Cambridge, Massachusetts, possesses photographic documentation that is probably unparalleled for a city of its size. In 1980, The Photo Search Project, a community-sponsored effort led by the Cambridge Historical Commission, unearthed thousands of photographs in archives, attics, and family albums. A curated selection of these images, dating from the 1840’s to 1946, appears in our publication, A Photographic History of Cambridge (1984).
Cover of A Photographic History of Cambridge (1984)
Within its pages, we see the exterior and the interior of a workers’ cottage as it appeared in 1860. We meet two of the founding members of the Cambridge Sewing Circle and the survivors of Company C, Third Regiment, who marched off to the Civil War in 1861. We are invited to a noontime English class for immigrants at a local factory in the early 1900s, and to a Polish wedding in 1913. Harnessmakers’, carriagesmiths’, and soapmakers’ portraits recall occupations of the past.
Coffee Counter at J.A. Holmes & Company, 638 Mass Ave, ca. 1904-1910
With a forward by renowned historian Oscar Handlin, introduction by CHC Executive Director Charles M. Sullivan, and text by historical experts, this publication provides not only an invaluable record of Cambridge’s history but a review of a century of developments in popular photography as well.
Magazine Beach, south end of Magazine St, 1906
Researchers, historians, photography enthusiasts, and those curious about the city’s rich ethnic, occupational, and architectural heritage will appreciate the diversity of subject, scene, and neighborhood beyond the well-known historic landmarks of our city.
J. Bouchard Provisions, 86-88 Harvey Street, corner Montgomery, ca. 1910
To obtain your own copy of A Photographic History of Cambridge for only $12.50, stop by our office at 831 Mass Ave, or email us at histcomm@cambridgema.gov. A limited number of hard cover copies are also available for $20!
Softcover and hardcover versions of A Photographic History of Cambridge (1984)
1976 image included in Architectural Record 09-1976. Edward Jacoby photographer.
Pusey Library as seen from Widener Library steps.
The Pusey Library in Harvard Yard was conceived from a 1960 report by Harvard, which outlined the needs for future expansion and growth for the university. The potential for expansion of facilities within Harvard Yard was surveyed between 1968 and 1970 by Hugh Stubbins, who examined the 22-acre area for circulation and the possibility for additional structures. Three years later, Stubbins was commissioned to design a new library in Harvard Yard.
Harvard University: An Inventory for Planning, 1960. Copy in CHC Library.
Pusey Library viewed from Harvard Yard.
The new library was to be named after Nathan Pusey, president of Harvard University from 1953-1971. President Pusey oversaw one of the largest building programs in Harvard’s history (second only to President Lowell). In 1957, Pusey announced the start of a program for Harvard College, a $82.5 million effort that raised $20 million more and resulted in three additions to the undergraduate House system: Quincy House (1959), Leverett Towers (1960), and Mather House (1970). During the 1960s, the Program for Harvard Medicine raised $58 million. In April 1965, the Harvard endowment exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Pusey left Harvard in June 1971 to become the second president of New York’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
1964 portrait of President Pusey. Courtesy of Radcliffe College Archives.
Hugh Stubbins believed that an above-ground library would be too constricted in the Yard and he began plans for a subterranean structure. From the beginning, the proposed library was envisioned as an interconnecting link among three existing libraries – Widener, Houghton and Lamont, all within close proximity. Its roof serves as a link as well, with paths and landscaping reinforcing the existing circulation network in the yard. From the exterior, the Pusey Library is a slanting grass-covered embankment only visible from some areas in Harvard Yard. Its roof is a stone-rimmed platform of earth containing a lawn, trees and shrubs.
Plan of Pusey Library.
Site plan and level one plan of Pusey Library.
The main entrance to the library is built into the slope of the hill with a broad band of brick paving at the ground level which forms a moat between the berm and the window wall. The moat allows for light to reach the interior on the perimeter walls without completely disrupting the landscape. Alexander Calder’s “The Onion” sculpture marks the main entry to the library.
Current view of “The Onion” by Alexander Calder.
1976 image included in Architectural Record 09-1976. Edward Jacoby photographer.
Construction of Pusey Library. Courtesy of Radcliffe Archives.
Construction of Pusey Library. Courtesy of Radcliffe Archives.
