Cambridge MA - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

National Hot Tea Month

Posted on January 20, 2022January 17, 2022 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Image via https://thehistoricfoodie.wordpress.com/

So, how to make a good cup of tea? Here are instructions from the Cambridge Chronicle:

How to Make Tea Properly. – The proper way to make a cup of good tea is a matter of some importance. The plan which I have practiced for these twelve months is this: The teapot is at once filled up with boiling water, then the tea is put into the pot, and is allowed stand for five minutes before it is used; the leaves gradually absorb the water and as gradually sink to the bottom; the result is that the tea leaves are not scalded, as they were when boiling water is poured on them, and you get all the true flavor of the tea. In truth, much less tea is required in this way than under the old and common practice.
Cambridge Chronicle August 15, 1856

We all know about the Boston Tea Party of 1773. But did you know the tea in those boxes hurled into the harbor was green tea? Green tea began life in China, and over the centuries bounced around to Japan, Korea, India and ultimately Europe, the United States, and everywhere else. It all started with a chance dead tea leaf floating in the Emperor’s cup of water somewhere around 2737 B. C. Apparently, he liked the taste, and green tea was born. In the 1500s, thanks to the efforts of English, Dutch, and Portuguese merchants, tea began its worldwide migration. In the 1600s, the Chinese began brewing fermented tea leaves which gave us what we now think of as traditional, black tea.

VARIETIES OF TEAS

All true tea comes from the Cammellia sinesis plant. The varieties derive from the different ways tea leaves are processed and brewed, as outlined in this article from the Cambridge Chronicle:

The article also included a list of green teas: Gunpowder (rolled into “bullets”), Imperial (Great Pearl tea), Hyson, Twankay (after a stream by that name in China), and Brick tea (a block of tea invented by the Tartars to make it easier to carry). Although Oolong was on the green tea list too, it is actually a black tea, but was listed because it tasted green.

TEA DRINKING ACCOUTREMENTS AND CUSTOMS

Teapot and lid. Left side is marked “America: Liberty Restored” and right side is marked “No Stamp Act.” Manufactured ca. 1766-1770. National Museum of American History.

The original Chinese tea cup did not have a handle. When tea arrived in England, this tradition was continued until the 1750s, when cups with handles emerged to protect delicate fingers from hot cups. Your host might also offer tea to gentlemen in a “moustache” cup which enabled sipping while keeping the “moustache” dry:

Image: https://www.tolosaldea.eus/en/que-hacer/museos/museum-rafa-gorrotxategi

And the teapot may have been perched on a “teapot tile” to protect the table:

Ceramic reproduction of Victorian tile. Image via Zazzle.com

INFUSING TEA

Originally, loose tea leaves were added to hot water. When the leaves were brewed, the water would be filtered through a strainer into the teacup. These strainers ranged from the fancy…

English Tea Strainer. Image via Aspire Auctions

…to the simply practical.

Antique tea strainer with rocking mechanism. Image via catawiki.com

Next came the invention of a perforated metal ball filled with tea leaves and dunked into the pot or cup. Also available from fancy to plain:

Finally came tea bags. It is generally thought that a New York tea merchant named Thomas Sullivan invented the teabag. Actually, silk tea bags had been around since the early days in China. The first patent for the tea bag in the U. S. was given to two women: Roberta Lawson and Mary McLaren of Milwaukee in 1903.

Sullivan’s claim to fame is that he took the idea of tea bags and used them as a way of packaging his tea samples for vendors.

MILK & SUGAR? OR LEMON?

The English began adding sugar to tea in the late 1600s. The French soon came up with the idea of adding milk to bring the temperature down (and avoid the teacup cracking). It was the Russians who introduced adding lemon to tea served at travel posts along highways. Lemon was thought to soothe stomachs upset by the rigors of jolting carriage travel.

TEA PARTIES

John Tenniel’s illustration of The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party from *Alice in Wonderland* (1890). The British Library.

It’s generally agreed that European tea parties became popular in the 1840s, when the Duchess of Bedford initiated the custom as a needed afternoon pick-me-up around 4:00pm. It evolved into the standard 4:00 tea for the upper classes, and a later, “meat tea” (more like supper), for laborers after work. The 4:00 tea was often a social affair:

AND HOW ABOUT THOSE “MARTHA WASHINGTON” TEA PARTIES!

