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SHOCK WAVES! National Electricity Day

Posted on January 7, 2023January 6, 2023 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

“A bright light is the enemy of rascality”- Cambridge Chronicle July 7, 1883

Ever get your wires crossed? Blown a fuse? Received a rousing charge? Blame it on electricity!

In 1869, two out of the four “great events” of the century, ranked by the Cambridge Chronicle in their issue of May 29^th, were Morse’s invention of the telegraph in the United States, and the laying of the Atlantic Cable. The other two events were the death of slavery in the U.S. and the completion of the Pacific Railway. Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call 1876, and then…

Wow! The Electric Telegraph

Although existing in various experimental forms in Europe in the early 19^th century, in the United States it was artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1821, born in Charlestown, Mass) who made the electric telegraph a reality here. Invented around 1837, it was not until 1843 that Morse received funding from Congress for the first telegraphic line. The cable was strung between Baltimore and Washington, D. C. The first message? “What god hath wrought.”

The transatlantic telegraph was laid between 1854 and 1858. Written a year before its completion, this awestruck note appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle (September 19, 1857) Excerpt:

By 1869, Cambridge had installed 15 fire alarm boxes using the electric telegraph. The boxes were hooked up to only one bell—that of the Methodist Church in Ward Two at the corner of Third and Cambridge streets. In the Cambridge Annual Report of 1870, it was recommended that henceforth they should be connected to one bell in each ward.

Next Came the Lightbulb Moment

“A boastful Edison catalog cover from 1887” (Courtesy of collectorsweekly.com)

As they did with the telegraph, inventors worldwide were attempting to invent an electric light bulb. In 1835, an electric “arc” bulb was demonstrated in Britain. In the U. S., William Sawyer (1850-1883) and Albon Man (1826-1905) were working together in an attempt to invent the first electric light bulbs here. However, the bulbs continued to burn out too quickly and were not mass produced. It was Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who improved the filament and commercialized the incandescent light bulb, for which he received two patents: in 1879 and 1880.

Cambridge was impatient to join the electrical ranks. On July 9, 1881, The Cambridge Chronicle reported: “There is a movement on foot to introduce electric lights in this city,” implying that things could have been moving more swiftly as they had in other towns. By 1880, Boston was using electric lights. In 1883, William J. Marvin, Commissioner of the West Boston and Cambridge bridges, did succeed in having both bridges illuminated by electric lights. On July 7, 1883, the Chronicle proclaimed “A bright light is the enemy of rascality. Lighting our streets by electricity would be equal in value to doubling our police force.”

By 1884, a company “controlled by the American Electric and Illuminating Co.” had been formed to provide electricity to Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington and Watertown. On March 1^st of that year, The Cambridge Chronicle noted that:

Excerpt: *Cambridge Chronicle* March 1, 1884

Still, Cambridge only inched along. Apparently, the Mayor agreed: in 1885, Mayor William E. Russell stated in his annual address:

“Cambridge is certainly behind the times in having no such lighting on her streets.

The expense is much more than lighting by gas; but the improvement is so great that I believe it commends itself to the citizens, and justifies the additional cost. I recommend that, whenever a proper plant is established, the city place electric lights in her squares and on some of her main thoroughfares.”

The following year he was able to proclaim “I am very happy to say that arrangements have been made for the use of electric lighting in our main streets and squares.” This included Main and Cambridge Streets, parts of North Avenue from Harvard Square to the Lexington and Arlington Railroad, and Brattle and other squares. This installation would require approximately 70 lights at “55 cents per lamp per night burning all night, or a total cost (estimating for 339 nights per year) of $13,051,50.” And the other 26 nights…?

Then the Electric Trolley

Spliced car at Arlington Heights (12 May 1898). Source: Frank Cheney.

By 1887, electric trolleys were in use in Kansas City, Cleveland Ohio, Omaha, Nebraska, and Mansfield, Ohio. But not yet in Cambridge.

Referred to as “electrics,” electric trolleys presented a big controversy. Many, many column inches of newspapers were devoted to arguments for or against the trolleys. Advocates hailed efficiencies in transportation; the opposition was of the NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) variety, complaining about the speed, noise, and the esthetics of overhead wires:

The following year, residents on Brattle Street were stillfighting the case, declaring that “the electric trolley system is a new and improper use of streets.” (Cambridge Tribune September 29, 1894). As an aside, perhaps these citizens forgot to take into account the improved the life of squirrels, who could now scamper from one place to another across the wires instead of the roads, not to mention a newfound site for birds to light and socialize!

Electrical interference with the telephones (in use since 1877) was also a problem, as James W. Lovering, Superintendent of Mount Auburn, complained about in this letter to a client in Boston:

“Dear Sir: We were unable to understand your message by telephone this forenoon.

Since the electric cars began running the interference has been so great that we have been unable to use the telephone with any degree of accuracy, and until the telephone company, to whom we have already made complaint remedy the matter it is absolutely unsafe to attempt to send any message by telephone in regard to anything which is of importance.” (March 12, 1889)

But the West End Railway and electric companies forged ahead. Electric companies allowed the telephone and electric trolley lines to be attached to their poles. These unsightly metal poles were being replaced by “fine sticks of timber” (Annual Report 1891). On May 11, 1893, the Chronicle reported that “it is expected that by June 1 the electric railway system will be complete between Boston and Arlington.”

Electric wires over Central Square on June 7, 1910. Boston Elevated Railway negative, CHC collections.

Yikes! 2,000 Miles of Wires

By 1890, the city was crisscrossed with a combined 2,000 miles of wires—telegraph wires, trolley wires, telephone wires, and private electric wires. It was a dangerous situation: crossed wires started fires, webs of wires prevented firemen from reaching buildings, and trolley wires interfered with telephone reception. As a consequence, in July of 1890, the City established a new position: Inspector of Wires. The job was to sort out all the technical, legal, and esthetic issues, and to develop rules and regulations for wiring of all sorts. The position was soon filled by the aptly-named Charles H. Morse. Writing on December 29, 1890, Morse reported:

Soon, the Inspector of Wires’ job description was expanded to include the role of “superintendent of the fire-alarm telegraph, the police signal system and all other electric wires and wire systems.”

Stay tuned for the second and final installment where we explore electric appliances, medical electricity and “The Electrical World”!

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES

Building Old Cambridge. Susan E. Maycock and Charles M. Sullivan, 2016 Cambridge Historical Commission; the MIT Press

City of Cambridge Annual Reports

Cambridge Public Library Digitized Newspapers

https://www.britannica.com/technology/clock/Electric-clocks

https://archive.curbed.com/ad/17101030/history-of-the-doorbell-nest-hello

https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-light-bulb

https://www.britannica.com/summary/electricity

https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/ (for the history of the Cambridge Electric Light Co.)

https://www.nsmedicaldevices.com/analysis/brain-stimulation-therapy-history/

https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/samuel-morsettps://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1830-1860/

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/02/24/downton-abbey-and-electricity/

https://archive.curbed.com/ad/17101030/history-of-the-doorbell-nest-hello

Let There Be Light Bulbs: How Incandescents Became the Icons of Innovation

History Cooperative

https://www.britannica.com/technology/clock/Electric-clocks

Monopoly Day!

