, my name is The London! I’m not sure why I have this name, but I quite like it.
Henceforth, please read my story with a British accent.
I was born, as I have been told and do believe, in 1866, just after the end of the American Civil War. My father’s name was Sanborn Sulvilyer, and at the time I was built, I was one of the only structures in Cambridgeport. From my beautiful second-floor porch, one could see clear to the Charles River and the bathers at Magazine Beach.
In 1900, the architect W.E. Clarke, who had recently completed my sister next door, gave me a major remodeling and added a third floor. Like all good sisters, we've been forever arguing over who copied who.
Since then, as you can clearly see, I haven't changed much. Inside, I still have many of my original 19th-century details, including a very large working dumbwaiter capable of lifting a small elephant.
In my century-and-a-half on this earth, I've been fortunate to be the home to many wonderful and interesting people. I have two units on each floor, and one in the basement, and today I'm home to an eclectic group of young punks and professionals, including a social worker, a chef, a nutrition educator, a network engineer, a Globe reporter, an underwriter, two med school students, a marketing professional, an importer/exporter, a psychologist, two cats, three dogs, and a little boy named Charlie Blue.
I’m proud to be an icon of this great neighborhood, and love all the people who stop to sketch me and take my picture.
I think I’m pretty cute, too.
Billy Baker
132 Magazine Street
This modest Italianate Victorian would tell you that it was a “prefab” -- built in 1872 in Lewiston, Maine!!!! –and shipped down the coast – to be assembled For Mr. C.K. Hooker, who “had charge of the piping of the City Buildings.”
Diane Tabor
207 Magazine Street, Shell Sign
This Shell sign is the earliest known surviving example in the Boston area of the type of advertising signage known as a "spectacular" display. It is also significant as an intact example of a transitional type of advertising sign that combined both incandescent and neon lighting. The sign was built in 1933 and is associated with two important developments: the adaptation of neon and electricity to commercial applications, and the growth of the automobile and recreational highways at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Shell sign was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and made a Cambridge Landmark in 2010.
Cathie Zusy, from Historical Commission documents
We will be looking for neighborhood support as we petition the Historical Commission to approve minor updates as we rehabilitate the sign to make it energy efficient.
Tibor Hangyal, Magazine Beach Shell
290 Massachusetts Avenue, MIT's Random Hall
This building was constructed in 1894. It was originally a hotel, and had a lobby and a barber shop on the first floor. In the late 1960s it was acquired by MIT for use as a dormitory. Because students were randomly assigned to live here, it became known as Random Hall, and was dedicated as an MIT dorm on Leap Year’s Day (February 29) 1968. On Feb. 29, 2008, over 100 alumni of all ages returned to help current Random Hall residents celebrate. Nina Davis-Millis
581 Massachusetts Avenue, Harvest Co-op
This Harvest Co-op Market store started in 1974 as Cambridge Food Co-op across the street at 580 Mass Ave, in the basement where the art store is now. It joined together with the Boston Food Co-op in 1990. Now part of a two-store operation with a store in Jamaica Plain, we are now open to the public.
Cooperatives are owned by local members to serve their needs―in our case, food. Profits are returned to the membership or to the community.
Supporting your co-op is supporting your community.
Chris Durkin
20 Crpl. McTernan Street
If this building could talk.............It would tell you that it was once the Blessed Sacrament School. The School was closed and converted into a condominium complex with 23 units, as was the neighboring former Blessed Sacrament church now about 21 condominiums and a 2-level parking garage.
I am one of the first few owners. I personally do not have prior experience with what was once a Catholic school but is now Dana Park Place and my home, but my friends do and it's been fun listening to the varying memories and connections they have with the old Church school.
One friend visited me and spoke about how she remembers teaching CCD. She thought it was weird to be visiting the space as her friend’s home now, observes the space in aw, calling it beautiful. Three other friends remember being CCD students, at different times they similarly looked around in amazement, jaws dropped with thoughts on how shocked they were at the transformation and how gorgeous the place was renovated. A friend that is a police officer recalls his police training being done in the space and was also pleasantly surprised by the conversion to condominiums.
The front of the building tastefully still has the former molding keeping its historical traits. I fully enjoy the stories my friends share, the history of Dana Park Place and being a resident of the Cambridgeport area.