The “Martha Washington Tea Party” became popular at, during, and after the country’s centennial celebrations in 1875-1877. They mimicked Martha Washington’s famous tea parties, which she began when she and the General moved to Philadelphia after his inauguration in New York. Initially her invitee list included only Philadelphia’s upper-class ladies. As the tea parties became weekly affairs, they also evolved into intellectual and political salons. Others followed her lead. One hundred years later, at the time of this country’s centennial, many ladies celebrated with what by then were called “Martha Washington Tea Parties.” The main point of these affairs was to dress up in Revolutionary era costumes:

ADVERTISING TEA IN CAMBRIDGE

The first advertisements in (digitally available) Cambridge Newspapers for Tea were for the Boston Tea Company.

That same year, someone felt compelled to rant against “Imposter Tea,” in particular “Canton Tea”

The “Big Tea Kettle” was put up by the Oriental Tea Company in 1873—and it still exists today—now outside Starbucks Coffee by Boston City Hall.

Photo by Mary Blake – WBZ NewsRadio 1030 via CBS Boston

THE INFLUENCE OF TEA DRINKING ON SOCIAL CUSTOMS: TEA HOUSES

Initially, any shop selling tea would call itself a “Tea House”

The term “tea house” evolved to refer to a social place where friends could to sit down and enjoy a light lunch and “cuppa.”

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 20, 1919

THE BLACKSMITH HOUSE

Today perhaps the most well- known Cambridge tea shop was the Blacksmith House at 56 Brattle street.

Mary Walker’s House at 54 Brattle Street. Source: *Cambridge Center for Adult Education.*

Formerly The Cock Horse Inn, and then Dexter Pratt’s blacksmith shop, it was subsequently owned by escaped slave Mary Walker (1817-1873). Mary had been a seamstress on a plantation in North Carolina. She made her escape to freedom in 1848 while on a trip her enslaver’s family to Philadelphia. She settled in Cambridge where she earned her living as a seamstress. Mary later purchased the Dexter Pratt blacksmith shop from Pratt’s children in 1870. She ran it as a boarding house and ensured that it remained in her family by stipulating in her will that it must do so until her youngest son turned 21. It remained in her family until 1912.

In 1947, the house was purchased by Elsa Brändström Ulich (1888-1948).

Portrait of Elsa Brändström Ulich (1929) Image via Wikipedia.

Elsa, “the Angel of Siberia” had an extraordinary life. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, where her father was the Swedish military attaché. The family returned to Sweden where Elsa grew up and went back St. Petersburg when her father was made the Swedish Ambassador to Tsar Nicholas II. During WWI, Elsa was a nurse with the Imperial Russian Amy and served in Siberia. After the war, she was worked with the Swedish Red Cross and got involved with, or started, a number of aid organizations for soldiers, POWs, women and children. Elsa moved to the U. S. in 1933 when her husband, Robert Ulrich, was appointed a lecturer Harvard. In Cambridge, she started a consignment shop to employ Eastern European refugees from the War. It was located at 102 Mt. Auburn Street and was called The Window Shop. In 1947, the shop moved to “The Blacksmith House”, enabling her to expand her tearoom and pastry shop. Sadly, Elsa died of cancer just a year later. By 1971, the original purpose of the shop had been met, and it closed its doors. The property was purchased by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in 1972.

NEXT CAME TEA DANCES

Tea dances emerged in the late 19^th and early 20^th century and provided a means for young ladies to mix with young men while being discreetly chaperoned. Private tea dances were a means of introducing debutantes to society. Some of the most popular tea dances were held at hotels with a full orchestra.

*Boston Herald* January 18, 1914 (excerpt)

HERBAL TEA

This post has focused on traditional black tea, but of course herbal teas have been used for medicinal purposes for millennia and have their own long and interesting history. Perhaps a post for another day!

