Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 22

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

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2. The Harvard Congregational Church, Harvard and Marion Sts., is a low rambling brownstone building in Gothic style with a high tower which contains an unusually fine set of chimes. It was designed by E. Tuckerman Potter and erected in 1873.

L. from Harvard St. into Marion St .; L. from Marion into Beacon St.

3. All Saints' Church, 1773 Beacon St., consecrated in 1926, and like the cathedrals of Europe built slowly over a period of years, was one of the first large churches undertaken by Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson. It shows the influence of the 'perpendicular' churches of England - late Gothic design. The high walls, low-pitched roof, and restrained use of carving are characteristic. The rose window, by Charles F. Connick of Boston - the American authority on stained glass - is a notable feature. Retrace Beacon St .; L. from Beacon into Summit Ave., a steep grade.

4. The Corey Hill Outlook (alt. 265) is the best vantage-point of Brookline. Beneath it, to the west, lie the towns of Brighton and Watertown, with the tower of Perkins Institution for the Blind, and the Watertown Ar- senal, a group of gray-brick buildings, standing out among the huddle of roofs. To the north the horseshoe of the Harvard Stadium is easily distinguished, with the towers of the college buildings on its right. To the east the Charles River widens to its greatest breadth and merges with Boston Harbor in the distance.

Retrace Summit Ave .; L. from Summit Ave. on Beacon St.

5. The Brookline Trust Company, at 1341 Beacon St., has the Ernest B. Dane Collection of Tapestries, which includes four Gobelin tapestries valued at $2,000,000.

L. from Beacon St. on Harvard St.

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6. The Edward Devotion House (open Sat. 2-4; adm. 10g), at 347 Harvard St., was built in 1680 by Edward Devotion, town perambulator, town constable, fence viewer, and tythingman. The neat cream and yellow two-and-a-half-story frame house with small-paned windows, gambrel roof, and central chimney stands on the premises of the Devotion School. Two old maples shade and partly hide the little house, which is now the headquarters of the Brookline Historical Society.

Retrace Harvard St .; L. from Harvard St. on Beacon St .; L. from Beacon St. on Amory St.

7. Hawes Pond (skating), lies in the Amory St. Playground. Tradition has it that a white horse and wagon once sank in its reputedly bottomless depths, and for many years thereafter it was known as White Horse Pond.

Retrace Amory St .; R. from Amory St. on Beacon St .; L. from Beacon St. into Kent St .; L. from Kent St. on Aspinwall Ave .; L. from Aspinwall Ave. into Netherlands Rd.

8. The Netherlands House (private), is a close copy of the Stadthuise at Franeker in Fresland (16th century). From the World's Columbian Ex- position held at Chicago in 1893, where it served as the Dutch Cocoa House, it was moved piece by piece and set up in its present location. The door frame, embellished with stone animals, is a replica of the door- way of the Enkhaisen Orphanage.

Retrace Netherlands Rd .; L. on Aspinwall Ave .; R. from Aspinwall Ave. on Brookline Ave .; R. from Brookline Ave. on Boylston St .; R. from Boylston St. on Buckminster Rd .; L. from Buckminster Rd. on Seaver St.

9. The Zion Research Library (open daily 1.30-4.30), 120 Seaver St., is a non-sectarian institution for the study of the Bible and church history. The building, a brownstone mansion of 60 rooms, once John Munro Longyear's private residence in Bay City, Michigan, was carried stone by stone to its present location on the crest of Fisher Hill.

Retrace Seaver St .; R. from Seaver St. into Buckminster Rd .; R. from Buck- minster Rd. into Summer St .; across Boylston St., entering Warren St.

IO. The Davis-Cabot-Goddard Home or Green Hill (private), 215 Warren St., on one of the tall inner chimneys bears the inscription, 'Greenhill 1730.' The first-floor windows and their sturdy green blinds are ten feet high. The wallpaper in the living-room is of the design known as Les Rives du Bosphore, and was printed in colors from wooden blocks by Joseph Defour in Paris; the dates ascribed to this design vary from 1816 to 1829. The rear wing, with its floors three feet lower than those in the original house, is a long, low, rambling addition.