Mina Mauras
24 & 26 McTernan Park View Coop
This building was designed by the architects Newhall and Blevin and built for Dr. True in 1908. Decades later, it became one of the first Cambridge limited equity co-ops. As a co-op our history has been written cooperatively.- GK Our building, originally occupied by medical students, is now at present occupied by families for a corporate style of living- JN This building has a tradition of housing organizers. In the '70s Cambridge leaders of the 2nd wave of feminists met here. In the '80s union organizers - today green activists.-EM
Gavin W. Kleespies, John Nesby, and Elizabeth Morr-Wineman
769 Memorial Drive, Riverside Boat Club
Riverside Boat Club was founded in 1869 by printers, many of them Irish immigrants, from The Riverside Press. In addition to making rowing available to the working people of Cambridgeport, the club was a center of local social and political life. This building, its third, was built within the new Captain’s Island (Magazine Beach) Park in 1912 after its second was acquired by the city for the parkway. True to its origins, Riverside today is a member-run non-profit offering affordable rowing from the highest competitive to recreational levels. For information, visit www.riversideboatclub.com.
Richard Garver
45 Pearl Street, Cambridgeport Branch, Cambridge Public Library
A February 1972 article in the Cambridge Chronicle reported that a $6.5 million complex to be built on Green, Franklin & Pearl were going through the final steps of approval by the City Council. On what was a car lot for 165 cars, the City would build a 19-story 204-unit apartment house for the elderly, a large branch library, a 290-car garage, and an 8,000-square-foot open-air park. The Massachusetts Department of Community Affairs would pay for the $4.5 million housing development, and two bonds would finance the library, park and garage. It was noted that the garage would be paid for by meter receipts and violation fees—amounting to $600k annually—and that it would be only a few years before it paid for itself.
Cathie Zusy
128 Pearl Street
If this house could talk it would tell the tale of its exciting ride on a flatbed truck over the 1961 holidays, from Bell Court, near Fort Washington (see map). The Torreys are only the second owners of this ca. 1900 house. The Henrys, who ran the St. Johnsbury Trucking Co. locally, told us that a full cup of coffee, left by the house movers, was found, unspilled in the china cupboard at the new address! The 1955 photo below is the vacant lot that provided a play lot for local children between 1937 and 1963. Prior to 1937, this lot was filled with up to three homes since 1842.
Fun fact: The Torreys put in 23 windows, 8 of which were recycled from
a house looking out on Great Meadows in Concord.
Fun Fact: The hemlock tree to the left was 6 ft tall when planted in 1989.
David W. Torrey
139 Pearl Street
An old man who used to live in the neighborhood told the story that the little green house at the end of this driveway was built around 1900 by the son of the family who lived in the house in the front. I imagine him saying, "Hey, Dad, can I build a house in the back yard?"
After I bought the house and began doing some work on it, I noticed that some of the wood did not seem original―I got the impression that it might have been recycled fromsome other building.
Over at Harvard there's a wonderful web site containing high-resolution digital scans of many historical maps and atlases of Cambridge.
In the Bromley Atlas of 1903, you can clearly see this house (circled in red). (But of course there were some differences a hundred years ago: Corp. Mc Ternan St. was called "Lake St.", Dana Park was half its present size, and there was a street, Niagara St., between the park and an old school.)
But nine years earlier, in the Bromley Atlas of 1894, there was a different, smaller building in the corner of this lot. Could it have been a barn? Could it have been torn down sometime between 1894 and 1903, and the wood re-used to build my house?
I'll never know, but I like to think so.
Steve Summit
215 Pearl Street
If this house could talk it would tell you that during World War Two, there were two families living in just one side of the house. The adults in the family worked at the arsenal in Watertown (now the Arsenal Mall and office buildings) making bullets for the war effort. They shared the house, one couple working night and the other the day shift so they could trade off using the bedroom and living spaces. There was one bathroom in the basement with an iron toilet and small bathtub that everyone shared.
220 Pearl Street
It would tell you about 140 years of families, friends, laughter, and love-and that’s what is important!
Dinty Child and Carol Faulkner
238 Pearl Street
If This house could talk it would tell you about its well built in 1864 in what is now the driveway and before municipal water was supplied to Cambridge. It was circular and lined completely in brick, and still filled with water 16 feet down when it was (alas) filled I because of construction in 2000. A piece of it still lives above ground in the garden.