Posted on November 18, 2022November 21, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

It’s National Monopoly Day! A day to break out one of America’s most loved and well-known board games. To celebrate, we’d like to share a few board games from the archives collection!

Cambridge-opoly

Cambridge-o-poly was initially released in 2000 and designed in Randolph, MA by a company called Just Board in collaboration with Karen Carmean the president of the Cambridge Action Fund. This nonprofit fundraising agency helps to fund programs that combat homelessness. The game plays much like any other Monopoly game, but the design team’s goal was to make players more aware of homelessness in Cambridge and the organization set up to assist those in need. In place of what traditional Monopoly would call “Community Chest” cards, Cambridge-opoly has “Cambridge Action Fund” cards. Each card references one of the Action funds many funded organizations with instructions like, “Six homeless need beds for tonight at Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. Donate $150 to Cambridge Action Fund. Inc.,’’ or, “Affordable housing built for six families! Your rate goes down. Collect $30.” The spaces on the board available for purchase feature many Cambridge businesses, some now gone and some still around. These include Susan’s, Masse’s Hardware Company, Cambridge Savings Bank, Cardullo’s, the Longy School of Music, Gypsy Moon, and Picante Mexican Grill. The game was sold for $37.50. If you bought it from the Cambridge Action Fund, the cost was a taxable deduction and half the cost went directly to program funding. (Source Cambridge Chronicle)

The Champion Game of Baseball

The Champion Game of Baseball was manufactured in 1889 by Proctor Amusement Co. of North Cambridge. The game, consisting of a baseball field board, red and blue play pieces, and a spinning wheel, is designed to be played by 1, 2, or 4 players. There is not much strategy involved as your team’s performance is based largely on the spin of a wheel. 16 spots on the inner wheel that read various outcomes, “Out, Base Hit, Strike, Strike Out, 3 Base Hit, Ball, 2 Base Hit, Base on Balls, Foul, and Home Run,” with, of course, the Outs being the widest sections and Home running being the narrowest. Additionally, there is an outer ring used for stealing bases. It reads, “Out, Sacrifice, and Safe.” While the game is primarily based on chance, it seems like a great way to pass the time, become more familiar with baseball rules, and practice skills like keeping score.

Women’s Lib?: A Game of Women’s Rights

Women’s Lib was created in 1970 by Urban Systems Inc. a corporation previously operating at 806 Mass Ave. (Source: OpenCorporates) According to the instruction pamphlet, the objective of the game is “enlightenment.” It’s a sort of roleplaying game where each player chooses from a selection of characters,” The Male Chauvinist, Traditional Female, Moderate Woman, Moderate Male, (W.O.M.B.) women opposed to male bigots, Male Liberationist, and (W.I.S.E) women interested in sexual equality. After choosing your character, you are given a booklet that details that character’s beliefs and the facts that support them. With this in mind, you must debate election topics with your fellow players to persuade them to vote one way or another. Election topics include abortion, child care, employment, education, legal rights of the wife, and male contraception to name a few. The outcome of the vote in tandem with a “Historical Precedent” card then modifies the salary of each player. As mentioned earlier, the objective of the game is “enlightenment,” so there is no true way to “win” or end the game, you’re simply meant to discuss topics from different points of view.

We hope you enjoyed learning about some of our less typical collections items! Go play a board game with someone today!

“Made to Order Weather”: National HVAC Day, June 22

Posted on June 22, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Central Sq. Theater 1929 (Cambridge Ephemera Collection, CHC)

Here we are on the second day of summer, and although it has been on the cool side lately, it’s not hard to imagine the misery of life without air conditioning, especially if you were working in an office building on a hot and humid day in 1899 or so. Fortunately for all of us, 23 years earlier to that date Willis Haviland Carrier been born.

The “father of air conditioning,” Willis Carrier (Courtesy of PickHvac *Cooling & Heating Guide*)

A newly-minted Cornell graduate in engineering in 1901, Carrier (1876 – 1950) was trying to solve a humidity problem for the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, New York. He succeeded, and voila–air conditioning was invented. His electrically powered humidity-removing machine had the pleasant side effect of also lowering the temperature. In 1915, Carrier went on to form his own company – Carrier Engineering.

In 1929, The Central Square Theatre proudly advertised that the theatre was “COOLED BY REFRIGERATION.” The Cambridge Sentinel (June 15, 1929) touted this achievement, noting that the cost of installation had been $100,000 and (quaintly) that the air was taken into the “breathing zone” first before being distributed throughout the theatre.

*Cambridge Sentinel* June 15, 1929 (excerpt)

After Carrier’s original invention, it took another twenty years before a small air conditioning unit for residential windows was patented in 1931 by H.H. Schultz and J.Q. Sherman. Again, excerpts from the Cambridge Sentinel July 4, 1931:

“Made To Order Weather”

“St. Louis. – Made to order weather in which the average householder will be able to press a button on winter days and produce a climate of tropic warmth, or press another button and obtain bracing mountain air, was predicted by Willis H. Carrier, president of the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers…. Research work at Harvard, co-ordinated with experiments of the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers at the bureau of mines, indicates… ‘The average human being at rest has a heat output of about 400 body temperature units per hour, the approximate equivalent of a 120 watt electric light,’ he said. ‘This remains remarkably constant throughout normal ranges of temperature, moisture variation, and changes of clothing…..” (This measurement was accurate: today the average heat output of a male body at rest is 100-120 watts per hour.)[i]

By 1934, one of Cambridge’s own, the Air Conditioning Engineering Company at 171 Second Street, began marketing Perfectaire, designed by Raymond A. Sheffield, chief engineer and a senior partner of the firm.

“…It is just as necessary to have proper humidity in the home as to have ample heating. Furthermore, there is a direct relationship between heating and humidity. When humidity of forced air is kept at the proper level less heat is required than under the old dead air system. Air washed and then forced through filters to be immaculately cleaned and distributed throughout a home means better health and reduced heating bills.
Air conditioning equipment protects your investment in a home or business…The writer suggests that you consult the Air Conditioning Eng. Co. at 61 Rogers Street, under the management of Raymond A. Sheffield, for further information pertaining to air conditioning. Mr. Sheffield is an authority on the subject and his connection with the best engineers assures you of competent, dependable service in air conditioning and refrigeration problems. Your old home can be equipped with air conditioning just as well as a new home.
The Air Conditioning Eng. Co. is in a position to supply you with any type or make of system that would best suit your individual requirements on buildings of any kind. By calling Kir.2700 a courteous representative will call and give you a free estimate without obligation.
Do you know why air conditioning is so important to health and comfort?”
Cambridge Sentinel June 27, 1936

Sales Statistics and Costs: (from The Air Conditioner Then and Now)

In 1931, when Schultz and Sherman invented the home air conditioning unit, they could cost from $10,000 – $50,000 per unit. By 1938, the Chrysler air conditioner cost about $416 per unit.[ii]

1940 – Just 1 in 400 US homes had an air conditioner.

