USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 17
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MEMORIAL HALL AND SANDERS THEATRE
like a salute of artillery on some holiday which you had forgotten. Everything was a joke to him,-that the oath of allegiance had been administered to him by your grandfather, -- that he had taught Prescott his first Spanish (of which he was proud),-no matter what. Everything came to him marked by Nature Right side up, with care, and he kept it so. The world to him, as to all of us, was like a medal, on the obverse of which is stamped the image of Joy, and on the reverse that of Care. S. never took the foolish pains to look at that other side, even if he knew its existence; much less
America, and in 1825 became instructor in German at Cambridge and proved a most stimu- lating leader. It was Dr. Follen who introduced gymnastics in the College. Under his enthusi- astic direction the Delta, where Memorial Hall now stands, was fitted up as an out-of-door gymnasium; and under Dr. Follen's leadership there first began the interest in athletics which has in later years filled so prominent a place in student life. Dr. Follen married Miss Eliza Lee Cabot, and built a house on Waterhouse Street, at the corner of the street that now bears his name. Withdrawing from tcaching in 1835,
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he took up the work of the ministry and was the founder of what is now the Follen Church at East Lexington. He lost his life in 1840, in the burning of the steamer Lexington on Long Island Sound.
Charles Beck was another notable German scholar who was implicated in the same demon- strations against autocratic government in Germany that had forced Dr. Follen to fly. They were comrades on the voyage to America; and, in 1832, he became professor of Latin at Harvard. He taught for eighteen years and then retired, but his home, at the corner of Quincy and Harvard Streets where the Harvard
his boundless sympathies, his extraordinary gift of making friends, his genial personality, led all his hearers captive. In 1848 the Law- rence Scientific School was organized at Cam- bridge; and Agassiz became Professor of Natural History, and another great scientist who was Cambridge trained, Jeffries Wyman, became Professor of Anatomy. Agassiz at once estab- lished himself at Cambridge with a company of friends and assistants who had followed him from Europe, and who together made a cheerful household. In this domestic group were Count Francois de Pourtales, M. Edward Desor, M. Jaques Burkhard, the draughtsman, and M. A.
... .
THE HARVARD UNION
Union now stands, was long the center of a boundless hospitality. Beck Hall, the earliest of the privately-owned dormitories for students, was built by his daughter on part of the estate; and his name is also borne by the old Cambridge Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was a most ardent patriot, and foremost among Cambridge citizens at the time of the Civil War in recruiting and providing hospital supplies.
Most famous among these memorable Cam- bridge citizens of foreign birth was Louis Agassiz. Agassiz came to Boston in 1846 to lecture at the Lowell Institute. His scientific enthusiasm,
Sourel, the lithographic artist. M. Christison, an old Swiss minister, was their housekeeper and homemaker. Later, Professor Guyot arrived and many guests, chiefly foreign scien- tists, were constantly coming and going. Down on the marsh by the Boylston Street Bridge was an old shanty on piles. This Agassiz utilized for the storage of his first collections. Boards nailed against the walls were the cases for speci- mens, and a single rough table completed the laboratory. Such were, in 1848, the humble beginnings of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, now one of the greatest institutions
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of the kind in the world. In 1850 Agassiz married Miss Elizabeth Cabot Cary, an alliance which made him a member of a large and happy family circle, and brought him into especial intimacy with his colleague, Professor C. C. Felton, who became his brother-in-law. Agassiz not only lectured in all parts of the country, but carried on a vast scientific correspondence; and Cambridge became the Mecca of an ever- increasing body of students of zoology, geology and cognate subjects. In 1854 the Agassizs moved into the house which the College had built for them, at the corner of Quincy Street and Broadway, and there they carried on for eight years, in addition to all the great public labors, a private school of the highest reputa- tion. The Museum building, which is popularly known by the name of Agassiz, was begun in 1860. To the life and work of this most eminent of all American students of nature and his asso- ciates and successors, Cambridge owes not only its incomparable Museum, but also its fame as the chief American center for scientific research.