Susan Reverby
260 Pearl Street
This house was built in 1870 for a foreman of the Kennedy Biscuit Factory. Originally, the house and its barn occupied the entire corner lot. It was moved to its current location around 1900, when the brick apartment building was constructed.
(The Kennedy Biscuit Factory still stands in Cambridgeport, occupying the entire block at Brookline St. between Franklin and Green. The cookies, made there were named after local towns, including the original Fig Newton. The building now houses condominiums and a day care center.)
Mary LaClair
Pearl Street & Putnam Avenue, Corner dedicated Wilburt E. Brinkerhoff, Jr.
Seaman 1c Wilburt E. Brinkerhoff Jr., served on the USS Barton DD-599, built in Quincy, MA at Fore River Shipyard, commissioned 29 May 1942. Sunk by Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze off Guadalcanal, Friday, November 13, 1942. Massive explosions broke the Barton in two and both sections sank only minutes after the first torpedo struck, carrying with her 164 men to Iron Bottom Sound. Forty-two survivors were rescued by Portland and twenty-six by Higgins boats from Guadalcanal (Henderson Field).
USS Barton DD-599 was part of a 13 ship Force under Command of Rear Admiral Daniel Judson Callaghan on USS Atlanta, and was killed in action. The crushing USA, tactical defeat, highlighted superior Japanese Night fighting skills. Including the sinking of Juneau (5 Sullivan brothers), total U.S. losses in the battle were 1,439 dead. Historian Richard B. Frank states, "This action stands without peer for furious, close-range, and confused fighting during the war. But the result was not decisive. The self-sacrifice of Callaghan and his task force had purchased one night's respite for Henderson Field.". By November 15th, 1942, US Armed Forces ultimately prevailed in Battle of Guadalcanal, thanks to this initial Sacrifice.
Nelson Burtt, (RED), of the "Greasy Village" (1935 to 1965) writes of Brinkerhoff, "I didn't know Wilbur he was older than me but I was good friends with his brother Stanley and his sister Dorothy." Seaman 1c Wilburt E. Brinkerhoff Jr. grew up @ 515 Putnam Ave., Cambridge, MA, before joining the US NAVY.
Rediscovery - The wreck of the Barton was discovered in 1992 by Robert Ballard (RMS Titanic-1985)
Brian Campbell
263 Pearl Street, Gallery 263
Gallery 263 is a non-profit arts collaborative and performance space devoted to sustaining and invigorating all forms of arts in the Cambridge area.
In the summer of 2010, Gallery 263 established an artists-in-residency program. This program is designed to encourage and enhance interaction between the Cambridge community and the 3-5 artists participating in each three-month session. The program serves not only as an opportunity for the artists to share studio space and thus take their art in potentially new and collaborative directions, but also acts as a platform for inviting the public into the creative process itself, and enjoy the rare experience of witnessing art-making firsthand and meeting local artists. Each residency culminates in a two-week gallery showing.
The artists-in-residency program is open to artists working in any medium; the current roster of four artists (which includes the gallery co-directors Annie Newbold and David Craft) features residents working with paint, music, and performance.
Gallery 263 is currently one of only a handful of art galleries in Cambridge, and the only art gallery in the smaller residential community of Cambridgeport. As a contemporary art space, the gallery fulfills a dire need in the local region for a welcoming retreat in which to create, discuss, and appreciate art.
In the summer of 2010, Gallery 263 received its federal non-profit designation, which was a big step forward for us. Thanks to the V.L.A. and Josh Miller of Holland and Knight for helping us make this happen!
Art workshops, music nights, weekly yoga, and other assorted events fill up the gallery space on off hours, keeping 263 Pearl Street lively and fresh all year round. See what's coming at www.gallery263.com!
David Craft and Annie Newbold
285 Pearl Street
Our house was built in 1891. We replaced much of the front siding in 11-2006. We found these old News papers stuffed in the cracks, "The Electrical World" 03-28-1891.
This is not an interesting story, but, it is important to understand how people viewed Electricity and how it gave hope of better lives and jobs.
Brian D. Campbell
307 Pearl Street
It would tell you why it faces the water and not the street. It is because it was once the only house in this part of the Cambridgeport. It was part of the estate of Hastings, built sometime before 1854, when it first shows up on the survey map as the only house on a trapezoidal lot.