At the center, a two-story light well between Houghton and Lamont is apparent seemingly to only those who look for it. Sunk down two floors into the ground, the well is home to a Japanese Maple tree, which just peaks out from its subterranean home providing a clear statement of presence for the library.
Interior sunken courtyard with large maple tree.
Stubbins even designed the interior spaces, using a very 70’s design aesthetic. Nylon carpeting was used throughout except in bookstack areas. Most of the furniture was made of oak, as was the trim work. Walls were covered with a textured vinyl fabric with a flat off-white, non-reflective surface to reduce sound reverberation and create a sense of warmth in the otherwise bunker-like building. The interior spaces have since been modernized to meet current needs for the library.
Interior design by Hugh Stubbins’ office. Photographed by Edward Jacoby, 1976.
While underground construction is not needed or desirable in every location, it was brilliantly executed at the Pusey Library. Former Director of the Cambridge Historical Commission and historian, Bainbridge Bunting has said, “No other building has added so much to Harvard Yard yet disturbed its integrity so little”. We could not agree more!
Sources:
Architectural Record. September 1976, pages 97-102.
Much of the text from this post was provided by the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project
“Maude Morgan” photographed by Jamie Cope (1993). Gift of Jamie Cope to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in honor of Maud Morgan
Born in New York City, Maud Cabot graduated from Barnard College in 1926 and traveled to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She did not begin to paint until she was twenty-four, when she met her future husband, the artist Pat Morgan, in the late 1920s in Paris. In 1929, the couple moved back to New York, where she studied at the Arts Student League.
Following her studies, Morgan worked with Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann and began to exhibit at galleries in New York. In 1938, Morgan had a successful show at the Julian Levy Gallery, known as a haven for Surrealist art as well as experimental film and photography. During the show’s run, paintings by Morgan were sold to the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
“The Old Mill” by Maud Morgan, ca. 1930-1940. Whitney Museum of American Art, 42.33
In 1940 she and her husband moved to Andover, Mass, where he taught art at Phillips Academy, and she began to teach at the nearby girls’ boarding school, Abbot Academy. The couple had two children. In 1957, Morgan separated from her husband and moved to Boston. A few years later she moved to Cambridge, where she lived and painted for the rest of her life.
Clipping from the Cambridge Chronicle, 2 April 1964, depicting Maud Morgan and her winning painting “Candelabra” from the 20th Annual Spring Exhibition of the Cambridge Arts Association
Morgan continued to exhibit in New York, primarily at the Betty Parsons Gallery, where she was included in joint exhibitions with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and other notable contemporary artists. Morgan had two retrospective exhibitions, 1967-1968 at the Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Art Museum, and 1977 at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
“Nautique SSX” by Maud Cabot Morgan, 1974. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, gift of Victoria M. Benedict, 1977.168. This screenprint was exhibited in Maud Morgan: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1927-1977, Addison Gallery of American Art
The addition of an artist’s studio at her 3 Howland Street residence was designed by Yugoslav-American architect Alexander Cvijanovic in 1962.
Proposed Addition to the Residence of Mrs. Patrick Morgan, 3 Howland Str Cambridge, Mass. Alexander Cvijanovic, Designer. June 12, 1962
Cvijanovic was a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and later became a partner in The Architects Collaborative (TAC) as well as a close associate of Walter Gropius. The studio addition was demolished in 2004.
The artist’s studio at 3 Howland Street in 1965
The artist’s studio at 3 Howland Street ca. 2004
Cvijanovic’s wife, Maria, remembers that her husband very much enjoyed working on the project, after which the couple and Morgan became life-long friends. Following the commission of her studio, Morgan gifted the couple one of her paintings–a piece that still hangs in their home today.
Alexander Cvijanovic in his apartment in front of the two pictures of the Amberg “glass cathedral.” This building was the last planned together by Walter Gropius and Cvijanovic, his partner. Photo: Peter Geiger (Mittelbayerische, 2016)
In 1970, after her divorce was final, Morgan spent six months in Africa. She returned to Cambridge and lectured on art at Harvard and MIT and taught at Lesley College’s Institute for the Arts and Human Development.