1950s – National Homes, manufacturer of pre-fab homes, begins offering central air conditioning as an option for $500.

1960 – The US Census shows that 13% of American homes had AC in at least one room.

1970 – The US Census shows that almost 37% of American homes had AC in at least one room.

1993 – 68% of housing units had air conditioning.

2009 – 87% of housing had some form of AC.

2016 – 100 million US homes have central air conditioning, or about 87% of households.

In 2021 6.28 million window units were sold in the U. S.[iii] , with prices ranging from $15–$800, depending on features such as the BTU, brand, efficiency etc.

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

SOURCES

“Air conditioners shipments in the U.S. from 2001 to 2020 (in millions)” Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/220357/manufactured-shipments-of-unitary-air-conditioners/.

“A Brief History of HVAC” Coyne College. https://www.coynecollege.edu/a-brief-history-of-hvac-air-conditioning/.

PickHvac. Cooling & Heating Guide, April 28, 2022.

Rardin, Nic. Air Conditioning: Then and Now. July 8, 2015. https://www.hvac.com/resources/air-conditioning-then-and-now/.

“Who Invented Air Conditioning?” MD Air Conditioning & Heating. https://mdairconditioning.com/who-invented-air-conditioning/.

“Willis Carrier” Carrier Company. https://www.carrier.com/carrier/en/worldwide/about/willis-carrier/.

[i] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/stevens1/Human Body Heat as a Source for “Thermoelectric Energy Generation,” Matthew Stevens, November 27, 2016

[ii] https://www.hvac.com/resources/air-conditioning-then-and-now/

[iii] Statista.com

Clip Clop: Urban Life with 4,000 Horses

Posted on May 20, 2022May 23, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

April 26 was National Help a Horse Day, which recalled city living in the age of horse transportation.

These days most of our relationships with animals are limited to dogs or cats. But in the 19^th century, everybody had a relationship with horses, whether they owned one or not. The “circulatory system of commerce” depended on horses[i] (New England Quarterly June 2001). All transportation depended on them. Horses were the engines of the day—so much so that still today we measure engines in terms of “horsepower.”

Today a stroll down Mass Ave can be noisy: cars, buses, sirens, horns honking, etc. But is it that much worse than in the horse drawn era? Horses neighing, hooves and wagon wheels clattering on crushed stone paving, the Horse Railroad screeching over tracks, teamsters shouting, whips cracking and so on. What follows is a light survey of horse related facts in Cambridge back in the day.

HORSES BY THE NUMBERS

HOW MANY?

The mayor’s address of 1896 states that taxes were paid on 4,711 horses in the city that year. This number, of course, did not include all the horses owned by the city. The City Stables held at least 55 horses. In addition, each department (Fire, Police, Public Health, etc.) had two to eight horses each. So, the total was probably closer to 4,800.

James White’s carriage shop occupied the former fire and police stations at 27 and 31 Church Street from 1875 to 1896. Carriages were very light, and the improvised ramp and platform afforded additional workspace. Photo ca. 1890.

HOW MANY BUSINESS STABLES?

The 1896 City Directory listed 33 Boarding, Livery, Sale, or Hack stables. Historically, several were clustered in and around Harvard Square: on Church, Brattle, Bennett, Palmer, and Dunster streets. Also in the neighborhood were many ancillary businesses: blacksmiths, harness makers, carriage makers, etc. In 1886, the Cambridge R.R. Co. stables took up an entire block of Bennett Street (the current location of the Charles Hotel). By 1894, this stable had been taken over by the West End Street Railway which also had stables on Dunster Street.

On Brattle Street, there was Gwynne’s University Stable (whose name is misspelled in the advertisement here).

Two stables on Church Street, owned by J. (Joel) S. and James Pike, were often confused:

In 1876, James Pike had purchased the old police station on Church Street for his stables. [ii] By 1878, he felt compelled to take out an ad in the Cambridge Chronicle (March 30, 1878), stating, “Mr. James Pike desires to inform the public who have confounded his name with Mr. J. S. Pike, that the latter gentleman is an entirely different person, and that Mr. James Pike has no connection with the stable of Mr. J. S. Pike on Church Street.” James Pike later decamped from Church Street to his stable at 565½ Main Street.

The J .S. Pike’s stable next passed into the hands of Irving Blake. Blake’s obituary in 1901 described the premises: “The stable of Irving Blake, 35, 36, 37 and 38 Church Street, which is one of the oldest and best equipped establishments of its kind in New England, is a good example of the modern public stable. [Note: The street numbers were changed around 1900.] The fact that about 17 employees are kept busy looking after approximately 100 horses and carriages will show even the casual reader that the business is one of considerable magnitude.” (Cambridge Chronicle September 7, 1901).

Stables at 35 Church Street, owned and rented out by Samuel Chew
Cambridge Coach Co. photo, ca. 1905

In 1902, a Harvard graduate and investor, Samuel Chew, purchased these properties, and the Cambridge Coach Company moved in.

Horse-related business in the area included:

The Nelson Carriage Co. (below) succeeded J. H. Prescott & Son, which had succeeded J. P. Nutting & Co. at the same location on Palmer Street.

The farrier James Bolger, a 22-year-old native of Newfoundland, first established his business in 1867 at the corner of Church and Palmer streets and worked on the site until his death in 1896.

Speaking of horseshoers, we can’t resist this article from 1849 about the horse with five legs:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 13, 1849

HORSE-RELATED OCCUPATIONS

There were hundreds: harness, tack, and saddle makers, horseshoers, cart and carriage makers, horse breeders, manure collectors, feed dealers, hay storage, hack drivers, horse trainers, etc. The 1896 City Directory lists:

890 teamsters (astonishing!)
155 hostlers
34 hack drivers
20 horseshoers
19 stable foremen
53 harness makers/ cleaners
3 trainers
7 horse dealers
27 carriage or wagon makers
14 feed, grain, and hay dealers
10 veterinary surgeons (two of whom worked on Church and Palmer streets)
and
200 blacksmiths.

Blacksmiths did many things besides horseshoeing and making carriage wheels. A smith also fashioned boot scrapers—a necessary product in the age of horses (see below).