There are no records until a mortgage was taken out in the 1870’s by Clara and Uriah Butland. He was an expressman. His horses or mules were kept in the barn in back, which is now the studio. The original lot included the one next door as well. The house on that lot was built by the Butland’s for their son John in deeded exchange for care in their old age.
This house was sold for $56 in back taxes after the depression. The barn went with the house at 309 and was separated off in the 50’s when it was sold to a roofer for storage. We bought the house in 1978 and the barn in 1984.
Judy Motzkin and Richard Mandel
321 Pearl Street
It would tell you….
*In this house live the 4th, 5th & 6th generation of the same family to live on Pearl St.
*The families that have owned and lived here include:
The McMurtry’s,
The Greenleaf’s
And present owners –
Anne & Bill Davis
*Bill Davis was born at 346 Pearl St.
(His childhood home).
*This house was built in 1887 as a one family home.
*It was later converted to a two family.
*The front porch use to run along the right side of the house (the window you see on the right side alley use to be a entrance from the porch).
*Bill (the owner) can remember when he was a young boy and saw a horse that was spooked run right up on the porch.
*The Black doors were the front entrance, however there were only three steps leading to them.
*When the house was first built the yard was not fenced as it is today.
*The two-car garage was added to the property in 1929.
*It was a RED house from 1964 to May 2010 (It was painted a beautiful shade of Green - May 2010)
Denise Sullivan
346 Pearl Street
It would tell you….
*Only one family has ever owned it, whose lineage can be traced back past the American Revolution (They were Loyalist to the King of England)
*It was built as a one family in 1873, by Sea Captain George Southward
*He moved his family here from Arlington, MA after the influenza outbreak took two of his children and several grandchildren. His farm in Arlington stood where Arlington High School now stands.
*The back part of the house was added in 1886.
*Captain Southward brought home the stained glass in the second floor windows from Venice, Italy and he made the windows that you see.
*Captain Southward was very artistic and he painted a mural of the ships he sailed on in the front entry way (see picture) which is approximately 6 feet in width and 4 feet in length
*Captain Southward’s daughter Charlotte and her husband Gilford Hatfield Davis became models in their later years for a Boston Art School. (It is unknown if the tiles you see are really of them, but the resemblance is uncanny.)
*A purple heart recipient of World War I, Richard H. Davis lived here from
1900 – 1967
(The inoculation for Trench Fever was developed from his blood donations.)
*He also was very artistic―must of inherited the gene from his grandfather ;-} and retouched the front entry mural.
*During the depression Richard did not have the money to purchase canvas to work on so he painted pictures on the plaster walls. (See pictures attached)
*There is only one picture of his on canvas that still hangs on Pearl St. at the home of his son Bill Davis (321 Pearl) ―a Chinese Junk.
Denise Sullivan
5 Perry Street
Our home was built between 1890-1900 by a firm named Patterson and Fox. We bought this triple decker from the Stoker family who had a fish store on Pear St. where the restaurant Bakara is today. We raised our children here, and they met movie stars and Nobel prize winners. What a great neighborhood! We've had some wonderful tenants on the first floor, many who come to study or work at Harvard and MIT. We are especially glad that in the '60's the depressed 6 lane highway that was planned for Brookline street did not get built, and that neighbors fought against it. Yes―we've lived here for about 50 years, and been part of many neighborhood activities. One of us was even involved in writing Our Bodies Ourselves!
Jenny and Vincent Panico and Josie Patterson
9 Perry Street
This house was built in 1865, so we’re pretty sure that George Washington and his horse did not sleep here.
Our family has been here for 23 years, and we raised our 2 boys in it. The neighborhood has changed a lot in that time, but it has remained a close-knit place. So much so that when we were on vacation a number of years ago, a group of neighbors picked up our car and moved it by hand to the other side of the street so we would not get towed on the street cleaning day! Now that’s close knit.
The white pine tree was transplanted as a sapling from new Hampshire 50 years ago. It seems as happy here as we are…
Josie Patterson
11 Perry Street
William J. Dowd, who was listed in the city directory as a peddler, bought this property from Elizabeth Dana in 1868 and built the house the same year. The stable was added a year later.
