Did you know that Sherman Street in North Cambridge was once called Dublin Street? And that a small housing development off Dublin (Bolton St) was once known as New Ireland? In fact, in the 1840s before the street had been officially laid out, the whole area around Sherman St was referred to as “Dublin” (in quotes) or Dublin Village (without quotes).
Why were so many Irish living in that neighborhood? Clay pits and cattle. The cattle market at Porter Square had been functioning since the early 1800s and was a big employer. (For more on the cattle market, see our post from National Cow Appreciation Day). Since Dublin Street ran through so many clay pits and brick yards, this post focuses on the influence of that industry.
The growth of Boston in the mid-19th century created high demand for bricks as a fireproof construction material – which meant high demand for clay. Retreating glaciers left vast beds of clay in parts of eastern Massachusetts. The beds in North Cambridge were particularly accessible because of the railroad built through the area in 1842, and so were among the first to be exploited. You can see two of these clay pits in the 1854 Walling map below, to the left of the Catholic Cemetery.
The brick business in North Cambridge began in the mid-1840s when ice dealer Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth (1802-1856), who lived near Fresh Pond, began selling his land in the area. The extension of the Charlestown Branch railroad through North Cambridge in 1842 had given a big boost to brick production by providing an economical way of shipping bricks. In 1847, Wyeth opened his own brick business.
Dublin Street was laid out in 1847 from what was then Kidder’s Lane (next named Spruce St, and now Rindge Ave) south to the railroad tracks. It was subsequently extended to Walden St in 1851, to Garden St. in 1861,; and renamed Sherman Street, in honor of William Tecumseh Sherman, in 1895.
According to one source, “in 1858, around 187,000 bricks were produced each day in North Cambridge.”[i] More production meant more jobs. More jobs meant more immigrant laborers, and they needed housing.
Local farmer Solomon Sargent (1801- 1864) stepped in to fill the need. With a keen eye toward what the railroad would do to land values, in 1847 he surveyed 49 lots between the railroad tracks and Kidder’s Lane. In 1851, Sargent created the second subdivision off Dublin St. just south of the railroad tracks, which became “New Ireland.” It now includes Bellis Circle and Bolton Streets.
The diagram below shows the development of the brickyards south of Spruce St. in 1873.[ii] Dublin St is in green, Spruce St in red, and Concord Ave in purple.
Life on Dublin Street
In early Cambridge city directories, before street numbers were used, Dublin St was often referred to as a general identifier of where someone lived. For example, a person’s address might be listed as “h. n Dublin” meaning house near Dublin. In 1856, there were 40 people listed on Dublin Street and an additional 18 listed as “h. n Dublin.”
In 1875, novelist and Atlantic Monthly editor William Dean Howells (1837-1920), described a stroll through the area:
“… I take my way up through the brickyards towards Dublin, the Irish settlement on the north, passing under the long sheds that shelter the kilns. The ashes lie cold about the mouths of most, and the bricks are burnt to the proper complexion….. As I moved down the street, luminous on either hand with crimsoning and yellowing maples, I was so filled with the tender serenity of the scene, as not to be troubled by the spectacle of small Irish houses standing miserably about on the flats ankle deep, as it were, in little pools of the tide, or to be aware at first, of a sluggish movement of men through the streets, and a flying of children through the broken fences of the neighborhood, and across the vacant lots on which the insulted sign-boards forbade them to trespass. Here and there abandoned hoopskirts defied decay and near the half-finished wooden houses, empty mortar beds and bits of lath and slate were strewn over the scarred and mutilated ground, adding their interest to the scene.”
W. D. Howells, Suburban Sketches, 1875
As can still be seen today, (and in some of the photos below) many workers’ cottages were built on high, brick foundations. This may have been to avoid digging a cellar in the marshy land, or, because bricks were so readily available, it was just easier to build up rather than dig down. A good example of this is #132 Sherman Street, demolished in 1972 and pictured below.
In other instances, two family houses were created by jacking up a wood frame house to create a more livable space in what had been the brick basement. [iii].
