A Very Brief History of Cambridge, 1900-2000, Part I: The Turn of the Century Through Plan E

      With streetcars, electricity, and more, Cambridge was already a modern city by the turn of the twentieth century. At the same time, it was in for a number of significant changes over the next several decades. MIT moved in, immigration continued but trends in sources of immigration changed, the Great Depression and the First World War made their mark, and the people voted in a new system for electing the city council and school board. Life in early twentieth-century Cambridge was characterized by factional tensions, discussion and debate, both cultural and political.

       The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1861, but for its first fifty years, it was on the other side of the river, and many people called it Boston Tech. Appropriately enough, it was a technological change of sorts that caused MIT to decide to move: the land that had been created and groomed when Cambridge built seawalls on the Charles sat undeveloped. The school had been looking for a new campus, and while some MIT affiliates didn't like the proposed Cambridge location, the loudest protests came from Harvard. The older school's president, Charles William Eliot, had tried to absorb or buy MIT three times, and had failed. By the time the Cambridge move was in the works, the president was A. Lawrence Lowell, who worried that MIT would add to the city's tax burden. Since its inception, Harvard had not paid taxes on its ever-growing amounts of land, and Lowell feared that MIT would be the tipping point at which the city started asking for taxes. It wasn't until other cities started showing interest in enticing the school that the city of Cambridge made an offer to MIT. The university started construction in 1911 and moved in 1916. Cambridge never did start asking the schools to pay taxes, because they decided to pay the city an annual lump sum instead.¹

       Of course, many Harvardians saw MIT as competition for their monolithic status. Harvard did not stop producing important scientific and technological advancements, but ask any Cantabridgian today and you'll know which school has the reputation for that type of innovation. On the other hand, a Harvard-centric literary scene began to bloom in the early twentieth century. Writers from e. e. cummings to T. S. Elliot to Thomas Wolfe attended the school, and many had lasting connections to the area.² Both schools also educated modern architects like H. H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan, and in fact, Cambridge was one of the meeting grounds of several modern architectural styles.³

       While Old Cambridge was dominated by Harvard and East Cambridge gained its own university presence, the rest of the city was very much working class and populated by first and second generation Americans as well as immigrants. Early twentieth-century immigrants included Swedes, Russians, Portuguese, Poles, Armenians, Italians, Greeks, and Slavs.⁴ The Irish population that had once been marginalized in Cambridge became a significant force in local politics by the turn of the century. In 1901 Cambridge elected its first Irish mayor, John H. H. McNamee, and the city's government was dominated by the Irish for the next forty years.⁵

       Immigrants in Cambridge did not form distinct, homogeneous neighborhoods like Boston's North End or Chinatown. East Cambridge and Cambridgeport were settled by a potpourri of cultures, but a sense of community by national origin did exist, as could be seen in houses of worship (mostly Catholic, but separated by national group) and in voting patterns.⁶

       The newer ethnic groups faced serious prejudice from their neighbors. Russian Jews were particularly targeted, often by the Irish. In certain areas of Cambridgeport, Russian Jews could never be sure of their physical safety, and the police, who were largely Irish, didn't do enough to help. The Jewish community formed their own protective agencies to make up for the neglect.⁷

      While not a new group in the area, Cambridge Blacks probably suffered the worst discrimination. Many White factory workers refused to work alongside Blacks, so no one would hire them for fear of losing their other employees. Most Blacks commuted to Boston for work. While public schools in Massachusetts had been integrated since before the Civil War, and Harvard had been integrated not long afterwards, many poor Black families didn't feel it was worth it for children to finish high school because they would have so few opportunities to use their education.⁸

       During the First World War, Cambridge men from all walks of life enlisted, and some of the tensions between classes and races were very temporarily eased.⁹  Local factories produced materials for the war rather than for civilian markets. MIT taught engineering, aviation, and other skills that were essential to the war.¹⁰ The federal government established a Naval Radio School at Harvard and, once again, military barracks on the Cambridge Common.¹¹ The war provided a short-lived sense of unity in the city, but the one common belief that Cantabridgians held for several decades was that civic life and daily living conditions should be handled differently. How exactly they were handled was up for debate.