THE MANURE PROBLEM

Remember those 4,711+ horses? The Pennsylvania State Extension School informs us that, on average, a 1,000-pound horse produces about 30 pounds of manure a day. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the magnitude of the problem. Addressing the issue thus brought to their attention, the Cambridge Board of Aldermen reported:

In 1888, the Board of Health came out with the following regulations:

“The owners and occupants of livery and other stables within the city shall … shall keep their stables and yards clean and not allow large quantities of manure to accumulate or remain in or near the same, at any one time between the first day of May and the first day of November, and no manure shall be allowed to accumulate or remain uncovered outside of the stable building.”
Regulations of the Board of Health, Cambridge Press October 27, 1888

Thankfully, there were a few businessmen who bought and sold manure. But, somewhat mysteriously, there is little information to be found in the newspapers or town reports about how manure sanitation was managed on the streets. General street cleaning for all streets was about once every three months, and for heavily trafficked streets about once every three weeks. Still…

THE LIFE OF A HORSE

The average horse can live 25 to 30 years. Horserookie.com tells us that “horses need to consume about 2% of their body weight in forage per day.” That equals about 20 pounds of hay per day.

Oats are also on the menu.

Two particularly deadly infectious diseases affecting horses are horse influenza (referred to variously as horse distemper or horse meningitis) and Glanders. In 1872, a major epidemic of horse flu spread down from Canada in much the same way that human diseases such as cholera or typhoid do—through heavy population density, crowded living circumstances, and poor sanitation. The economic effect was to put a big dent in trade—all of which depended on horse-delivery systems. Though cities were hit the worst, Cambridge appears to have emerged relatively unscathed compared to Boston. Glanders, an infection of the respiratory system, spread in similar ways, and was so highly contagious that horses found to have it were killed.

All aspects regarding the health of horses led to the appointment of City Veterinary Surgeon Dr. William Ferguson in 1890. By 1893, Dr. Ferguson had established a Veterinary Hospital on Bay Street. Since his practice was primarily for horses, he seems compelled to mention that he also treated dogs:

THE INEVITABLE

THE DEMISE OF HORSE-DRAWN TRANSPORTATION

It is interesting that the 1906 City Directory devoted, for the first time, about five pages to listing horse owners by name, address, and number of horses owned, which totaled in the thousands. The same was done for car owners, which only totaled approximately 160.

Naturally, as the use of electric trolleys and motorized vehicles increased (not to mention the new subway), the use of horses declined. The transition was gradual: the 1910 Census for Livestock states that Cambridge still had 4,294 horses! It took another 10 to 20 years for motorized vehicles to completely take over from horses on city streets in America.

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES

Cambridge Historical Commission
Cambridge Library digitized Cambridge Newspapers
Genealogybank.com
“The Great Epizootic of 1872-73: Networks of Animal Disease in North American Urban
Environments” by Sean Kheraj
HorseRookie.com
New England Quarterly June 2001, Gilded Age Boston, Clay McShane
Newspapers.com
Penn State Extension: https://extension.psu.edu/horse-stable-manure-management
Wikipedia

[i] New England Quarterly June 2001

[ii] Cambridge Chronicle June 17, 1876

National Telephone Day

Posted on April 25, 2022April 25, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

“Telephonic Coal” – What the heck? The above was part of an 1877 advertisement from the Austin C. Wellington Co. in Boston specifically for Cambridge customers to acquaint them with the benefits of ordering coal by telephone. Imagine! In this era of cell phones and 5G, we thought it would be interesting to take a look back 146 years to the dawn of the telephone age.

Alexander Graham Bell changed human communication forever when he placed his “long distance” call from Boston to Thomas A. Watson (at 28 Osborn Street in Cambridge) on October 9, 1876, just three days after receiving the patent for his invention.

Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), colorized by Sanna_Dullaway

Alexander was born in Scotland. His mother was nearly deaf, and his father taught elocution to the deaf: Bell’s interest in improving communications came naturally. The family emigrated to Canada, and in 1872 Bell moved to Boston to teach and became at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes.

In 1877, seven months after Bell received his 1876 patent, Gardiner Greene Hubbard (the former president of the old Water Company) offered to install telephones at the Water Works and in City Hall, proposing that, “the city shall be to no expense for the same unless they shall prove satisfactory to the Board.” Hubbard felt in interest in having–

*Cambridge Chronicle* May 19, 1877.
“The Board” refers to the Water Board.

Hubbard was more than just the former president of the water company: he was Bell’s father-in-law. In 1877 Bell had married one of his hearing-impaired students, Mabel Hubbard, one of Hubbard’s daughters, who had lost her hearing at age five following a bout with scarlet fever. Gardiner Hubbard was also an investor in a plan to create a telegraph company to compete with Western Union, which backed Bell’s experiments.

Everyone hopped on the telephone bandwagon. The system had a substantial impact on public safety, connecting police and fire stations with their branches. By 1877 many businesses were proudly advertising their telephone connections—but without telephone numbers. In the beginning, callers who subscribed to a private serv ice would pick up the phone and ask an operator at a manual switchboard to connect them by name to the person or business they wanted. (The first switchboard was made in New Haven in 1878 for a grand total of twenty-one subscribers.) Early operators memorized the names of every subscriber. It didn’t take long for this system to become unwieldy, but it needed a medical crisis to develop a more efficient system. In 1879 a physician in Lowell, Massachusetts, worried that, if the town’s four telephone operators all succumbed to the current measles epidemic, no one would be left to operate the switchboards. He suggested a numbering system for each subscriber, and telephone numbers were born.

Like all technologies, the invention of the telephone created lots of new businesses and jobs. First among them were private telephone companies: New England Telephone Co., Suburban Telephone Co., Metropolitan Home Telephone, Cambridge Telephone Exchange, Massachusetts Telephone & Telegraph, and The Telephone Despatch, “Organized for the Introduction of the TELEPHONE”:

A month later, the company announced that it already had orders for eighty-eight telephones:

Then there was the astonishing new “Telephone Harp” demonstrated by the inventor Frederick Allen Gower at a concert at Union Hall on January 23, 1878:

Gower set up the “newly invented telephone in the bakery of Mr. Frank A. Kennedy on Green street, and from the general office in Pearl street, Boston. … He then called for a cornet solo at Mr. Kennedy’s bakery, and it was given clearly and loudly, the notes being perfectly rendered, both through the instrument on the platform, or through instruments depending from the ceiling by wires…”

After that was a demonstration of the Telephone Harp: an instrument comprising steel tongues set into a steel frame, beneath which was a hammer similar to a piano key. When the keys were played, the vibrating steel tongues came in contact with a metallic point opening a circuit. The notes where then transmitted over the wires to the telephone instruments in the hall. The Quadruplex telephone in the advertisement was actually an electric telegraph system invented by Thomas Edison in 1874 that allowed four separate signals to be transmitted simultaneously. The crowd was dazzled.