Such were some of the remarkable group that made the old Cambridge of the first half of the nineteenth century a singularly interesting place of residence. A more agreeable or stimu- lating society, or one more united in habits of life, common intellectual interests and happy
personal relationships it would be difficult to recall. Longfellow, writing from Rome, told of a talk he had had with Darwin: "Why," said Darwin, "what a set of men you have in Cambridge. Both our Universities put together cannot furnish the like. Why, there is Agassiz, he counts for three."
If Cambridge was thus renowned for the quality of the people who lived there, it is inter- esting to record that new reputation came to the town in the nineteenth century because of the fame of the people whose bodies were brought to rest in Cambridge soil. In 1831 the Massa- chusetts Horticultural Society, which owned a beautifully variegated tract of land at the western end of Cambridge, was authorized by act of legislature to establish there a rural ceme- tery. Judge Story was the leader in this move- ment, and he it was who delivered the dedication address on September 24, 1831. Mount Auburn was laid out in accordance with designs made by Mr. Alexander Wadsworth, and was the first, as it is still the most beautiful, of the well- planned country cemeteries in the United States. Mount Auburn is in no small degree the West- minster Abbey of our Nation, for within its gates rest many of the most famous of Americans.
X
THE CITY
T HE time had arrived when Cambridge must become a city. Between 1840 and 1845 the population had nearly doubled and with this sudden growth in numbers there had been an almost equal increase in the town's valuation. The habits of local government which were suited to a community of a few thousand people were strained to meet the needs of a population of over twelve thousand. The stormy debates about the inclosing of the Com- mon had demonstrated the inadequacy of the old Court-house at Harvard Square to accom- modate the voters, and thé town meeting had been obliged to adjourn across the street to the Meeting-house. An agitation for larger quarters resulted in the building, in 1832, of a new town- house on Norfolk Street in Cambridgeport. This was another grievance for the people of the Old Village who had already seen the County Courts transferred from Harvard Square to East Cambridge. Most of the new population and wealth were in the new villages, and jealousy between the three sections still disturbed the civic life of the town. The spirit of rivalry between "the Port" and "the Point," which had begun with the building of the two bridges, was still active and both of the new villages had a long-standing grievance against Old Cam- bridge, because of the real or supposed unwilling- ness of the taxpayers who lived there to be taxed for the building of schools and streets in the newer parts of the town. Communication between the three villages was slow and at some seasons even difficult. No one section was strong enough to control the town meeting, but there was constant wrangling. One solution of the difficulty was to still further subdivide the town which had already seen Lexington, West Cambridge (Arlington), Newton and Brighton carved out of its original territory. Another solution was to effect "a more perfect union" by adopting a city form of government. The latter course prevailed. A petition of some of the residents of Old Cambridge, presented
to the General Court in 1842, and praying to be set off as a distinct town, was rejected; and a petition for a City Charter adopted at a town meeting held on January 14, 1846, was granted by the General Court with a referendum to the voters of the town. The act incorporating the city was signed by Governor Briggs on March 17, 1846. On March 30th, the voters, by a vote of 645 to 224, adopted the charter, and on May 4th the first city government was inaugurated.