      The trend of Progressive-era social and community organizations continued steadily in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Groups such as the Cambridge Home Information Center ran cooking and housekeeping classes for women, and the Mothers' Club of Cambridge started vacation schools and built playgrounds.¹² Women took the lead in many movements for the betterment of society, from public health and good housing to education to prison reform.¹³ In part, this activism set the stage for women to push for the right to vote, with many claiming that voting would empower women to further their role as society's caretakers. Many other progressive-era trends, including campaigns to end corruption in government and in party politics, continued well into the twentieth century, and some people even called these and related reforms “The Cambridge Idea”¹⁴

      Spurred by discussions of the “political machine” and corrupt government, Cambridge debated a number of different changes to its political system in the early twentieth century. In 1911, voters shot down a proposal that included nonpartisanship (removing party names from local ballots), the right of referendum, initiative, and recall, and a new structure of voting.¹⁵ In 1915, the state legislature offered cities four options for structuring their local governments, called plans A, B, C, and D. Cambridge opted for Plan B, which included nonpartisanship and restructured some city administration with the hope of making it more transparent and representative.¹⁶

        For the next fifteen years, people debated less about the structure of government, but the underlying issues of the previous campaigns stayed on people's minds. Rising property taxes, more corruption, proportional representation, tenement housing, and other issues became the platforms for a plethora of groups, such as the Cambridge Housing Association, League of Women Voters, the Cambridge Charter Association and the Socialist Party.¹⁷ During the Great Depression, many concerns about wealth and housing in particular became much more dire. The city's population declined during the 1930's as industry stagnated. It was the first time Cambridge had shrunk since the early seventeenth century.¹⁸

        In 1938, some of the more radical of the reformers pushed the city to adopt Plan E, which included more administrative restructuring and also a voting system called Proportional Representation (PR for short, also called instant-runoff voting). Many people supported it, and many people called it Communism (although depending on who you asked, that wasn't necessarily a slur). The mayor and city council claimed that Plan E was concocted by Harvard's new School of Public Administration, and that they were using Cambridge as a testing ground. Papers reported that the city council planned to turn Harvard into its own municipality, an idea that generated more satire than change.¹⁹ Plan E was defeated that year by 1,300 votes.²⁰ In 1940, after aggressive campaigning on both sides, Cambridge voted on the plan again, and this time, PR and the rest of the plan were approved. A modified system of Plan E is still in place today.

       All of these changes in Cambridge took place before the Second World War. During and after the war, Cambridge's economy launched into the modern world, and even more changes were in store for the people.

1 Simha, O. R.“'Town and Gown in the Twentieth Century.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 165-166.

2Kenney, Michael. “Literary Cambridge: The Passage from the Past.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 245.

3 Fixler, David. “Cambridge Modern, 1930-1970: One Architect's View.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 60.

4Sutton, S. B. Cambridge Reconsidered: Three and A Half Centuries on the Charles. (Camgridge: The MIT Press, 1976) 96.

5Sutton 99.

6Sutton 97.

7Sutton 97.

8Sutton 99.

9Sutton 100.

10Simha 165.

11Sutton 100.

12 Moseley, Eva. “'The Absolute Majority of the Population': Women in 20^th Century Cambridge.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 95.

13Moseley 97.

14 Sullivan, Charles. “An Overview: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 4.

15Koocher, Glenn. “The Never-Boring Political History of Cambridge.” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 130.

16Koocher 132.

17Cunningham, Bill. “A Hundred Years of Activism – Or Was It?” A City's Life and Times: Cambridge in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Daphne Abeel. (Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Society, 2007) 151.

18Sutton 101.

19 Sullivan 6.

20Koocher 132.

A City Built of Bricks

    If you have been to Cambridge, you've seen bricks. Lots and lots of bricks. It's clear they're a part of the architectural aesthetic of New England and of this city, but another reason bricks are omnipresent is that they're a local product. In the nineteenth century, most of North Cambridge was dug up for brickyards.

  
  Brick had been used in New England since the colonial period, because it was stronger than wood and very fire-resistant. It was cheaper, lighter, and easier to find locally than quarried stone. Brickmaking was a large industry in present-day Medford beginning in the 17^th century.¹ In those early years, that area was still a part of Cambridge, which is why some will tell you that this city has been making bricks its whole life. If we look only within the modern borders of Cambridge, however, brickyards did not appear until the 1840's. In the mid-nineteenth century, there was a new market for bricks: they were the building material of choice for large factories.²

     North of Harvard Square and west of Porter Square, the North Cambridge areas that became brickyards had always been thought undesirable. The land was swampy and bad for farming, although most of it was owned by farmers. It turned out that this area was rich in clay, the raw material for a profitable industry. In 1844, Peter Hubbell and Almon Abott leased some of this land and created a brickyard. When it proved successful, it sparked a “clay rush” as entrepreneurs took notice and entered the brick industry.³ Some of the most famous companies were the Bay State Brick Company and the New England Brick Company, but by the end of the century, the area had at least half a dozen companies operating side by side.⁴ The Cambridge Historical Society has some great photos of the New England Brick Company.