Needless to say, there were commentaries on what this new-fangled invention meant to daily life:

Some more philosophical comments waxed on about the changes to daily life brought on by telephones. Below are excerpts from the Cambridge Chronicle (March 16, 1878), which called the telephone the “crowning invention of the age.” Change a few of the details and the complaint could have been written today about the speed of contemporary life:

“…parties were in adjoining rooms…. The beauty of thing will be that everybody will feel the necessity of having a telephone. The business places which do not have a telephone will naturally be at a disadvantage, and will soon succumb to the pressure……For ordinary messages the memory of the operator at the central office will suffice, but for longer ones a phonographist would be required.”
Cambridge Chronicle March 16, 1878

Does anyone know what a “phonographist” might have been?

In 1879 the Chronicle reported there were 30,000 telephones in the United States (Sept. 20, 1879). In 1883 the paper carried an article about telephone usage world-wide:

Trouble in River City: In 1887 trials in Cambridge of the “electric motor” cars produced substantial interference on the telephone lines. Customers complained: among them was James W. Lovering, Superintendent of Mount Auburn Cemetery and an early adopter of the telephone. By 1889 he was so fed up that he wrote to New England Tel & Tel: “the telephone service is so bad from this buzzing noise on the wires that we are unable to do any business with it, and unless it can be put right at once I do not care to continue the instrument in the office.” And, to one of the monument makers: “Since the electric cars began running the interference has been so great that we have been unable to use the telephone with any degree of accuracy, and until the telephone company … remedy the matter it is absolutely unsafe to attempt to send any message by telephone in regard to anything which is of importance.”

Lovering wasn’t alone. In October of 1889 a meeting of telephone subscribers was convened to address complaints:

A month later, the Cambridge Telephone Exchange “agreed to put in what is called the McClure system at an expense of $7000. This system is said to be such as to remedy the existing trouble.” (Cambridge Chronicle November 9, 1889)

But the troubles didn’t end there….

Installing telephone equipment on public streets produced hundreds of kerfuffles that were reported in the newspapers. In the decade 1890-1899, there were about 1,400 articles, editorials, or announcements about telephones—poles, wires, rates, etc. An example of one of the more benign complaints:

Hard to know exactly what this complaint was about:

The Cambridge Tribune reprinted this tidbit from the Boston papers on October 28, 1899:

Cambridge Chronicle June 9, 1883

Stereograph of “Long distance telephone switchboard.” (ca. 1893–1920).
Boston Public Library Arts Department via Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/nk322r32k

The rest, as they say, is history …
146 years …

Various images of telephones. User credits (L to R) via Openverse: France1978, plenty.r, Pete Prodoehl, and Sean Dreilinger

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES
Cambridge Public Library digitized newspaper collection
Mount Auburn Cemetery Copying Books
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Graham-Bell
Historical Marker Database: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=49766
https://historycambridge.org/innovation/First%20Phone%20Call.html
https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2017/09/telephone-switchboard-connected-country
https://forums.republicwireless.com/t/the-history-of-the-phone-number

Torn Down Tuesday: 188 Prospect Street

Posted on March 22, 2022March 22, 2022 by Meta Partenheimer

188 Prospect Street, photographed by CHC staff (2006)

The one-story commercial building that once stood at 188 Prospect Street was designed in 1912 by the architect Nathan Douglas and constructed by its owner Thomas A. Gannon. Douglas was a prolific local architect with an office on Harvard Street, who designed dozens of three-deckers, apartment houses, and stores between 1901 and 1927. His larger commissions included the Beth Israel Synagogue at 238 Columbia Street (1901) and the Swedish Evangelical Church at 146 Hampshire Street (1902). The façade of 188 was arranged as a single storefront, with a recessed center entrance and two large plate glass windows that angled in to meet the entry door. The façade was detailed with ornamental rafter tails and dentils across the front that wrapped around the corners. A large quarter-round molding decorated the cornice. In 1946 red asphalt shingle siding was added , covering the original clapboards.

Notice of building permit for Gannon’s store, as it appeared in *The Cambridge Sentinel* (6 April 1912)

The first business to occupy the building was Thomas A. Gannon’s ice cream shop. Gannon manufactured his ice cream in the basement of the house at #190 and sold it at the store next door. Gannon died in 1914 and was succeeded by H.L. Fowler. His advertisement in the 1914 city directory includes offerings of ice cream, baked goods, and homemade candies. Fowler kept the store until 1918 and was followed by the Cambridge Funeral Company operated by Daniel L. Shea, a Somerville resident. (There must have been a good freezer in the building.) Later shops included another confectionery, furniture sales and refinishing, tire sales and service, bicycle seat covers and upholstery, and a photographic gallery.

Detail of Fowler’s advertisement in the 1914 Cambridge City Directory

Infill development on Prospect Street related to garaging and repair of automobiles began in the 1920s and 1930s. Even 188 Prospect Street had an automobile related use for a time: a Sanborn atlas lists a tire sales and service business there in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Occupants in the 1960s included Hamilton Television Service and New England Bicycle Cover Co.

188 Prospect photographed by Edward Jacoby (November 1969)

In 1969, the storefront became the first home of a school called Trout Fishing in America, which took its name from Richard Brautigan’s 1967 best-selling countercultural novel. William Hjortsberg wrote in his 2012 biography of Brautigan, Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan, that the school comprised eight different storefronts. For a fee of $10, students could enroll in courses such as English, theories of revolution, math, science, and motorcycle repair. Trout Fishing in America served as both an educational space and a gathering spot for those who wished to listen, socialize, and plan their peaceful revolutionary future.

Richard Brautigan in 1959. Collection: California Faces: Selections from The Bancroft Library Portrait Collection at UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library. via https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf9v19p3wd/

In 1969, Brautigan came to the Boston area to promote the release of a collection of three works, Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar, and visited the Prospect Street school. With him was the reporter John Stickney, who was on assignment for LIFE magazine; his piece, “A Gentle Poet of the Young”, appeared in the August 14, 1970, issue. (Stickney later volunteered as the school’s journalism teacher.) The LIFE photographer Steve Hansen captured this image of Brautigan seated on the curb in front of the school surrounded by teachers and students. During his visit to Cambridge, Brautigan also participated in a Trout Fishing for America parade that began at 188 Prospect and wound through Central and Harvard squares to the northern end of Cambridge Common.

Richard Brautigan and the Trout Fishing in America School at 188 Prospect St, photographed by Steve Hansen (1969)

The Trout Fishing in America was based at 188 Prospect only for a short time before moving to 353 Broadway where it shared space with the Cambridge chapter of Vocations for Social Change.

188 Prospect St in 1978 (Community Development Department sign survey)

By 1971 The People’s Gallery, a photographers collective, occupied the space at 188 with a storefront gallery and dark room below. They soon shared space with Boston Area Ecology Action, an organic bulk foods store, and another photography studio came in the 1980s. Eventually the building fell into disuse. An application to demolish the commercial building and garage at 188 Prospect Street was filed in early July 2006, and the building was razed later that month. Today, the site is occupied by condominiums.

