History of Cambridge

History of Cambridge. . , Beginnings , Cambridge was founded in 1630 as a new settlement meant by the Puritan leaders in Boston to be their permanent capital. The site chosen was a low hill three miles up the Charles River and hence safe from attack by sea. Streets were laid out in a grid pattern near what is now Harvard Square. House lots were assigned, each with a small garden, while outside the village farm strips and common land stretched away to a fortified fence or "pallysadoe" which kept out wandering Indians and wolves. The village was called Newtowne., Harvard College , Newtowne did not succeed as a political capital, but with the founding of Harvard College in 1636 it became a center of learning and remains so today. It was re-named Cambridge, in honor of the great English university, where many of the colonists had been educated. Harvard, combined with the Puritan church-state, became a dominant presence in the community and moulded its ways., Cambridge as a Village , The ways of Harvard, however, were not the only Cambridge ways. The village stood on the ancient Indian track from Charlestown to Watertown which is now Kirkland Street, the path across the Common, and Brattle Street. It was a busy market center and claimed the land from present day Newton almost to the Merrimack River as its own., Tories , By 1775 the Puritan village and the college had been joined by a group of wealthy royalists whose revenues came from service to the Crown and the rum and slavery trade with the West Indies. They built elaborate mansions and gardens along Brattle Street which can be seen today. These proud occupants of "Tory Row" lived an elegant life apart, but when the storm of the Revolution broke, they fled to Canada or England and their estates were confiscated., The Revolution , The war began for Cambridge on April 19, 1775 when local Patriots, after being alerted by William Dawes to the approach of British troops, gathered to fight. Later that day, three were killed during the bloody British retreat from Concord. In the following weeks patriot soldiers from all New England gathered on Cambridge Common and there, on July 3, 1775, George Washington proclaimed the Continental Army and took command. In the next eleven months he directed the Siege of Boston from his headquarters here, training his troops and building defences like Fort Putnam in East Cambridge, whose guns, with those on Dorchester Heights, forced the British evacuation of Boston, the first great victory of the Revolution., Early 19th Century , After the war, the marshes, farms and estates of Old Cambridge and the banks of the Charles River were divided into building lots by real estate speculators. The community of Cambridgeport began when a group of investors, in 1793, opened the West Boston Bridge, now Longfellow Bridge, which was the first direct connection between Cambridge and Boston. The roads leading to the bridge were at once crowded with travelers and lined with new buildings. The bridge developers tried to attract ocean commerce by building wharves and canals around what is now Kendall Square and by having the facilities declared a Port of Entry by Congress. Their great plans were nullified, however, by the Embargo and the War of 18 12., Immigration and Growth , Cambridgeport recovered, however, its people paying the tolls to cross the bridge and work in Boston, or finding jobs in new local industries such as the Davenport Car Works. When the bridge toll was removed, immigrants flowed in from overcrowded Boston. Families came from Ireland, Canada, Sweden and Portugal, and later from Russia, the Baltic States and the eastern Mediterranean. By mid-century, Cambridgeport had 10,000 residents, a majority of the area's population, and the new City Hall, built there despite the protests of Old Cambridge., East Cambridge , Dr. Andrew Craigie, an energetic and creative businessman, started growth in this remote and long neglected part of Cambridge. In 1809 he opened a second toll bridge to Boston, bringing traffic and prosperity to the area. Craigie built a new Court House and Jail in East Cambridge, taking these functions also away from a reluctant Old Cambridge. He brought in a new industry such as the glass works, and immigrants from Europe by the thousands came to work in them. These newcomers founded their own national churches along with cultural, social and political organizations which have preserved Old World ways and greatly enriched the life of the City., Expansion North and West , North Cambridge gradually along Massachusetts Avenue and westward. For years it was a livestock center and the Porter House Hotel flourished in Porter Square, leaving its name to us on a fine cut of beefsteak. From the 1840's on, ice was cut on Fresh Pond and shipped all over the world. Local clay pits supported a giant brickmaking industry which lasted well into the twentieth century. The railroad which was built to carry ice to the wharves of Charlestown carried away Cambridge brick and serves the lumber and steel yards of today., Unification as a City , Cambridge became a city in 1846, after the petition of Old Cambridge to be separate had been denied. In the 1870's the last marshes were filled and many industries propsered on this new land. 1910 saw the Charles River Dam completed, ending at last the tidal mud flats along the river. By 1912 the subway had brought Boston and Harvard Square within eight minutes of each other and four years later Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened its new campus, joining a new group of great thinkers and teachers to those of Harvard and Cambridge's other institutions. Creations and inventions multiply here, products of a long active history and a diverse energetic people.