“Green Hazard” by Maud Morgan (ca. late twentieth century). Lawrence University Wriston Art Center Galleries Collections
According to Morgan’s Getty record, the artist was known as “Boston’s modernist doyenne,” leaving a legacy spanning 80 years worth of skilled and complex works “from abstracts to still lifes and self-portraits as well as collages.”‘
In 1980 a film about Morgan’s art, “Light Coming Through,” by Nancy V. Raine (Producer/Co-Director) and Richard Leacock (Co-Director/Cinematographer) was released. The film premiered on October 21 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was later shown at MoMA in New York and the Place Pompidou in Paris.
Maud Cabot Morgan, ca. 1950 / unidentified photographer. Robert G. McIntyre papers, 1903-1957. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
In her eighties and nineties, she continued painting, displaying continuing creativity. She received an Honor Award in 1987 from the Women’s Caucus for Art. Since 1993 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which holds a number of her significant paintings, has awarded the Maud Morgan prize yearly to a mid-career woman artist from Massachusetts.
Maud Morgan with self portrait, ca. 1990 / unidentified photographer. Robert and Jonatha Ceely papers regarding Maud Morgan, 1976-2000. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
In 1995, at the age of ninety-two, she published an autobiography, Maud’s Journey: A Life From Art. She died four years later in Cambridge and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. An art museum and gallery, Maud Morgan Arts, has been constructed in her honor.
On a warm day, the Tanner fountain offers a shady and cool place to pause
Located between Harvard Yard, the Science Center, and Memorial Hall is the Tanner Fountain, designed by Peter Walker in 1984. At the request of then Harvard University President Derek Bok, Walker was commissioned to design a fountain that didn’t require the extensive maintenance usually associated with a water feature. Walker rose to the challenge and created a basinless fountain, in collaboration with sculptor Joan Brigham, featuring 159 granite boulders arranged in a 60-foot diameter circle with 32 nozzles that emit a fine mist. During the spring, summer, and fall, the mist hovers above the stones, with rainbows refracted through the mist on sunny days. During the winter the boulders are cloaked with steam from the university heating plant. The configuration sits within asphalt paving surrounding two existing trees. Inscribed in a plaque set on grade is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The soft sheen all enchants a gleam of sun, a summer rain.”
Site plan of the fountain showing the arrangement of boulders in front of the Science Center
View of fountain with the Science Center in the background
The boulders reflect the history of New England when settlers worked to clear land of boulders to make way for farming. Roughly 2 by 4 feet in size, the stones were buried so that only 16 to 18 inches of their surface is exposed. In contrast to the stones and trees, the asphalt speaks to the urban environment in which the fountain sits. As Walker noted,
“The fountain is a minimal piece full of contradictions, …the materials, their perception and their various meanings are brought into conflict and into question. This artistic statement may be apropos to the questioning stance of students and the intellectual inquiry of the university.”
The fountain was envisioned as a source of active and passive recreation. Instead of an object in the landscape, the fountain is a part of the landscape that people engage with. The stones encourage pedestrians to pause and sit, while the spacing of elements prevents through passage for skateboarders. Children gravitate to the fountain to climb, roam around, or play in the mist, and other people carry on conversations while watching the world go by.
View of fountain on an early spring afternoon with food trucks on the plaza beyond
The Tanner Fountain was the first institutional project of the “Landscape as Art” movement which grew out of the Expression Studio offered by the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Design School. In 1987, the fountain received a design award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). In 2008, the fountain was awarded the ASLA Landmark Award. Jury comments included the following:
“One of the first examples of a landscape architect creating public sculpture. It set a precedent for the profession and has stood the test of time remarkably well, retaining the full power of the original idea. The landscape architect designed it to be accessible and recognize the four seasons and to celebrate water without a traditional body of water. Transformational. It lives in your memory.”
View of fountain and inscription, and Memorial Hall beyond
Based in Berkeley, California, Peter Walker has designed a wide range of projects types and scales, including Sea Pines Plantation, Hilton Head; South Carolina Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California; Upjohn Corporation World Headquarters, Kalamazoo, Michigan; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; and the National 9/11 Memorial, New York City.