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

SOURCES
https://www.hackberrytea.com/blogs/tea-education/the-history-of-green-tea
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67297/how-tea-parties-got-their-start
https://www.afternoontoremember.com/learn/etiquette
https://www.apollotea.com/tea-articles/tea-in-russia/9-russian-tea-tradition
https://www.nutritionadvance.com/healthy-foods/types-of-tea/
https://www.wbur.org/news/2012/02/21/mary-walker-runaway-slave
https://mountauburn.org/mary-walker-1818-1873/
Sweet Auburn Magazine, February 2013
Wikipedia

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

Gothic, Glass, and the Goodhues

Posted on December 1, 2021December 6, 2021 by ehillchc

The Arts and Crafts Movement developed in England in the 1860s in response to the increasing industrialization of production. Factories were turning out everything from furniture and fabric to architectural elements and selling all cheaply. Advocates of the movement believed that these mass-produced items lacked style, beauty, and individuality and desired a return to the unique, high-quality goods made by artisans and artists using traditional methods.

Arts and Crafts ideals migrated to America beginning in the 1880s. In 1897, the first US exhibition of contemporary crafts was organized by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and sparked a design reform movement in the United States. Craftspeople, consumers, and manufacturers realized the aesthetic and technical potential of the applied arts. Architects, artists, and intellectuals were influenced by their studies of old English architecture and design; Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival buildings proliferated in Cambridge and across the country.

The brothers Bertram and Harry Goodhue were early practitioners of medieval Gothic design and helped transform American architecture and art for decades to come.

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

*^{Bertram Goodhue, undated. Courtesy of Panama-California Exposition Digital Archive.}*

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869-1924) was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, to Charles Wells Goodhue and his second wife, Helen Grosvenor Eldredge. Bertram attended the New Haven Collegiate and Commercial Institute. He became enamored of the Gothic-style buildings on Yale’s nearby campus. He wanted to become an architect himself but could not afford university, so in lieu of formal training, at sixteen years old he moved to Manhattan to apprentice at the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell. He later relocated to Boston, where he joined other young, artistic intellectuals to found Boston’s Society of Arts and Crafts. Through this group Goodhue met  Ralph Adams Cram; the two men would be business partners for almost twenty-five years. In 1891, they founded the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue (renamed Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson in 1898 after Wentworth’s death) and became proponents of Neo-Gothic architecture, accepting commissions from significant ecclesiastical, academic, and institutional clients. Their 1902 design of the United States Military Academy at West Point was a major milestone in the firm’s career.

*^{Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (left) and Ralph Adams Cram (center) in their Boston architectural studio with a client (and a dog).  Courtesy of Cram & Ferguson archives.}*

Soon after, the company opened an office in New York where Goodhue would preside, leaving Cram to operate in Boston. At first, the men worked as a productive team, complementing each other’s strengths; later they began to compete, sometimes submitting independent proposals for the same commission. The partnership ended when Cram was selected as the architect of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan– on Goodhue’s supposed turf. When Goodhue left to begin his own practice in 1914, Cram had already created his dreamed-of Gothic Revival commission at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and continued to work in the Gothic style mode for the rest of his career. Goodhue branched out from the Gothic mode which gained him such prominence, and designed notable Byzantine and Spanish Revival buildings all over the country. He died in 1924 at the age of fifty-four and at his request was interred in a wall vault at the Church of the Intercession, the building he considered his finest design. The centerpiece of the monument is a life-size effigy of Goodhue in the manner of those preserved in medieval English country churches.

Church of the Intercession, designed by Bertram Goodhue, the building he considered his finest design. Image c.1915 by Wurst Brothers.

Harry Eldredge Goodhue

Harry Eldredge Goodhue (1873-1918), Bertram’s younger brother, was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, and attended the Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire. In 1892, at nineteen, he joined the Boston Art Students’ Association and became an advocate for and expert in traditional stained glassmaking processes. Harry began designing stained glass for his brother’s firm and was sent to Europe to study, draw, and collect medieval stained glass. In 1900, Bertram Goodhue’s firm was chosen as the architect of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Newport, Rhode Island; in 1902, Harry began designing their Brown Memorial Window, his first major commission. The window was the first in America to be made of antique glass in accordance with techniques refined in thirteenth-century Europe. From this, Harry became known as one of only three stained glass artisans then reviving the art of medieval glassmaking.