L. from Warren St. into Cottage St .; R. from Cottage into Goddard Ave.

II. Green Hill (The Goddard House; private), 235 Goddard Ave., was built as a farmhouse for Nehemiah Davis in 1732. The great drawing- room with chambers above was added in 1797, and subsequent alterations have been made. This house is one of the oldest in Brookline. Just beyond the house is a cone-shaped pudding-stone boulder set in an alcove of young

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evergreens, with a bronze tablet to Hannah Seaver Goddard and her husband John Goddard, loyal patriot and wagonmaster-general during the Revolution. In the barn, long since demolished, were secreted military stores which Goddard carted to Concord in 1775.

Straight ahead into Newton St .; R. from Newton St. on Clyde St.

12. The Country Club (adm. by invitation), claimed to be the oldest course in the United States, was established in 1882. Along Clyde St. the grounds, over 100 acres, are enclosed by a high wooden beanpole fence. Here are perpetuated the ancient sport of curling and various turf sports, as well as the more modern horse-racing, steeple-chase, and golf. In the dining-room are several interesting murals depicting hunting scenes, painted by Karl Yens.

Retrace Clyde St .; R. from Clyde St. on Newton St .; straight ahead into West Roxbury Parkway.

13. The Municipal Golf Course is one of the finest public courses in the vicinity of Boston (available to transients; small fee).

R. from West Roxbury Parkway on Hammond St.

14. The Longwood Cricket Club is at the junction of Hammond and Boylston Sts. This organization sponsors national annual tennis tourna- ments.

Retrace Hammond St .; L. from Hammond St. on Boylston St.

15. A Tercentenary Marker opposite Reservoir Park indicates the Site of the Zabdiel Boylston House. Here, in 1736, lived Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, the first American physician to inoculate for smallpox. In 1721, despite popular prejudice, he inoculated his son and two slaves. As a consequence of the success of this experiment, smallpox inoculations gradually became general, public hostility was reduced, and smallpox finally ceased to be a scourge.

CAMBRIDGE . University City

City: Alt. 9, pop. 118,075, sett. 1630, incorp. town 1636, city 1846.

Railroad Station: Cambridge Station near Porter Square, for B. & M. R.R. Bus Stations: Bence Pharmacy, 1607 Mass. Ave., for B. & M. Transportation Company; Leavitt and Pierce, Harvard Square, for Frontier Coach.

Accommodations: Five hotels, including 3 apartment hotels, and a large number of certified tourist homes.

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Swimming: Magazine Beach, Memorial Drive.

Annual Events: Ride of William Dawes, April 19.

Information Service: Booth at Harvard Square (summers only).

ON THE northwest bank of the beautiful Charles River, occupying a level plain broken only by Mt. Auburn, lies the city of Cambridge, bi- sected by the busy arteries of Massachusetts Avenue and Mt. Auburn Street and bordered by the leisurely sweep of Memorial Drive. In reality four cities occupy its confines. Here in elm-shaded streets, in fenced door- yards and landmarks that preserve treasured memories, still live Old Cambridge and that second Cambridge which succeeded it, the Home of the Literati. And here, visible in contemporaneous lusty existence, are two other cities: the University City and one other - the Unknown City.

The University City shelters ten thousand people within the walls of the Harvard dormitories, and Harvard Yard is a hive of learning vaster than any Tibetan monastery. The University City houses a thousand Rad- cliffe students in beautiful Georgian Colonial brick buildings. The Uni- versity City may claim the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1861), the leading technical institute in the United States, and one of the foremost in the world, with 2600 men and women students.

This Cambridge is famous. The story of its historic shrines, its illustrious authors and poets, its learned scholars and scientists, has been told and retold. But the story of Cambridge, the Unknown City, has seldom been told.

Yet this is a very real Cambridge. A hundred and fifty thousand people throng its streets, stores, and crowded subway stations. Five hundred distributing and manufacturing plants pour out a score of nationally known products. The streets of its mercantile sections are lined with banks, motion-picture theaters, department stores, and more than one thousand small retail stores. It, presses in between Harvard Yard and the vast Technology Unit; it surges toward the elegant Embankment; it encroaches on the placid dignity of Brattle Street and Lincoln Lane; the city of which one seldom hears but which no one should ignore: Cambridge the Industrial City.

This Unknown City is the second of Massachusetts in the value of goods manufactured; it is third in all New England, outranked only by Boston and Providence. Huge factories pour forth goods, including candy, bread, and soap, into the great stream of American commerce and industry. Within its confines over a hundred thousand workers dwell.