Sources
American Society of Landscape Architects, asla.org
Portrait of Sarah Wyman Whitman by Helen Bigelow Merriman, Wikipedia.org
Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904) was a painter, stained glass artist, and book cover designer based in Boston. Whitman was also a doyenne of Boston society, along with Isabella Stewart Gardner for whom she designed a sign over the entrance to her house, now a museum in the Fenway. Married to Henry Whitman, a wool and dry goods merchant, they entertained in their home on Beacon Hill and summered in Beverly Farms on the North Shore. In addition to her social activities, Whitman was deeply involved in philanthropy. She founded the Boston Water Color Club in response to the Boston Society of Water Color Artists who only admitted men, and co-founded the Boston Arts & Crafts Society. Whitman advocated for Radcliffe College and better educational opportunities for women and children in the public school system, and she was a benefactor of Howard University and Tuskegee Institute.
“Gloucester Harbor”, late 1880s or early 1890s, Wikipedia.org
Whitman studied painting with William Morris Hunt of the Boston Museum School from 1868 to 1871, and studied drawing with William Rimmer. In the late 1870s, she traveled to France and studied drawing with Hunt’s former master Thomas Couture. She worked in oil and pastel, painting landscapes around New England as well as floral studies. She also painted numerous portraits, preferring to paint her subjects against dark backgrounds. She exhibited widely in the 1870s through the 1890s, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
“A Song,” signed S. W. Whitman, 1883, invaluable.com
In the early 1880s, Whitman apprenticed with John La Farge, a stained glass artist who utilized opalescent glass in his work and innovated methods of layering and welding glass. Whitman also used opalescent glass in her own work along with colored and transparent glass. Whitman later started her own firm, Lily Glass Works, and her stained glass windows can be found in churches and colleges throughout New England, including the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, Memorial Hall at Harvard University, Trinity Church in Boston, and First Parish Church in Brookline. For Harvard’s Memorial Hall she designed both the elaborate south transept window and the Honor and Peace window on the south side of what is now Annenberg Hall.
Stained glass at the Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 1900. The left side depicts “honor”, the right, “peace”.
In 1884, Whitman was asked to design book covers for the publishing company Houghton Mifflin. She designed over 200 books, working in the Art Nouveau style using organic forms and delicate line work. She also employed gold stamping and was one of the first to carry the design over the front, spine, and back of the book.
Whitman designed many book covers for her dear friend Sarah Orne Jewett, author of Country Of The Pointed Firs and A Marsh Island, among others. Wyman also designed a stained glass window in memory of Jewett’s father at his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
Smith, Betty S. “Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman.” Old Time New England, V. 77, No. 266, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, 1999.
Since the 1970s, summer evenings in Harvard Square have featured a vibrant street theater scene. In 1985, a major subway construction project that extended the Red Line subway to Alewife was completed, resulting in major changes above ground, including wider sidewalks and small plazas, that created even more opportunities for busking (Lotman, Harvard Square, An Illustrated History Since 1950, 2009). Performers ranged from jugglers, mimes, tightrope walkers, and fire eaters, to musicians and singers. This dynamic street performance culture continues today.
In the early 1990s, one performer stood out as a unique and remarkably gifted entertainer. From 1993 to 1996, Igor Fokin enchanted people with his life-like marionettes that mesmerized young and old alike as they danced, played, and interacted with the audience. Igor hand-carved his wooden puppets who ranged from dancing skeletons, a witch sweeping up the sidewalk, to a puppet named Doo-Doo with a fluted nose, and Satchmo playing his trumpet to the song Mack the Knife. Each puppet, measuring less than 12 inches, was elaborately detailed and truly came to life under Igor’s nimble handling, when climbing up someone’s leg, petting someone’s nose, or sitting on a child’s lap.
Born in Russia and a graduate of St. Petersburg Theatrical Institute, Igor moved to Cambridge in the summer of 1993 with his collection of puppets, and by the end of the summer he was one of the most popular performers. Igor put on several shows a day, including passers-by in the late afternoon and culminating in the evening with a large audience who purposely came out to see his show. He was always refining his craft and developing new characters for his street performances which he referred to as the “most democratic art form” (Schmidt, The Puppeteer, 2003).
Igor performed in Harvard Square until his untimely death in 1996 at the age of 36. Today, at the corner of One Brattle Square, where Igor enjoyed performing the most, a bronze replica of Doo-Doo by sculptor Konstantin Simun is perched on a bollard, a permanent reminder of Igor’s joyful imagination and the delight he brought to everyone lucky enough to experience his magical world.
Sources
Lotman, Mo. Harvard Square, An Illustrated History Since 1950. Abrahms, 2009.