William Dowd died in 1873. The 1873 atlas shows that his heirs owned this property as well as 13 and 15 Perry Street next door. (Both of those houses were built in 1876.) The 1874 city directory listed Eliza A. Dowd, widow of William J. Dowd as boarding at 18 Perry. The following year she had a house at 6 Sidney.
The Walshs bought his house in 1974 and lived here until 1995, when we bought it.
The picture below shows what the house looked like in 1971. (Cambridge Historical Commission Photo)
Jeff, Shary, Julia, Nina Berg
23 Perry Street
This large double house from 1852 illustrates a transition in style from Greek Revival to Italianate. Greek Revival features include the pilasters on the main block. The one-story bays and cast iron balconies are Italianate features. The original occupants of the house were Isaac D. Brewer, a tobacconist, and William Pulsifer, an insurance agent.
Kit Rawlins
46 Pleasant Street, Women’s Center
In 1971, a large group of women occupied an abandoned, Harvard-owned building at 888 Memorial Drive, advocating for women’s rights, affordable housing and child care, and education. Inspired by their actions, many local supporters contributed toward the purchase of this house, which opened in 1972 as the Women’s Center. The organization is run mostly by volunteers and continues to be a vital community resource for women, raising awareness of issues affecting women and other oppressed groups, and offering practical classes and workshops.
The house was built in 1874 for Charles E. Hancock, a real estate agent and justice of the peace.
Kit Rawlins
80-82 Pleasant Street
Built in the 1870s, a store was attached to this building in the 1880s. Arthur H. Smith’s “Mammoth Grocery and Provision House, selling “Everything pertaining to a first-class Grocery and Provision Establishment…at Bed Rock prices.” Mr. Smith made great improvements at the Grocery in 1893, including adding a 70-foot-long marble counter for the meat and provision department. Across from this were shelves and lockers of polished oak.
According to the Cambridge Chronicle:
“The store is supplied with new scales and fixtures, Lamson’s cash travelers, etc. The refrigerator is one of the largest in the city, thoroughly ventilated and holding thirteen tons of ice. A track with travelling meat hooks conveys the meat from the sidewalk to the refrigerator.”
Cathie Zusy
459 Putnam Street
Cambridgeport Baptist Church (CBC) was started in the 1860’s by First Baptist Church in Central Square as a mission to the children of dock workers back when Cambridge had an active port on the Charles River (hence “Cambridgeport!”). The current sanctuary was built in 1889.
The message of God’s love, purpose, and plan through Jesus the Messiah has been proclaimed, explained, encouraged, and lived out at CBC ever since by one generation of Christians after another.
Like the congregation that first gathered and worshiped here, today’s congregation is also on mission to the equivalent of those children of dock workers – college and career age young adults who come to Cambridge for education and job opportunities. Our congregation is comprised of primarily young adults and young families, many of whom have a connection to MIT, Harvard, or Boston University.
We are on a lifetime journey of learning how to trust God, love one another, and reach the world with the good news that Jesus is King which sets us free to trust God, love one another...
We would love to have you join us on our faith journey! We are not offering a worship service but a worshiping community which you can be a part of! Our Sunday gathering is at 10:45 a.m.
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:9-11).
Pastor Dan Szatkowski, Cambridgeportbaptist.org
460 PUTNAM AVENUE
I WAS BUILT IN 1869 AND AM AN EXAMPLE OF ITALINATE DESIGN. I’VE HAD SEVERAL ADDITIONS INCLUDING A BACK HALL IN 1886, SIDE BAY WINDOW IN 1894, AND A WHOLE ROOM WITH BAY WINDOW IN FRONT IN 1916.
I WAS FIRST OWNED BY THE DILLOWAY FAMILY, THEN THE HOUGHTON FAMILY FOR OVER 40 YEARS. I WAS PURCHASED IN 1930 BY
THE SERINOS WHO SOLD ME TO ED AND DIANNE RICE, MY CURRENT OWNERS, IN 1965.
I WAS ONCE THE PARSONAGE FOR THE BAPTIST CHURCH ACROSS THE STREET.
ED AND DIANNE RICE
91 River Street
Built in 1899, 91 River Street is an example of a flatiron building, similar in design to the famous Fuller Building (aka “the Flatiron building”) in New York at 175 Fifth Street, at the crossing of Broadway and 23rd Street. This building is now home to Charlie Allen Restorations, named Boston’s Best Restoration Contractor by Boston Home Magazine.