So they stand, interlocked, interpenetrated, Cambridge the University City and Cambridge the great Industrial City; and behind them and with- in them in surviving landmarks lie the shadows of two other cities: Old Cambridge and the Home of the Literati.

OLD CAMBRIDGE dates back over three centuries. In 1630, the Com- pany of Massachusetts Bay arrived from London with its charter and

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its Governor, John Winthrop. A fortified place was needed for a cap- ital, protected against the enemy most to be feared - not the Indians, but the warships of King Charles. 'Wherefore they rather made choice to enter further among the Indians, than hazzard the fury of malignant adversaries that might pursue them ... and erected a town called New Towne, now named Cambridge.'

Great pains were taken in laying out and building the 'New Towne.' One of its earliest visitors describes it as 'having many fair structures with many handsomely contrived streets - one of the neatest towns in New England. The inhabitants, most of them, are very rich.'

An early episode had much to do with determining New Towne's destiny. In October, 1636, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony agreed to give £400 towards a school or college - a sum equal to the whole colony tax. It remained to select the place.

The preceding year a solemn synod of the teaching elders had been called at the little meeting house on Dunster Street, Cambridge, to put down the dangerous and disturbing doctrines of Mistress Anne Hutchinson of Bos- ton, a strong-minded and brilliant New England woman who took the liberty of expressing lively doubts as to the Boston clergy's being the recipients of divine inspiration. This first New England synod was dom- inated by the Rev. Mr. Shepard of New Towne; and Mistress Hutchinson was condemned by the General Court together with about eighty others - for opinions 'some blasphemous, others erroneous, all unsound.'

As the country was 'miserably distracted' by a storm of Baptists and other 'unorthodox sects,' and as 'the vigilancy of Mr. Shepard preserved the congregation from the rot of these opinions,' Cotton Mather, the eminent Puritan divine, says that Cambridge was selected as the site of the new college because it was 'under the soul-ravishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shepard.'

At the time there was living in Charlestown a young dissenting minister, John Harvard, and as the friends of higher education 'were thinking and consulting, how to effect this great work ... it pleased God that he died, and it was then found he had bequeathed his library to the proposed col- lege, and one-half his estate - in all, some £1,700.' It was therefore decreed that the new college should bear John Harvard's name. The Court also ordered that 'New towne shall henceforth be called Cam- bridge,' the name of the Old English University town.

Less than a decade later, once more in solemn synod, the solid men of the town assembled to set forth a document of all known opposites to the Church of England. This was the famous 'Cambridge Platform,' wherein the powers of the clergy were minutely defined, and the duty of the com- mon people stated to be 'obeying their elders and submitting themselves unto the Lord.' By this action Church and State were united by law, and the rule of the clergy was made absolute.

In spite of all this, there shortly appeared in Boston 'an accursed and pernicious sect of heretics lately risen up in the world, who are commonly

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called Quakers.' The plague spread, and the horrified people of Cambridge beheld Elizabeth Horton passing through the streets crying, 'Repentance! Repentance! A day of howling and sad lamentation is coming upon you from the Lord!' Elizabeth was soon laid hold of by a mob and cast into jail; then tied to a whipping-post and lashed ten stripes with a three- stringed whip having three knots at the end. Then they carried her, miserably torn and beaten, many miles into the wilderness, and toward night 'left her among the wolves, bears, and wild beasts.'

The Devil, however, continued to afflict Old Cambridge; and the Mathers, father and son, as God's appointed judges, jousted vigorously with him.

At Harvard, Bible study was most important. The student was expected to live under a monastic code. The main aim of his life was ' to know God and Jesus Christ.' All his acts were performed under the vigilant eye of the Town Watch. He was to read the Scriptures twice a day, and not to 'intrude or inter-meddle on other men's affairs.' He could not 'buy, sell, or exchange anything above the value of a sixpence,' nor could he use tobacco without permission of the president or prescription of a physi- cian, and then only 'in a sober and private manner.'