View of former location of 188 Prospect St via Google Street View (2007)

Sources

brautigan.net

Cambridge Public Library historic newspaper database

CHC architectural survey files

Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan by William Hjortsberg (2012)

“Mapping Out Utopia, Vol. 1: Cambridge” by Tim Devin (2017)

National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day

Posted on March 11, 2022March 22, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Before there were Funeral Directors, there were carpenters, who, after measuring the deceased, made and delivered coffins to the family parlors where funerals took place. As time went by, coffin makers “undertook” for grieving families more of the duties associated with interment. Many became known as “Undertakers.” Although fitting, the term was not a reference to placing he departed six feet under. Because talking about any aspect of death was considered awkward, “undertaker” became a euphemism for those who organized the process. Undertakers soon were advertising as “Funeral Undertakers” with ready-made coffins available.

The term “Funeral Director” emerged after undertakers took on all of the social, health, and legal burdens of death. This included a change in where funerals were held. Rather than continuing the tradition of holding services in personal homes, funeral directors now provided “funeral homes” for these services. The funeral director received the body, embalmed or preserved it, provided the coffin, and arranged for viewing at the funeral home. They wrote obituaries, transported or shipped bodies, and arranged religious services and interment. They even extended their services to renting door wreaths and selling memorial books, gloves, and black armbands.

At the same time, embalming, first used on a mass scale during the Civil War, was becoming increasingly popular, which led to the development of both the profession of undertaker and that of mortician. The U.S. National Funeral Directors Association was founded in 1882, the same year that the first school of “mortuary science” was opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eventually, the terms Undertaker and Mortician became interchangeable, although it is interesting to note that no one cared to list themselves as a mortician in the Cambridge City Directory.

Amos P. Rollins was one of those whose career followed the path from carpenter to undertaker. In 1848, he was listed in the City Directory as “carpenter” and in 1850 as “coffin maker” – even though he had been advertising himself as a “funeral undertaker” since 1849.

Interestingly, even though Rollins was an undertaker, in the federal census he consistently listed himself as “carpenter.” He also held the posts of Constable and City Messenger.

Roland Litchfield Jr. was another of those undertakers who started out as a carpenter while simultaneously holding the posts of City Messenger and Superintendent of Lamps. Once he became an undertaker, Litchfield took full advantage of advances in technology, as described in this advertisement the City Directory of 1859 regarding preserving bodies that could be “conveyed hundreds of miles”!

Many in the undertaking profession were also appointed by the Mayor as City Undertakers. As such, they handled arrangements for persons who died unidentified or were considered indigent. By 1852, there were twelve appointees listed in the City Directory, including Amos P. Rollins and Roland Litchfield, Jr.

CASKET OR COFFIN?

Why coffins became referred to as caskets is a little murky. The general consensus seems to be that the magnitude of death during the Civil War is what drove the change in terminology—and the shape of containers for the deceased. The English word “coffin” derives from the French “cofin” which originally meant a basket. The primary difference between coffins and caskets was that early wood coffins had six sides and were hexagonal to accommodate the width of shoulders. Caskets, on the other hand, were and continue to be rectangular.

What about the connection to the Civil War? There are varying views, but most agree that changes in funeral rituals were created in response to the personal and national heartache caused by the unprecedented death toll. People desired more significant ways to pay homage to the deceased. More elaborate coffins— caskets—were part of that impulse. Over time, elaborate caskets were also meant to convey the social standing and wealth of individuals.

William Lockhart, who had emigrated from Nova Scotia to the U.S. at age 16, was yet another carpenter turned coffin maker. By 1885, Lockhart had a large manufactory on Bridge Street in East Cambridge.

Lockhart died in March of 1902, just six months before his new plant was erected on First Street. His brothers carried on the business, until in 1906 the company was absorbed by the National Casket Company, which operated out of the East Cambridge plant for several decades before closing its doors in 1976.

National Casket Co. at 120 First Street, ca. 1968 (Cambridge Historical Commission)

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

Sources

“A History of Funerals in the United States.” Frazer Consultants, July 30, 2020. https://web.frazerconsultants.com/2016/07/a-history-of-funerals-in-the-united-states/

Short, Jessica. “A Brief History of Funeral Directors.” Gather. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://blog.gather.app/a-brief-history-of-funeral-directors.

“Funeral Homes and Funeral Practices: Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: Case Western Reserve University.” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History | Case Western Reserve University, May 11, 2018. https://case.edu/ech/articles/f/funeral-homes-and-funeral-practices.

Further Reading

“Morticians: A History.” Accessed March 9, 2022. https://blog.borgwardtfuneralhome.com/morticians-a-history/.

Zahn, Jonas A. “A Brief History of Caskets.” Northwoods Casket Company, September 16, 2021. https://www.northwoodscasket.com/northwoodscasket/2011/03/brief-history-of-caskets.html.

The Robeson Othello

Posted on February 25, 2022February 25, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

By 1930, Paul Robeson was an acclaimed star: a full-voiced bass; a commanding actor on screen and on stage; and a Civil Rights activist. In March of that year, he debuted his Othello at London’s Savoy Theatre. It was a wretched production—poorly directed, badly acted, overly elaborate sets—but Robeson shone. His “resonant voice, imposing stature, and artless acting were largely responsible for the twenty curtain calls at the London premier” (Harvard Theatre Collection, “Paul Robeson as Othello: the 1942-1945 Margaret Webster—Paul Robeson production of Shakespeare’s Othello”).

Paul Robeson backstage, 1942
New England Historical Society

Robeson was eager to perform the role in America but suspected that a Black Othello would not be acceptable to audiences here. And he was right—his Othello did not make it to the United States until August 1942. The Harvard Theatre Collection essay explains the long journey.

John Haggott, a young Harvard-educated stage manager and producer, arranged “through his Cambridge connections for Robeson’s Othello to appear at Brattle Hall, home of the Brattle Theatre Company … under the auspices of the Cambridge Summer Theatre.” Margaret Webster, the director, was an accomplished actress and preeminent Shakespearean director. Webster and Haggott met with Robeson, and the three approached New York theatre producers, but none would agree to finance a possibly controversial show. Webster, Haggott, and Robeson formed a three-way partnership and cast Uta Hagen as Desdemona and her husband, Jose Ferrer as Iago.

On August 8, 1942, the Cambridge Sentinel announced the advent of “The Robeson Othello.”

Uta Hagen and Paul Robeson.
1942 New York Theatre Guild production

Cambridge Summer Theatre playbill. CHC Ephemera Collection, Gift of Susan Juretschke

Jose Ferrer (white shirt, goatee) and Paul Robeson.
1942 New York Theatre Guild production

Juretschke found the playbill in her father’s papers. He had attended one of the performances and deliberately kept the program; he told his daughter he knew it was important.

The Harvard Theatre Collection essay concluded, “The Brattle Theatre appearance was attended by enormous, far-reaching publicity and a rush on tickets; according to contemporary accounts the opening performance went flawlessly and extended calls followed the performance, accompanied by collegiate-style foot-stamping.”