Chris Kelly
128 Sidney Street
Wheelock, Lovejoy & co., steel manufacturing was established in 1850 with their main plants in Cambridge. On this site in 1914, they built a steel warehouse, 1915 a steel factory, and in 1916, workshops and garage space was added. Railroad tracks ran on the northwest side of the building delivering supplies and sending out fabricated product. In 1938 through 1941, this building went under major renovation to meet the needs of the new technologies in steel.
In 1993, this again under went major renovation to become laboratory space for the up and coming cutting edge biotechnology field. In 2010, this space continues to function as a laboratory and manufacturing area for new biotechnology-derived pharmaceuticals.
Bob Steininger, Acceleron Pharma, Inc.
12 Upton Street
It would say: “Who chose these colors!?!?!?!
What were they thinking?”
Alice Turkel
15 Upton Street
School buildings have occupied this site since 1852 when the Daniel Webster School was established. It was the sole structure on what was then called Webster Street, and the neighborhood’s only school (until Willard Primary was built in 1870 at Dana Park). In 1862, a male principal led the school and an all-female teaching staff of eight taught 478 students. By 1872, the street, now Upton, had filled with houses, and Webster’s enrollment had increased to 625 students under 12 women teachers. Nothing of the original brick building remains.
Kit Rawlins
16 Upton Street
This was the home of the first African-American police officier’s granddaughters Lillian and Maria Homer. Sergeant Julius Homer was appointed to the Boston Police Department in 1878 and served until 1910. He was believed to be the second African American policeman in the United States. Sergeant Homer played ten musical instruments and memorized one poem each day. He was a Republican (party of Lincoln). He was recently discovered in an unmarked grave in Brighton. He was reburied in Evergreen Cemetery June 2010. Maria and Lillian Homer still reside in Cambridge!
The story continues. This house was owned by Samuel Dottin. The Dottin family is one of the oldest and largest families residing in Cambridge. Upon his death, Samuel Dottin passed the home to his daughter Mariam. Mairiam sold the house in 1982 to her daughter Bonita. The block of Upton St. from #28-#16 suffered a major fire in 1997. All homes were lost and rebuilt within 18 months. The Dottin family boasts at least 14 sets of twins. (2 sets reside here.) Samuel Dottin came here from Barbados with five brothers and many generations were spawned and still live in Cambridge.
Bonita Cox
3 William Street
At a dinner five years ago with old friends (living at No. 6 William Street), the talk turned to my preoccupation: buying a house after 40+ years out of the country. “What about the place across the street?” I stared out in the failing light at the elegant bones of a very frowzy structure, an arguably an old girl but with perfect Palladian proportions: the precise slope of the roof in relation to the height, the quoins and ship-lapped siding to give it the look of a granite structure, the return of the roof and the sculpted detail of the corbels supporting the ample roof overhang. Hooked? Yes but Lordy it was a mess.
The records on the year of construction conflict: 1850 for some, 1857 for others. I had known nothing of its early occupants. Butlers and maids to the lairds of Brattle Street? Maybe but pretty fancy digs for servants. And yet there was never a driveway nor room for one, so one may assume that if a horse was part of the picture, it had to be dossed down elsewhere. As it turns out, it was an upholsterer that I have to thank for creating this small gem a century and a half ago.
[Note: The text below wasn’t on the sign, but was part of the write up.]
There was never a fireplace, the internally-built chimney having been used presumably for the venting of the smoke of a Franklin Stove, something we forewent on account of its excessive size in relation to the space of the LR.
In the process of turning the space into “ours”, the entire house was gutted, filling no fewer than 4 dumpsters in order to create an “open” configuration. Everything proceeded without a hitch until it was discovered that that the “el” had no material connection to the main house. The only thing holding the two parts of the house together were sheetrock and roofing shingles which worked just fine to hold the two halves together for 150 years, thank you very much.
“Ah well”, I offered brightly, “if it survived over 150 years like that, I guess we can just put it back the way it was.” “Wrong” said my builder. “Now that it has been opened up for all to see, code requires that you tie the two pieces together with more than Tooth Fairy faith.” And without further discussion, a 4x10 piece of paralam, that harder-than-iron stuff that is made out of wood chips, was in place and now, not even the collapse of the gigantic cottonwood tree behind the house could separate the two sections.
