Today,
the big transportation issue people are talking about in Cambridge is
the T. It affects individuals, businesses, and local government. In
the first two hundred years after Cambridge was settled, however, the
construction and maintenance of bridges across the Charles River had
just as broad-reaching an effect. While we depend on bridges today,
and a bridge closing or new bridge would certainly draw attention, as
compared with the years through the mid-nineteenth century, we take
bridges for granted.
When
Puritans settled Boston and Cambridge in 1630, the two towns were
very far apart, not just in distance, but because of natural
obstacles and the methods of transportation available. The
first ferry in Cambridge, which
left from
the foot of Dunster street, began
running in 1635. It crossed the Charles and docked in Brookline. A
traveler would follow the road through Brookline and Roxbury
to Boston.1
However,
ferries were unreliable for a variety of reasons: they ran
infrequently, and stopped in the winter when the river froze. The
people decided they needed a bridge
to carry Cambridge products, such as cattle and surplus crops, to the
market in Boston. It had become increasingly clear over the past few
decades that Cambridge was not developing into a center of trade the
way its neighbor was.2
Like
most decisions in the first few generations of settlement in
Cambridge, the
one to build a bridge
was made
communally, with the support of church members. In
1656,
the town meeting decided “to pay each one their proportion of a
rate to the sum of 200l. Towards the building a bridge over Charles
River.”3
It
was completed eight years later. The bridge went across the river,
through Roxbury, and across Boston Neck (the
narrow strip of land connecting Boston, which was then a peninsula,
to the mainland),
and the total journey spanned eight miles. The bridge was simply
called the Great Bridge.4
While
it was a public project, the
responsibility for the Bridge was debated within Cambridge. In the
middle of the
seventeenth
century, there were ongoing tensions between the Cambridge government
and the residents of the part of the town on the south side of the
river. The residents of the south side felt distinct
from
the center of town, and repeatedly petitioned to have their own
parish or township status. In
1661, three leading south
side
residents
refused to pay their share towards the money the town was spending on
the Great Bridge, and the Cambridge selectmen ordered the constable
to seize the men's property equal to the amount of the dues.5
In
the 1680s, the area did separate from Cambridge to become Newton.
The
Great Bridge spanned
the Charles at a time when the river was much wider than it is today.
The bridge was large, wooden, and very
expensive to maintain. In 1670, the General Court of Massachusetts
observed that the bridge was decayed enough to be dangerous. The
bridge had been funded by Cambridge citizens and by voluntary
contributions from residents of a few neighboring towns, but now
Cambridge declared that it was unable to pay for repairs.6
The
General Court knew how important it was not to have to go back to
using a ferry to stay connected with Boston. The
Court stated that a ferry is “not so safe, convenient, or useful,
as a bridge, for a ferry is altogether useless in the winter, and is
very inconvenient to transport horses, and not at all accommodable for
carts or droves of cattle.”7
The
Court declared that any person or town that could repair the Great
Bridge or build a new bridge would have the authority to collect
tolls as long as the bridge was serviceable.8
However, from the 1680's forward, the General Court divided the
responsibility for the upkeep of the bridge between
the county of Middlesex and
several towns who benefited from the
bridge.9
In
1734, Cambridge, Newton, and Lexington were each given a land grant
to enable them to continue to repair the bridge.10
While
the Great Bridge
caused decades of discussion about who was responsible for
maintaining it, at
one pivotal moment, maintenance was not the goal. On April 19, 1775,
Lord Percy led
British soldiers from Boston to Lexington as reinforcements in
the battle that became known as the Battles of Lexington and Concord,
the first battles of the Revolutionary War.
In order to slow the advancing British troops, patriots
tore up the planks of the Great Bridge and piled them on the
Cambridge side of the Charles River.11
Percy's
brigade
was slowed, but not stopped. The
planks
on the bridge
were later replaced.
The
Great Bridge was torn down and rebuilt in 1862, and replaced again in
1915 on the same site, at the foot of JFK Street. This is the
Anderson Memorial Bridge, which is still in use today.12
The West Boston Bridge was built in 1793, shortening the distance to
Boston considerably.13
While the debates over who would pay for the upkeep of this one
important central bridge became less consequential as the Great
Bridge was joined by many other bridges in Cambridge in the late
1700's and the 1800's, the building of bridges continued to be a
topic of debate. In the nineteenth century, several important bridges
were built by private companies, who had the right to charge tolls
for a prescribed number of years. The competition between these
companies shaped the bridges but also local roads and had
ramifications for business and the law.
1Paige,
Lucius. History of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1630-1877. (H. O. Houghton and company,
1877), 195.
2Thomson,
Roger. Cambridge Cameos: Stories of Life in
Seventeenth-Century New England. (Boston:
New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2005), 23.
3Records
of the Town of Cambridge (Formerly Newetowne) Massachusetts,
1630-1703, quoted in Paige 195.
November 10, 1656.
5Thomson
142.
6Records
quoted in Paige 195. October 12, 1670.
7Records
quoted in Paige 195. October 12, 1670.
8Records
quoted in Paige 196. October 12, 1670.
9Paige
196.
10Paige
196.
11Marean,
Emma Endicott. “The River Charles” Merrill,
Estelle, ed. Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge
Authors. Cambridge Young Women’s Christian
Association. (Boston: The Pinkham Press, 1896), 170.
12Seaburg
12.
13Seaburg
12.