By Doug Brown Cambridge has made a lot of things over the centuries, not all of them valuable. Our manufacturing history has its dirty, dangerous downside, and dealing with the hazards and by-products of production has always been a challenge in this jam-packed, 7.1-square-mile city. By the end of the 19th century, the technological advances of the Second Industrial … Read More
SWEDENBORG CHAPEL: Living history
by Ruth Hobeika “Planting community” is how the century-old Swedenborg Chapel’s Reverend Sage Cole describes a year-long outreach set to launch in January, joining visions from opposite sides of the country. Anna Woofenden – currently a visiting consultant – is exploring the question of what it means to be a church today, when so many congregations are dwindling. She is … Read More
The Reverend Jose Glover And The Beginnings Of The Cambridge Press (Part 2) by John A. Harrer
[Continued from last week] V The newly appointed printer, Samuel Green, having had no experience in his new trade, was at once confronted with the work of producing a small book that involved some problems not easily solved by a novice. The Platform itself required four gatherings of eight pages each. The Preface was too long to be contained … Read More
The Reverend Jose Glover And The Beginnings Of The Cambridge Press (Part 1) by John A. Harrer
The Reverend Jose Glover And The Beginnings Of The Cambridge Press By John A. Harrer Read May 24, 1960 The most famous antiquarian sale of books America has known was held in the year 1879. None other has equaled it in the eighty years that have passed since then. The great collection of books, on display for the occasion … Read More
Early Glass Making In East Cambridge by Doris Hayes-cavanaugh
Early Glass Making In East Cambridge By Doris Hayes-cavanaugh Read 5 June, 1926 Much has been said recently about the business growth of Cambridge, and a number of publications have stressed the fact that Cambridge, and particularly the section known as East Cambridge, now stands very high in the scale of New England manufacturing centres. Imposing schedules of plants … Read More
Elias Howe, Jr., Inventor Of The Sewing Machine (Part 2)
[Continued from last week] The Victory Over Labor Mobs Starvation near his door and the $500 of George Fisher exhausted, Howe could now manufacture his machine for sale — if it would sell. To do this, he asked a practical Boston tailor to Cambridge to test it by sewing. All at once the whole company of tailors in Boston … Read More
Elias Howe, Jr., Inventor Of The Sewing Machine (Part 1)
Elias Howe, Jr., Inventor Of The Sewing Machine 1819-1919 A Centennial Address Born In A Cradle Of Invention The succession of master minds in a particular locality compels us to believe in the spiritual consanguinity of genius. It is an heredity much greater than that of blood. It is an heredity of spirit, that second birth that is not … Read More
The Romance of Brick by G. Burton Long
Brick is something that has been with us for centuries. There is an old maxim which says, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and this might well be applied to brick, because it has been used as a building material throughout the ages, and we are prone to accept it without regard to its antiquity or to its continued use or to the … Read More
Printing In Cambridge Since 1800 by Norman Hill White, Jr.
Printing In Cambridge Since 1800 By Norman Hill White, Jr. Read January 27, 1920 From 1692, when Samuel Green retired as manager of the college press, there was no printing done in Cambridge for over a hundred years, except that done by the brothers Samuel and Ebenezer Hall in 1775, under the direction of the Committee of Safety. The … Read More
Eighty-five Aromatic Years In Harvard Square by Catharine K. Wilder
Eighty-five Aromatic Years In Harvard Square By Catharine K. Wilder A tiny island exists today in Harvard Square about which the poet Robert Hillyer, Harvard ’17, writes: Not all goes up in smoke, here smoke appears To give stability in changing years. Leavitt & Peirce, whose name evokes a host of blue haze memories, has the honor … Read More