It was no easy task to care for the fast-growing needs of the young city. It is difficult to realize how very recent in discovery and adoption are all the conveniences of community life which the people of a modern city take for granted. The old town of Cambridge had indeed provided for schools and for very inexpensive schoolhouses, for the care of the poor in an almshouse, and for the occasional repair of the dirt roads, but that was all. When the citizens had arranged for the primary education of the children and made decent provision for the destitute, their civic obligations appeared to them to be ful- filled. Everything else that contributed to the health, comfort, protection and happiness of the people was disregarded or left to the initia- tive of private individuals. When the city was incorporated the streets were unpaved and un- lighted. The sidewalks were uncurbed and neglected. Water was drawn from wells or rain-tanks attached to the individual houses. There were no sewers and no system of garbage collection. Not until 1852 was an ordinance adopted establishing a system of sewers, and not until 1865 did the city undertake to provide water. There was no provision for the care of the public health, nor means for preventing or checking epidemics: no hospital, no ambu- lance, no nurses. The people were accustomed to pasture their cattle on the grassy roads, and there was a good deal of resentment when the new city government tried to put a stop to that practice. A watchman or constable was em- ployed in each of the three villages, but there
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was no police force, and indeed, to the credit of the citizens, it must be said that there was very seldom any occasion for the services of a policeman. There were several volunteer fire companies, but it sometimes happened that their efforts did more damage to property than the fire they were supposed to extinguish. There was no public library, and parks and play- grounds were undreamed of. The two bridges connecting Cambridge with Boston were both privately owned toll bridges, and did not become free until 1858. The hourly stage sufficed for public conveyance. Save for the works of the New England Glass Company at East Cam- bridge, some small soap factories in the Port, the brick-making on the Fresh Pond meadows, and the printing business at Harvard Square, there was no manufacturing. The chief in- dustry was still the College, which, with the Divinity School and the Law School, had in the middle of the century some five hundred students. The business of teaching, lodging, boarding, clothing and generally providing for these temporary residents was the occupation of the majority of the households of the Old Village.
The new city government went to work promptly and judiciously. The first mayor was James D. Green, who had been the minister of the Unitarian Church in East Cambridge, and who had already served as a selectman and as a representative in the General Court. He served two terms and was succeeded by Pro- fessor Sidney Willard for three terms. Mr. Green was mayor again in 1853, and again during the early years of the Civil War. Police and fire departments were organized, roads began to be paved and sidewalks to be constructed. The "Old Villagers," the "Porters" and the "Pointers" began to lose their sectional dis- tinctions. Houses grew up on the intervening fields and marshes until the three villages could no longer be distinguished. A community feeling more and more superseded the old rivalries. Conveniences and comforts multi- plied, population continued to grow rapidly, and if the tax rate showed a steady increase there was no complaint, because the people received their money's worth. In twenty years in the place of the three villages there was a united, busy, suburban city, with many and
diversified industries, abundant public spirit and an intelligent, progressive population.
John Fiske, in his oration at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the city pointed out that the chief causes of the growth of Cambridge were three in number: proximity to Boston, the reputation and growth of the University and its allied interests, and the availability of the city as a manufacturing center. The whole city shared in the general prosperity of the metropolitan district of Boston, and the early development of a transportation system gave Cambridge a good start. The Union Railway Company was organized in 1855, under the leadership of Gardiner G. Hubbard, Charles C. Little, Estes Howe and other active and sanguine citizens, and the first street cars began to run over the West Boston Bridge between Harvard Square and Bowdoin Square in Boston in the following year. The trans- portation facilities have since kept pace with the needs of the people. Electricity took the place of horses as a motive power on the street rail- ways in 1889, and the rapid transit afforded by the new system of subways will undoubtedly again stimulate the growth of population.
Many of the leading merchants and pro- fessional men of Boston make their homes in Cambridge, where their families can enjoy access to sunlight and fresh air, to green lawns and gardens, where the schools are admirably con- ducted, where health conditions are the best of any city in the state, where there are no saloons and where the libraries and parks and the various activities of the University provide unusual facilities for education, recreation and social enjoyment. Famous lawyers like Henry W. Paine, Richard H. Dana and Chauncy Smith, who were leaders of the Boston Bar, were thus Cambridge residents; and among the many honorable business men who lived in Cambridge while conducting their affairs in Boston two should be especially remembered, both because of the service which they rendered to the civic life of their home city, and because they manu- factured and distributed a characteristic Cam- bridge product. Henry O. Houghton was the founder of the Riverside Press, and senior part- ner of the great publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company. He served one year as Mayor of Cambridge. Charles C. Little
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was the founder of another great publishing firm, Little, Brown & Company, and he was the active promoter of many of the local enterprises which contributed to the develop- ment and welfare of Cambridge.