So there it is. We fixed up everything, tarted up the garden to a fare-thee-well, and if the house couldn’t talk before, it certainly talks now. Fifty years ago, I couldn’t have come down to Cambridgeport without getting my head knocked in. Today, my faux Palladian is home and William Street is kid heaven. And with Cathie Z. leading the talking house parade, I consider that, at age 73, I’ve finally arrived.
F. L. (Peter) Higginson
9 William Street
For many years, asphalt covered the entire side area, front to back, of this house. Twenty years ago, we decided to remove most of the asphalt and create a yard and garden. To our surprise and dismay, below the asphalt lay three feet of cement. Removal required a backhoe and a massive excavation effort. We now have a lovely garden.
Update: The mystery of the cement has been solved. A neighbor recalls that there was once a garage in what is now our backyard!
Ann Levin and Larry Beeferman
12 William Street
Builders left a time capsule in the walls as they finished construction—a Cambridge Chronicle newspaper. Current owners also placed a time capsule in the walls during renovation in 2000.
Excerpts from
The Cambridge Chronicle
Saturday May 2, 1863
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Annual subscription, $2.00, or 4 cents per weekly copy
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The True Wife – Only let a woman be sure that she is precious to her husband – not simple useful or valuable, nor convenient, but lovely and beloved….
--------------------------------
Agency for the Ammoniated PACIFIC GUANO
We are receiving a constant supply of this superior GUANO which will be found one of the cheapest and best fertilizers on the market. It is adapted to all soils, and all the various crops – Grass, Grain, Corn, Potatoes, Tobacco, &c.
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Why is the sun like a good loaf? Because it’s light when it rises.
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CAMBRIDGE RAILROAD TIME TABLE
PROSPECT STREET: For Boston at 6, and 6:15 A.M., and every 10 minutes until 10:15 A.M., 4:25 P.M., and every 10 minutes until 7:15 P. M.
21 William Street
House was built in 1837 as a single-family residence. It’s the same building as #17 to your right.
Current residents, since 1998, are James, Colleen, and Pedro, our friendly tabby who patrols the neighborhood.
For much of its 20th century history the house was broken up into apartments. A legacy is that we have 5 heat zones, now useful for keeping our heating bills within reason.
In looking under a floor to examine the strength of the beams for holding up a bookcase, we found a letter from David Watson, the previous owner from 1984 to 1998.
September 7, 1986
David totally renovated this home between 1984-1987(?). We will never undertake such a large project again… Many problems from previous miscellaneous, cheap and substandard renovations.
We have added only bookcases. The floor beams are sturdy and supporting thousands of books.
Colleen Clark and James Cox
23-25 and 25A William Street
This imposing and proud gray Greek Revival house, with four stately columns and a broad porch, was built in 1836 and 1837 by the same crew who made the practically identical yellow Greek Revival house directly across Magazine Street. (Actually the two were probably identical at the start.) We found a mid-19th century daguerreotype of a man who might have been one of the original residents. He’s wearing a nice silk vest under his swallow-tail coat and a silk cravat to match….In more recent years the lower-left unit served as a neighborhood doctor’s office, as you may recall if you grew up here….
Scott Ruescher
William & Magazine Streets
Walk the short block of William Street between Pearl and Magazine streets and savor the exceptional collection of Greek Revival and early Italianate houses, most constructed between 1830 and 1860. The houses were not built for the wealthy, but owned by the tradesmen and workers. For example, the substantial double Greek Revival at nos. 5-7 (built 1848) was owned by a butcher; 11-13 (ca. 1840) by a housewright and a blacksmith; and 17 (1836), 21 (1836), and 23-25 (1837) all belonged to carpenters.
Several houses in the Italianate style grace the street: the beautifully restored house at no. 3 was built in 1857 for an upholsterer (note the rounded window under the gable, an element of the Italiante style ), and no. 39 (across I mean, to see no. 39 one must cross magazine street Magazine Street? Parenthetical remark could be cut.), from 1854, may have been owned by a carpenter (look for the roof’s deep overhang, another Italianate element).
Kit Rawlins