    Like the industrial populations of East Cambridge and Cambridgeport, the laborers in the brickyards were chiefly immigrants. ⁵ North Cambridge was nicknamed “Dublin” and “New Ireland” around the Civil War, because of the number of Irish immigrants working and living there.⁶ By the late nineteenth century, Irish-Americans were beginning to use their numbers for political clout, and the descendants of impoverished immigrants were starting to make it into the middle class. By this time, the local brick industry was starting to decline, but it still needed workers, and French Canadian and Italian immigrants became the biggest populations in the brickyards.⁷

    The brick industry in Cambridge used the soft-mud method of making bricks, which is the “handmade” way and the most common method during the nineteenth century.⁸ In the soft-mud method, workers first plow the ground, then soak the clay in water and sand for about a week in a “soaking pit.” Then the material is beaten – a difficult process done in a large apparatus called a pug mill (ceramics enthusiasts will recognize some of these early steps, as clay used for pottery is treated similarly).⁹ The pugged clay is then put into molds that are coated in water or sand to prevent the bricks from sticking to the molds, and sun-dried. After being dried once, the bricks are laid on flats for more drying and finally fired in a kiln.¹⁰ The firing took more than a week, and after it was completed, the whole kiln, which was made of bricks itself, was often disassembled. A brickyard worker generally had a specific task that he performed, and so there were many specialized job titles for the laborers, including clot moulders, off-bearers, and edgers.¹¹ The process used became more advanced as the Cambridge brick business grew. In the early years, men moved clay with shovels and wheelbarrows alone. Later, donkeys, horses and even trams helped the workers move larger quantities of clay.¹²

     While there was a continued demand for bricks as long as factories were being built from them, the brickyards in Cambridge were most active in the middle of the nineteenth century. Brickmaking went through expansion and recession cycles that followed the economic climate of the country, and the brickyards were particularly hard-hit by the Panic of 1873 and that of 1893.¹³ Local brickmaking went into its last period of decline after the Second World War. Many of the clay beds, which could get to 80 feet deep, were spent.¹⁴ From the 1950's through about 1970, the city used some of the former brickyards as landfills, while others were still active. No bricks have been produced in Cambridge in the last 40 years.¹⁵

     Many of the bricks used in buildings and sidewalks in Cambridge are local. On some, you can see the stamp that indicates the brand, but generally, the branded side of a brick is the side placed out of sight. Most brands are the name or initials of the company, but some use a symbol. Here's a branded paver (brick used in paving a street) from near Harvard Square:

Abstract symbol, or a stylized "H+G?" "H+C?" I have not found information on a brick maker with those initials, but either one is possible.

1 Seaburg, Alan. Cambridge on the Charles. (Cambridge: Anne Miniver Press, 2001), 113.

2 Brick Collecting Online, “New England Brick Company.” http://brickcollecting.com/NEB.htm Accessed 2-12-11

3 Seaburg 115.

4 Sutton, S.B. Cambridge Reconsidered: 3 1/2 Centuries on the Charles. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), 69.

5  Seaburg 113. 
6 “New England Brick Company.”

7 “New England Brick Company.”

8 Brick Collecting Online. “Brickmaking in the USA: a brief history.” http://brickcollecting.com/history.htm Accessed 2-12-11.

9 “Brickmaking in the USA: a brief history.”

10 Seaburg 115.

11 “Brickmaking in the USA: a brief history.”

12 Seaburg 112.

13 “New England Brick Company.”

14 “New England Brick Company.”

15 Seaburg 115.

A Very Brief History of Cambridge, 1800-1900, part II: Immigration and Industry

      As noted last time, I am dividing the 19^th century into several posts. I want to stress that no century is more important or more worth studying than another, but it happened that it was most convenient to do it this way for the 19^th century. The subjects of immigration and industry in Cambridge in the nineteenth century are closely related, as immigration provided a new workforce, and they are also the main reasons that Cambridge changed size and shape over that century. Most immigrants to the city settled in Cambridgeport or East Cambridge, and these areas were also the centers of local industrial growth. Now, let's take a closer look at these topics.