The production met with equal success at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. It was brought to New York by the Theatre Guild in October 1943, where it ran for a record-breaking 296 performances. Then the company, with Robeson, Hagen, and Ferrer in the leads, began a nationwide tour. At every theatre, management had to sign a contract that included a non-negotiable clause:

“There shall be no segregation, grouping or setting apart of audiences because of race, creed or color.”

None of the Cambridge papers appear to have published reviews of the play but were thrilled to announce another public appearance by Robeson.

Paul Robeson helps the Women’s War Savings Committee sell war bonds in Central Square, 1942.
CHC. Courtesy Bea Fox

Ice Cutting at Jerry’s Pit

Posted on January 25, 2022January 11, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

The warm weather in early 2022 made it hard to believe that as late as 1935 commercial quantities of natural ice up to 13” thick were harvested from a disused clay pit in North Cambridge.

Annual ice cutting campaign at the Johnson plant, Rindge Avenue. *Cambridge Sentinel*
October 11, 1924

In the days before mechanical refrigeration, ice harvested from local ponds was harvested in huge amounts every winter, stored in enormous wooden icehouses, and distributed to households everywhere. The role that Cambridge’s own Nathaniel Wyeth and Frederick Tudor played in developing this industry at Fresh Pond has been extensively documented, but after the City of Cambridge closed the ice houses in 1891 most of Cambridge’s domestic ice – apart from a small amount harvested from the Glacialis, or Artificial Pond, off Concord Avenue – was sourced from Spy Pond in Arlington or from New Hampshire.

Layout of the Johnson Ice Cream plant. Sanborn Map Co., ca. 1929

Cambridge’s defunct ice industry was resuscitated in 1920 under unlikely circumstances. John B. Johnson, a New Hampshire native, had been making ice cream on Columbia Street since 1911. Johnson purchased 225,000 square feet of land off Rindge Avenue in the fall of 1919 and announced that he expected to save up to $15,000 a year by harvesting his own ice from Jerry’s Pit. He immediately erected a small icehouse (a double-walled wooden building insulated with sawdust) and that winter filled it with 3,000 tons of ice. In 1920 he built a two-story ice cream factory adjacent to the icehouse and closed his Columbia Street plant.

J.B. Johnson Ice Cream factory, 361 Rindge Avenue. L-R: factory, icehouse, and stable. *Cambridge Sentinel,* April 1, 1922

The next few winters were suitably cold, and in 1921 and 1922 Johnson was able to harvest 4,000 tons in each season, filling the icehouse with a conveyor belt at the rate of twenty-six 400 lb. cakes per minute over ten working days. After storing surplus ice outside under tarpaulins for a few seasons, Johnson more than doubled his storage capacity in 1925. Not every year offered suitable weather – at least a few weeks of clear, very cold nights and an absence of significant snowfall – but there were substantial harvests in 1930 and 1934, when up to 70 men and several horses brought in cakes 13” thick. 1935 turned out to be the last harvest, as Johnson fell ill and was unable to keep up with mortgage payments. The business continued in other hands until 1938, when the lender foreclosed. The factory buildings were cleared in 1940. The Board of Health denied a subsequent owner permission to use the pond as a dump, and the Dewey & Almy Co. purchased the property in 1942.

Johnson Ice Cream advertisement. *Cambridge Chronicle*, Dec. 14, 1934

Jerry’s Pit has always had a checkered reputation. Brickmaker Jeremiah McCrehan mined clay at the site until one morning in 1860, when, as his son told the story to the Cambridge Chronicle in 1927, he went to work at the pit and found 4’ of water in it. Some operators that tapped underground springs found it profitable to pump their pits dry, but McCrehan abandoned his mining operation instead. Ice was harvested there for domestic use in 1892, but the Board of Health objected, calling the water “entirely unfit for this purpose.”

The pool is a favorite place for such washing as is done by the foreign element who live in the neighborhood; it is a capital place for drowning stray cats and it is often used in this manner by the festive youth who gambol on its banks and who plash about in its shallows in their bare feet; it is, in a way, the cesspool of that neighborhood, and yet during the coming summer a large number of people will dilute their water with ice cut from its surface.
Cambridge Tribune, May 21, 1892

Jerry’s Pit was a de facto neighborhood recreation center, a site for swimming in the summer and skating in the winter in a neighborhood with few such opportunities. J.B. Johnson’s use of the ice in its manufacturing operation was apparently unobjectionable because it was not sold for human consumption. Johnson permitted swimming and skating throughout his ownership, and in 1927 allowed Cambridge’s Recreation Department to improve the facilities and staff the place with lifeguards. In 1943 the Dewey & Almy Co. built a bathhouse and toilet room at its own expense, which the city operated until the Metropolitan District Commission opened the Francis J. McCrehan Pool nearby in 1960.

“It’s a long wait for Linda Lavin, Donna Labo and Tommie Robichaud as they line up at the diving board of Cambridge’s new MDC pool to be the first to try it out.” *Boston Record-American,* July 25, 1960. CHC Photo Morgue Collection

Today’s post was written by CHC Executive Director, Charles Sullivan

Sources

Cambridge Historical Commission files

Cambridge Public Library, Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection

Sinclair, Jill. Fresh Pond: The History of A Cambridge Landscape. The MIT Press, 2009

Weightman, Gavin. The Frozen Water Trade. HarperCollins, 2001

OINK! OINK! National Bacon Day, December 30

Posted on December 30, 2021January 3, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

*Cambridge Chronicle* April 28, 1955. Excerpt from advert for Carl’s Super Market

Having earlier posted a piece on the Cambridge Cattle Market in North Cambridge for National Cow Day, we can’t resist writing this piece about a hog market at the opposite end of town, in East Cambridge, on National Bacon Day.

On Monday night October 5, 1891, Cantabrigians all over town could probably have smelled bacon cooking. It was the occasion of a gigantic fire at the J. P. Squire & Co. pork processing plant.

*Cambridge Chronicle* October 10, 1891 (excerpt)

1,500 hogs perished in the blaze, which started in the hog house. Though it was thought to have been started by sparks from a passing locomotive, no cause was ever firmly established. The fire also demolished the refrigerator building where the hogs were slaughtered and dressed. The main building of the complex survived.

JOHN P. SQUIRE (1819-1893)

Portrait of John P. Squire (image via Arlington Historical Society)

John Peter Squire, known as “the pioneer of the pork industry,” was born in Windsor Co., Vermont in 1819. In 1838 at the age of 19, he arrived in Boston and began working at the Faneuil Hall Market for Nathan Robbins, a poultry dealer from Arlington, Mass.