The growth of Cambridge has, in the second place, been influenced by the presence of the University. More than four thousand officers and students live in Cambridge and in the long vacation a thousand other students come to attend the summer courses. Every year a considerable number of families move to Cam- bridge in order to educate their children, and others come because of teaching appointments, or for purposes of scientific research. The co- operation between the University and the city for the public welfare is close and cordial. The great literary and scientific collections of the University are open to all under suitable restrictions. The Library, the Bo- tanic Garden, the University Mu- seum, the Fogg Museum of. Arts, the Peabody Mu- seum, the Semitic Museum, the Ger- manic Museum, the Social Muse- um, are all places of large public resort. The University chapel is a center of interest for many Cambridge people, for through- out the year services are conducted there by eminent preachers of many different denomina- tions. The University also provides a very large number of evening lectures open to the public. These lectures cover a wide range of subjects and afford to Cambridge people many opportunities of seeing and hearing distinguished men. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has for many years given an annual series of concerts under the auspices of the University, and there are many other opportunities of musical culture afforded by the presence of the College.
The University gives to the city a unique atmosphere. It is cheerful and inspiring to
THE WILLIAM HAYES FOGG ART MUSEUM
live in a city through which pours an ever-rising tide of healthy and manly youth making ready for worthy service in the world, but not yet burdened by its cares and griefs. It is agreeable to live where hundreds of men work with their minds bent primarily on intellectual pursuits, and kindled by enthusiasms which have nothing material as their object. "A society," said Horace Scudder, "in which a university is planted cannot easily make riches the measure of social rank, and Cambridge thus still attracts the lovers of a literary life, who value in society the coin which is struck from the same mint as that they carry about with them in their empty pockets;" and William D. Howells wrote of his Cambridge experiences: "One could be openly poor in Cambridge without shame, for no one was very rich there, and no one was proud of his riches. ... The air of the Cam- bridge that I knew was sufficiently cool to be bracing but what was of good import in me flourished in it. The life of the place had its lat- eral limitations; sometimes its lights failed to detect excellent things that lay beyond it; but upward it opened illimitably."
It is easy to see that Cambridge should profit by its advantages as a place of suburban resi- dence and as a resort for scholars, but it is more surprising to discover how its growth has been expedited by the establishment of numerous factories. In recent years the combined facilities for railroad and water communication in the eastern part of the city have proved peculiarly favorable to great manufacturing plants. The Fitchburg Railroad skirts the northern boundary of the city and the main line of the Boston and Albany Railroad is just across the river on the south. The Grand Junction freight tracks run through the eastern end of Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, connecting these trunk
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lines that enter Boston and giving to that sec- tion of Cambridge unusual transportation ad- vantages. The chief manufacturers are of various kinds of machinery, and among the other important industries may be mentioned printing and publishing, musical instruments (especially pianos and organs), furniture, clothing, soap and candles, biscuit-making, carriage-making and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's materials, bricks and tiles and confectionery. "Most of the steel railway bridges in New Eng- land," said Mr. Fiske in the semi-centennial oration, "are built in Cambridge, and a con- siderable part of the world is supplied with hydraulic engines. The United States Navy comes to Cambridge for its pumps, and this Cambridge product may be seen at work in Honolulu, in Sydney, in St. Petersburg. In the dimensions of its pork-packing industry Cam- bridge comes next after Chicago and Kansas City. Fifty years ago all the fish-netting used in America was made in England; today it is chiefly made in East Cambridge. The potteries on Walden Street turn out most of the flower- pots used in this country." Such facts as these bear witness to the unusual facilities of the city, where coal can be taken and freight can be shipped at the very door of the factory, where the protection against fire is efficient, where skilled labor is easy to get, because good work- men find life comfortable and attractive, with healthy conditions of life and unrivalled means of education for their children.