In spite of all this praiseworthy regulation, however, the infant college, which should have been a stronghold of piety, was not free from the taint of 'willfulle heresie.' There was the painful conduct of President Dunster, who obstinately would neither renounce nor conceal his opposi- tion to infant baptism, and who was therefore haled before a Grand Jury and removed from office for 'poisoning the minds of his students and thus unfitting them to become preachers of the truth.' By the early quarter of the eighteenth century the College had fallen into a sad state of decay. Its buildings were dilapidated, the number of students reduced, and all available funds did not amount to £1000.

Cambridge in those days was still primitive. The forest was still near at hand and the town had not yet 250 taxable inhabitants. 'A great many bears are killed at Cambridge and the neighboring towns about this time,' wrote student Belknap of Harvard.

But the town had its elegant sophistication. The wealthy and aristocratic families who gave social strength to the Church 'made a superior figure to most in the country.' The Phipses, Inmans, Vassalls, Sewalls, Lees, Ruggles, Olivers, and Lechmeres were all in easy circumstances. The whole easterly part of the town was divided into a few great farms, and the luxurious estates stretching along Brattle Street on the highway to Watertown won for it the name of Tory Row.

Tories were, however, soon to become decidedly unpopular in Cambridge. In 1768, delegates from ninety-five towns met in patriotic protest at Faneuil Hall - among them two Cambridge delegates. On March 8, 1770, the solemn tolling of the bell in the meeting house in Cambridge mingled with the tones of the bells at Charlestown and Roxbury while the victims of the Boston Massacre were carried through the streets of Bos- ton to their burial. In May of that year, the House of Representatives

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sat in the halls of Harvard College. In 1772, events were moving rapidly toward the crisis. Cambridge elected a revolutionary committee of ten despite the efforts of William Brattle, its Tory Moderator, to prevent it. The night following the famous Boston Tea Party thousands of people assembled round the courthouse steps, forcing the Crown's officials to resign, including High Sheriff, Judges, and Councillors.

One evening a party of British soldiers dined in Cambridge, arousing great suspicion. That night, hoofbeats echoed in the frosty air - Paul Revere set out on his midnight ride; William Dawes, his comrade, galloped over the Great Bridge into Cambridge to arouse the town. The women and children, awakened by the 'horrors of that midnight cry were bidden to take refuge near Fresh Pond away from the Redcoats' line of march.' From all quarters, small companies of militia and Minutemen were has- tening to Cambridge.

By the end of the week a rude army of fifteen to twenty thousand men had assembled. For the next year, after the nineteenth of April, 1775, Cam- bridge became the headquarters of the first American army.

Shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill, a cavalcade of citizens and a troop of light horse gathered by the Watertown road. There they were met by General George Washington, newly commissioned Commander. The weathered bronze tablet on the Common gate tells the rest of the story:

Near this Spot on July 3, 1775 George Washington took command of the American Army.

Through a glass, from a 'crow's-nest' erected in the branches of a tree, Washington surveyed the surrounding country. A citizen wrote: 'Thou- sands are at work, every day from four until eleven o'clock in the morning. ... There is a great overturning in Camp. Generals Washington and Lee are upon the line every day. Everyone is made to know his place, and keep in it or be tied up and receive forty lashes.'

On the first day of the new year, over the camp a new flag of thirteen stripes was unfurled, symbolizing the union of the thirteen Colonies. On the second day of March, the booming of cannon and mortar announced that the bombardment of Boston had begun. A sortie and counter at- tack by the British was expected; but on the seventeenth day of March the British troops were seen moving out of the city. Boston was evacuated and Washington left for New York soon after. The military days of Cambridge were ended.

After the Revolution, the life of the little town flowed along. The church gave an impulse to the college, the college to the town, and a scholastic and literary atmosphere took form, regarded as the epitome of American culture even by critical European intellectuals. Cambridge, borne on a sluggish but smooth and comfortable current, was entering upon the second chapter of its existence, as the Home of the Literati.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, the kindly 'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' brilliant talker and disarming wit, too sympathetic to practice medicine despite his brilliant contribution in the discovery of puerperal fever, at fifty had embarked on a new career - literature. Associated with him was a young Harvard professor of modern languages, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. No poems of the era entered more deeply into the life of the people than Longfellow's. 'The Psalm of Life' was translated before the century was out into fifteen languages. The children of Cambridge subscribed to give him an armchair from the wood of the 'spreading chestnut tree.' James Russell Lowell, also a Harvard professor, and also a poet, author of the famous 'Biglow Papers,' was twice appointed United States ambassador, once to Spain and once to the Court of St. James's. In London his popularity was tremendous in literary circles.