In 1842, Squire started his own firm, Russell & Squire, with partner Francis Russell. The pair continued as general provisions dealers at Faneuil Hall. When that partnership dissolved, Squire kept the business going on his own. Thirteen years later in 1855, he took on two new partners, Hiland Lockwood and Edward D. Kimball, to form the John. P. Squire & Co. Kimball had also been born in Windsor, VT or across the river in Cornish, NH. While still operating at the Faneuil Hall Market, the business expanded from general provisions to specialize in slaughtering and dressing hogs.

John P. Squire’s Faneuil Hall Market stall, ca. 1880s (Image via Picclick.com)

That same year, Squire bought the land in East Cambridge between Gore Street and the Miller’s River and built the J. P. Squire & Co. meat packing and processing plant. The plant ultimately covered 22 acres on either side of the Cambridge/Somerville line.

Detail of Ward 3 on G. M. Hopkins Map, 1873

In 1842, Squire’s operation processed one hog a day. By 1872-73, 394,000 hogs per annum were dispatched at the plant. In 1881, Squire built a large refrigerator with four cooling floors, which could hold 30,000 tons of ice, enabling him to increase production. By 1890, having weathered an employee strike, the plant employed 1,000 men and slaughtered approximately 5,000 hogs per day. The ice house could accommodate 42,000 tons of product. So many of the company’s employees were immigrants that the firm provided English lessons during lunch hours. Squire’s business that year was $15,000,000. It was ranked third in the world of the pork packing businesses. [i]

A chromolithographic view of the John P. Squire and Company’s meatpacking factory on Gore and Medford Streets in East Cambridge, Mass. From Collection of the Boston Athenaeum

The company suffered nearly fatal damage in a fire in 1891. Squire rebuilt it on a grander scale—the plant went through 300 tons of ice daily and had room to hang 10,000 hogs.

WHERE DID ALL THOSE PIGS COME FROM?

Squire’s advertisement for the Arlington brand. CHC collections

Rather than get his hogs from the local abattoirs in Brighton, Squire imported them from the Midwest, delivered to the plant via the Grand Junction Fitchburg Railroads. The Fitchburg railroad also shipped hogs to the “Cattle Market” at Porter Station in North Cambridge. After arriving at the plant on Gore Street, the hogs were housed in sheds until they were processed. By the mid 1870’s, the company was importing 60-120 Carloads of hogs per week. [ii]

Advertisement in Cambridge City Directory, 1890

POLLUTION: PEE-YEW!

Squire’s plant was not the only meatpacking business in the vicinity. Others in Cambridge were Nash, Spaulding & Co., Charles H. North & Co., and Joseph Boynton, with seven more upstream in Somerville.[iii] The amount of blood and offal produced by the slaughterhouses of these three companies was vast. Some of Squire’s offal was processed into fertilizer, but most of it, like the others, was dumped into the Miller’s River, leading to a variety of “pestiferous exhalations”:

“…When they slaughtered [the pigs], what an odor! It all depended on where the wind was blowing. We would say, ‘Oh, they’re killing the poor pigs’’ In those days we didn’[t know enough to complain to the city about the smell.”
—Jennie and Helen Iantosca”[iv]

The situation led to the Board of Selectman in Somerville and the Board of Health in Cambridge to call for hearings to remove the “lard factories and slaughter houses” in the area. Arguments about various solutions went back and forth for several years. Squire himself paid for the construction of a sewer through the Miller River channel, for which he was later reimbursed. Somerville, Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Board of Health finally decided that the best solution, in addition to the sewer, was to drain and fill in the Miller’s River basins.

FIRES

Squire’s plant suffered through no fewer than five significant fires: in 1878, 1891, 1893, 1963, and one hundred years after the first fire, in 1978. The 1891 fire was the most significant during the lifetime of the business. The fire of April 1963, one of the largest of fires in the history of Cambridge, broke out in the then-abandoned factory whose floors were saturated with flammable grease and lard. More than 300 firemen from surrounding communities battled the blaze for five hours before it was brought under control.

Left: billows of smoke pour from the John P. Squire Co. meat packing plant, as fireman battle to bring the blaze under control, (14 April 1963); Right: aftermath (16 April 1983). Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection, Cambridge Historical Commission.

PRIVATE LIFE

In 1843, Squire married Kate Green Orvis (1821-1901), the daughter of Gad Orvis, Squire’s first employer in Vermont in 1836. In 1848, the couple moved to Arlington (then West Cambridge) where they lived and raised their eleven children. John Peter Squire died in 1893. His home in Arlington, at #226 Massachusetts Avenue, still stands.

Squire’s home at 226 Mass Ave in Arlington, ca. 1910-1950 (via Arlington Historical Society)

After Squire’s death, management of the company devolved to his two sons, Frank O. and Fred F. Squire. In the mid-1930’s, Swift Co. (based in Chicago) bought the company and ran it until it closed in the mid-1950s.

J. P. Squire & Co. was an influential presence in the community of East Cambridge for over 100 years. Not only for the size of the physical plant and its odiferous-ness, but because they employed 1,000 local people. In 1867, the company built “Squire’s Court,” a complex of 19 housing units between Lambert and 7^th Streets, for rental by their employees. [v]

View of Squire’s Court, February 9, 1940. CHC collections

Their clock tower, built in 1873, was an iconic landmark in town:

Cupola and clock at Squire’s. CHC collections

*Cambridge Chronicle* October 1, 1953 noting “Squire’s Clock”

“Everybody who wanted a job worked at Squire’s, and they had to wear a white hat, coat, and apron. The men had to be there by 7:00 AM. …I worked in the cafeteria…They had a sliding window from the kitchen to this beautiful dining room for the bigshots…Twelve or fourteen bucks a week, that’s all they paid. The best waitresses in the cafeteria got sixteen dollars.”
—Mabel Mokaba Ruffing[vi]

THE LAST HURRAH: 1978

Even after the gigantic fire of 1963, one vacant, five story brick warehouse was left standing.

On September 1, 1978 it too went up in a blaze.

Image via Somerville Fire Department, Local 76 (http://www.somervillelocal76.org/)

SOURCES

All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Comp. Under the supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd. (1890).

Cambridge Historical Commission

Cambridge Historical Society: https://historycambridge.org/industry/jpsquire.html

Cambridge Public Library historical newspaper database

Genealogybank.com

Newspapers.com

East Cambridge by Susan E. Maycock. The MIT Press, 1986.

“Tracking Progress: How Somerville Yards — Rail, Stock and Brick — Have Shaped Union Square” Walking Tour researched & led by Ed Gordon, President of the Victorian Society in America, New England Chapter Sunday, September 25, 2016 Co-sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council and the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission.

[i] History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Compiled under the supervision of D. Hamilton Hurd. (1890

[ii] Cambridge Chronicle December 5, 1874

[iii] East Cambridge by Susan E. Maycock (The MIT Press, 1986).

[iv] All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission

[v] Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge: East Cambridge. Revised edition by Susan E. Maycock.

[vi] All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, by Sarah Boyer, Cambridge Historical Commission