Among the Cambridge industries, several are especially characteristic and famous. The University Press is the successor of the first printing establishment in America, of which we have spoken as beginning in 1639. The River- side Press sets the standards of bookmaking as one of the fine arts. The Athenaeum Press, founded by the ability and practical foresight of Edwin Ginn and his associates, turns out the school books that are used all over the country. The past half century has seen Cambridge come into the foremost rank among the printing and publishing centers of the world. A unique industry goes on in a modest establishment on Brookline Street, where, just before crossing the bridge, one comes upon a pleasant dwelling house, with a private observatory, and hard by it a plain brick building. That is the shop
of Alvan Clark and Sons, who have carried the art of telescope-making to a height never reached before. There have been made the most power- ful refracting telescopes in the world. The Mason and Hamlin Company built its factories on Broadway in 1874, and sends its famous organs and pianos all over the globe. The gardens of the world are watered, its fires quenched, its wheels tired, by the products of the Woven Hose Company, which, starting from very small beginnings in 1870, has grown into an enormous concern. The Cambridge- port plant of the New York Biscuit Com- pany, formerly the famous factory of Mr. Frank A. Kennedy, is the second largest in the country. The John P. Squire Company Corporation, leading pork-packers; Ginn and Company, leading publishers.
The prosperity of Cambridge has also been upbuilt and its political and social life unified by the energies of its municipal administration and the supply of the varied needs of the com- munity. When the city was organized its people drank from a thousand different private wells. All now drink alike from one public supply. It was in 1852 that a charter was granted to the Cambridge Water Works, and four years later Fresh Pond was set aside as the source of supply. A high service reservoir was estab- lished at the corner of Reservoir Street and Highland Street with a tower which was long a landmark. "I shall hardly expect to know my native Cambridge when I come back," wrote Lowell from Europe, "what with railroads and water-works. . .. The water- works I have no manner of conception of. Whence is the water to come? Where is the reservoir to be? And will a pipe run through Elmwood lane and cut off all the roots of the ash-trees? Will there be any fountains? Will it be against the law to mix anything with the water?" And on his return he wrote: "Rome, Venice, Cambridge! I take it for an ascending scale, Rome being the first step and Cambridge the glowing apex. But you wouldn't know Cambridge-with its railroad and its water- works and its new houses. ... Think of a reservoir behind Mr. Wells's! And then think of Royal Morse and John Holmes and me in the midst of these phenomena! I seem to see our dear old village wriggling itself out of its
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chrysalis and balancing its green wings till the sun gives them color and firmness."
As the demand for water increased new sources of supply were utilized: Spy Pond (afterwards abandoned) and Wellington Brook, then Stony Brook, and Hobbs Brook, where large storage basins have been constructed. Fresh Pond is now practically the distributing reservoir, and the high service reservoir is now on the hill in Payson Park at the west of the Pond. The surroundings of the Pond are now a Park under the control of the Water Board and appropriately named for Chester W. Kingsley, who was for
dedicated with an address by President Edward Everett. In 1886 the high school, then located in the building at the corner of Broadway and Fayette Streets, was divided, the classical department becoming the Cambridge Latin School, and the remaining departments, the Cambridge English High School. The grammar schools of Cambridge take high rank among the similar organizations and the city has always enjoyed the services of able and high-minded superintendents. The standards of attainment are such as befit a university town, and Cam- bridge spends more money on its schools than
CAMBRIDGE PUBLIC LIBRARY
nearly thirty years a member of that Board, and for fourteen years its President.
At the time when Cambridge became a city a high school and a grammar school was con- ducted in each of the three villages; and one of the first steps of the new government was to bring the high schools together in a central school in Cambridgeport. This step still further reduced the sectional jealousies and promoted the growth of more sympathetic relations be- tween the different parts of the city. The first building of this united high school stood at the corner of Summer and Amory Streets and was
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