     Nineteenth-century immigration changed and diversified the character of the city because it was different from previous immigration. Generally speaking, early immigrants to Cambridge were English. In the first part of the nineteenth century, almost all immigrants to Cambridge were Irish or English.¹ In the second half, immigrants also came from Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Armenia, and Lithuania, and Canada, particularly French-speaking Canada. The ethnic makeup of the city also included some Asian immigrants, some African Americans, and a small number of Native Americans.² The new residents of the area came looking for new economic opportunities. One of largest immigrant groups was the Irish. Ireland had long been impoverished, and in 1845, a blight struck the country's potato crops, causing widespread devastation known as the Great Hunger or the Irish Potato Famine. 

      Immigrants brought their own cultural traditions, including religion. In 1831, a group of Catholics in Cambridge began to raise money to build their own church, so they would no longer have to cross into Boston to attend Mass. In 1842, their project, St. John's Roman Catholic Church, was finally completed.³ The Catholic church took care of the Irish population with charities and social programs, but as its constituency was mostly poor, its efforts had mixed success. Irish immigrants were sometimes passed over for jobs because of widespread anti-Irish prejudice. Irish Catholics were viewed as drunk, stupid, unskilled, and sick. “Paddy” became a standard buffoon character in popular jokes and in newspaper humor columns.⁴ In both Boston and Charlestown, the early nineteenth century saw anti-Irish rioting, and in 1834, a mob burned down the Ursuline convent and Catholic school in Charlestown. In Cambridge, people acted with as much prejudice, but less violence – the city never had an anti-Irish riot.⁵

 

      The waves of immigration also caused new diversity in the economic makeup of the city. In the first two centuries that Cambridge was settled by Europeans, most immigrants, even the somewhat ascetic Puritans, were at least moderately well-off. However, the majority of immigrants to the area in the mid- and late nineteenth century were poor.⁶ Like much of the American North, Cambridge was swept by industry in the later part of the 19^th century. ⁷ Immigrants filled a need for cheap unskilled industrial labor. They also took jobs as domestic servants. All but the poorest of native New Englanders refused to take jobs with such low pay and equally low social status.⁸

       Industrialization in Cambridge rescued Cambridgeport and East Cambridge from floundering attempts at becoming centers of trade in the early part of the nineteenth century. The major industries in these areas included soap making, furniture making, and meatpacking. As the century progressed, the areas developed even further. Migration from rural areas increased as people gave up their small-scale farms in the rocky New England soil and took jobs in factories instead.⁹ In 1860, Cambridge was one of the forty largest American communities.¹⁰ The Panic of 1873-78, which at the time was the worst economic depression in American history, didn't hit Cambridge very hard; the city's economic growth paused, and then resumed at its regular rate.¹¹ The growth was not limited to major industries. Cantabrigians bound books, made musical instruments, engines, industrial-scale boilers, and cars, laid railroad track, and built bridges.¹² However, industrialization was a mixed blessing. For example, in the 1890s, East Cambridge typified a dirty modern city. Meatpacking and fertilizer were among the most offensive of the many industries that contributed to the odor and uncleanliness of the area.¹³

 

        By 1896, the population density in Cambridge was greater than in Boston.¹⁴  Apartment buildings of varying quality sprung up all over the city by the end of the century. Many of them were the crammed, sometimes rickety buildings we think of as tenements.¹⁵ Cambridge developed big-city Industrial Age problems, such as dangerous workplace conditions and living conditions. By the late nineteenth century, many people began to try to correct these kinds of problems, through legislation, charitable organizations, and other methods. 

Coming next at Cambridge Considered: A Very Brief History of Cambridge, 1800-1900, part 3, Progress and the Progressive Era

1Seaburg, Alan. Cambridge on the Charles. (Cambridge: Anne Miniver Press, 2001),  100.

2Seaburg 100.

3Sutton, S.B. Cambridge Reconsidered: 3 1/2 Centuries on the Charles. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), 57.

4Sutton 58.

5Sutton 58.

6Sutton 55.

7Sutton 55.

8Sutton 56.

9Sutton 55.

10Seaburg 98.

11Sutton 75.

12Seaburg 101.

13Sutton 64.

14Sutton 55.

15Sutton 65.