In the 1870s, the local grocer on Dublin St was Jeremiah Murphy (b. Ireland, 1820) whose store was adjacent to his home at #187 Dublin St. Neighbors might have enjoyed buying Smoked Neat’s Tongue for 20 cents/lb., oysters (then cheap source of protein) at the astonishing rate of only 40 cents/qt., eggs at 28 cents/doz., or the all-important potato from 50 cents to $1.50 per bushel. Or, perhaps you wanted to pick up some “Irish Moss,” which was advertised in many grocery stores in Cambridge. “Irish Moss” is a nutrient-rich red seaweed long harvested in Ireland, dried, and used as a sort of gelatin. Here is recipe for “Irish Moss Blanc Mange” from 1897:
Jeremiah Murphy’s house today:
If you were a man, in 1876 you might have joined the meeting advertised below to organize an Independent Workingman’s Club. This is the only reference to “Murphy Hall” on Dublin St found to date. It is unknown which of the four Murphys living on Dublin St at that time may have owned a separate structure known as “Murphy Hall.”
The People
Many are familiar with the big picture when it comes to how the potato famine in mid-19th century led to a surge in Irish emigration to the United States. Soon, there were four distinct Irish enclaves in Cambridge: East Cambridge, Cambridgeport, “The Upper Marsh,” (West Cambridge between Mt. Auburn and Foster St) and in “Dublin” in North Cambridge.
To celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day, we set out to find some particular stories about the particular Irish people living on Dublin Street back around 1872. The year was chosen because the City Directory for that year is the closest to the census of 1870, which was used to confirm people’s birth and birth dates. But finding out the personal stories of individual people was harder than anticipated. This is for several reasons: for one, many Irish in Cambridge shared the same names. Secondly, the young laborer population was very fluid and their listings in the City Directory inconsistent. Some, known to have been living on Dublin St from the Directory, did not show up at all in the 1870 census. This made figuring out who was who in newspaper articles difficult.
Take the example of Jeremiah Murphy mentioned above. He was initially listed as a laborer and subsequently as a grocer. The 1876 Directory lists 120 adults named Murphy in Cambridge, of whom 11 were named “Jeremiah.” Is our grocer the same Jeremiah Murphy noted in the newspapers as arrested for “assault and battery” in 1855? Or the Chief Marshall of a St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1873? Or a member from Ward 5 of the City Democratic Committee? Obituaries reveal many with the same name as those living on Dublin St owned real estate, were deeply involved in ward politics, and had successful businesses. But even obituaries are not always enough to confirm the deceased actually lived on Dublin St.
The clay pits provided work, but they were also a hazard. Newspapers were full of accounts of children drowning, workers being crushed by sliding banks, horses going over the edge, or boys crashing through the ice while ice skating. By 1892, “the clay pit nuisance” was being discussed in the papers, with a suggestion to “include the pits as ponds in parks”[iv] It took another 98 years for that idea to become a reality.
Time went by. Many Irish moved to other neighborhoods while French Canadians replaced those workers working in the brickyards. Eventually, all but one of the hazardous clay pits were filled in. Jerry’s Pond (formerly known as Jerry’s Pit) survives on Rindge Avenue. In 1951, those owned by the New England Brick Co. were sold to the City of Cambridge, and this area became the town dump. The dump closed in the early 1970s. Finally, in 1990, the idea for a park first mentioned in 1892 came to fruition. Danehy Park is named after former Mayor Thomas W. Danehy whose paternal great-grandfather and maternal grandfather had been born in Ireland. The Danehy family had grown up in the neighborhood, on Sargent and Yerxa streets.
The 1872 Directory listed 86 adults on Dublin Street. The Irish birthplace of 50 of those is listed in the 1870 census. Of the remaining 36 residents, nearly all have Irish names, but their birthplace cannot be definitively confirmed in the census. Below are images illustrating what some of their homes look like as photographed by the author in 2023:
Finally, we can’t forget that symbol of the Irish culture of the neighborhood, Paddy’s Lunch at 260 Walden Street which opened for business 86 years ago in 1934.
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen M. Fox.
SOURCES
https://brickcollecting.com/NEB.htm
Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: Northwest Cambridge, Cambridge Historical Commission
History Cambridge.org: https://historycambridge.org/articles/changing-tides-in-cambridge-industry/
Beth Folsom
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/scituate-irish-moss-history
http://cambridgeconsidered.blogspot.com/2011/02/city-built-of-bricks.html
https://atlascope.leventhalmap.org/
Federal and Massachusetts Census forms
Cambridge Public Library newspapers on line
Cambridge Historical Commission
[i] Beth Folsom: History Cambridge.org: https://historycambridge.org/articles/changing-tides-in-cambridge-industry/
[ii] Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: Northwest Cambridge. Cambridge Historical Commission
[iii] Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: Northwest Cambridge. Cambridge Historical Commission
[iv] Cambridge Chronicle September 24th 1892.