Now appeared the North American Review, devoted to the 'true revival of polite learning,' its editors and its foremost contributors mainly from Cambridge. Similarly came into being The Dial, the journal of the famous Transcendental Club, edited by the brilliant Margaret Fuller. Two famous presses, the University Press and The Riverside Press, were a practical factor in this literary domination.

The history of Cambridge is peppered with the names of scholars, his- torians, and scientists. Among the historians are Henry Adams, Ticknor, John Fiske, and Palfrey. To these may be added distinguished European scholars, among them the great scientist Louis Agassiz from Switzerland; Francis Sales, that living Gil Blas in hairpowder and pigtail, from France.

By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Cambridge the University City was far beyond the embryo stage. 'This business of teaching, lodg- ing, boarding and clothing and generally providing for the [Harvard] students [who numbered five hundred] was the occupation of the ma- jority of the households of the Old Village.' College and town, mutually dependent, grew steadily during the next century.

One evening in 1878, Dr. Gilman, a noted teacher, historian, and author, invited Prof. Greenough and his wife to come to his house to talk over a very important matter, namely, the foundation of a college for women.

Radcliffe was created, unofficially, in 1879, as a mere association of Harvard instructors, who agreed that in response to popular demand they would give women 'some opportunity for systematic study in courses parallel to those of the University.' There was no official con- nection with Harvard until 1894. In that year the new college was formally named Radcliffe, in honor of Ann Radcliffe of England, donor of the first Harvard scholarship fund. The new institution of learning was long known among the irreverent as Harvard Annex, and serious qualms were felt by the respectable citizenry of Cambridge at the idea of 'hosts of young women walking unescorted through the town.'

Today, though Radcliffe has its own President and other administrative officers, the counter-signature of the President of Harvard on all diplomas officially establishes standards of scholarship equal to those of Harvard.

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In 1916 another and most distinguished institution of learning added itself to Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Late one August afternoon, a procession, its members clad as Venetian sailors and led by a marshal in the crimson and velvet of a Doge, moved slowly to the river edge in Boston. Followed by a group of men in gowns and crimson hoods, and bearing a great gilded and ornamental chest contain- ing charter and archives, the solemn procession moved forward. They were met by a Venetian barge, which, under the eyes of ten thousand spectators, bore them away to the other shore.

The processional solemnity, the colorful spectacle, the silent throngs massed on both banks of the river, the hovering sailboats and motor craft, constituted a peculiarly appropriate celebration of a civic event of tremendous import: the University City had come of age.

So, too, but without heralds or fanfare, the date unnoticed and unre- corded, had the Industrial City.

While Washington was still President, the building of the Unknown City began. One of its founders was a lad who walked ninety miles from a New Hampshire farm to make his fortune. From good Deacon Liver- more he learned to make brown soap. Today from his efforts stands the Lever Brothers Soap Works, one of the largest in the country.

One of its founders was a cook on a Nova Scotia fishing schooner, a boy of sixteen who came to Cambridge to seek his fortune, paying his toll over the bridge with a lead pencil. He learned to make coffins, and today his business is part of the National Casket Company.

Two of its founders, named Little and Brown, were clerks in a bookstore. They, with Henry O. Houghton, founder of The Riverside Press, estab- lished two great publishing houses in Boston.

The stories of these men and a hundred more read like those of Oliver Optic, and are stranger than fiction. Among them were the farsighted men who built the town buildings on the edge of a marsh in the far corner of the town and reclaimed the useless mud flats along the river, where great factories stand today. They made the laws, freed the bridges from tolls, founded the banks, and kept the town records. Old residents still recall the hundred and twenty-four foot chimney of the New England Glass Company, and the great banquet held on its top the day that it was completed.

Before mid-century the Unknown City was a going concern with eight times as many workers in its factories as there were students in the college.

Today the country's first ladder factory and the great carriage works are but memories. So, too, are the immense ice cuttings on Fresh Pond, from which the ice trade of the country was controlled. But here, laying the foundations of today's industrial city, was made the first galvanized iron pipe, relieving thousands of tinsmiths from making their pipe by hand. Here were the machines that produced the first piano keys, and,

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 22

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802