Harry Goodhue opened his own shop at 23 Church Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, in 1903, soon after completing the memorial window. He was sought-after by church people and architects who were intrigued by the medieval quality of his translucent and richly colored hand-blown stained glass and preferred it to the opaque opalescent glass that was popular at the time. Opalescent stained glass was developed in the late nineteenth century by John La Farge and Louis C. Tiffany and presents a milky, streaky, and iridescent appearance. In 1903 Harry wrote a piece for the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts’ monthly publication, Handicraft, criticizing the opalescent “American” style as not really stained glass, for it is absolutely different from what has been understood by the term.” In a subsequent issue, the artist Sarah Wyman Whitman (featured previously on our blog) wrote in opposition to Goodhue’s opinion and praised the experimentations of La Farge and Tiffany in the development of the opalescent/American method and claimed that academics and experts varied in their preference.

_{Circa 1930 image of 23 Church Street with added fourth floor for Goodhue studio. Cambridge Historical Commission Photograph.}

With additional positive press and commissions from churches and homeowners, Goodhue outgrew his studio on Church Street. When asked, the property owner obliged him by adding an entire floor to the building. The addition was completed in 1907, and Goodhue expanded his company. However, by 1916, Harry’s business was in decline, and he closed his Cambridge shop. 23 Church street would later be heavily altered in 1936 when the top three floors were removed and the building redesigned in the Art Deco style we see today.

*^{23 Church Street (2019). CHC staff photo.}*

After closing his Cambridge shop, Harry became affiliated with Vaughan & O’Neill & Co. that had a studio on Sudbury Street. Harry’s brother Bertram felt that this company was beneath his brother and refused to order windows from them. Between 1903 and his death in 1918, Goodhue created antique stained glass windows for more than seventy buildings in twenty-one states and Canada. During fifteen plus years of perfecting his craft, he trained dozens of apprentices, including his wife, Mary, and their eldest son, Harry.

*^{All Saints Church, Ashmont. Adoration by Kings and Shepherds window by Harry Eldredge Goodhue, pre-restoration, 1898. © Julie L. Sloan}*

Mary Louise Goodhue

Mary Louise (Wright) Goodhue (1876-1965) was born in Cincinnati to Juliet and Daniel T. Wright. Her father was a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, and her brother, Daniel, held an Associate Justice seat on the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Mary married Harry Goodhue in 1904 and had three sons, Harry, Daniel, and William. The couple settled in Cambridge and first resided on Buckingham Place, soon after, relocating to a rental on Martin Street. By 1908 the family had bought a house lot on Fayerweather Street and hired the architectural firm of Newhall and Blevins to design an Arts and Crafts style house. Mary taught singing and violin at her home to young students and assisted her husband in his growing stained glass company.

Mrs. Goodhue was the president of the Cambridge Musical Club, as well as a suffragist. When Harry died in 1918, she took over the stained glass company; she fulfilled commissions and taught their eldest son the art of making antique glass. In a 1920 Boston Globe article, Mary explained her ability to take over the family business so quickly. “Having worked so much with my husband, it comes easy for me to carry on the business. I have hundreds of his designs to guide me and find little trouble in selecting portions of them for the work I get. I know all about his ideals and became so impregnated with his imagination and genius that I love the work, even as did he.” She continued, “when he [Harry] died, I simply had to take up the practical part of the work, but as I was well taught in the artistic part, I found no trouble in mastering the business part.” The article listed Mary as the only female, stained glass maker in America and highlighted her winning proposal for a memorial window to be placed in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in celebration of the Massachusetts Bay Tercentenary. She had bested dozens of male artists to win the commission.

*^{Photograph of Pilgrim Hall windows by Mary L. Goodhue. © Julie L. Sloan}*

Mary Goodhue is credited with stained glass windows in churches in the Boston area and as far as Providence and Detroit. Her memorial windows at Pilgrim Hall and the First Parish Church of Brookline are her most notable. When Harry, the oldest, came of age, he took up the family business, and Mary returned to her other passion, music. In 1935 she wrote “Stagefright and its Cure“, to help musicians and public speakers understand the psychological reasons for stage fright and ways to overcome it. Mary lived at the family home on Fayerweather Street until her mid-80s. After the Great Depression, when her children had left home, she converted the single-family to a duplex and rented out one side for income. She died in Braintree, Massachusetts, at eighty-eight years old.

*^{56 Fayerweather Street, built in 1914 for Harry and Mary Goodhue. CHC photo 11-2021.}*

Harry “Wright Goodhue

Harry Wright Goodhue (1905-1931) closely followed his father’s footsteps in medieval stained glass artistry, but in order to distinguish himself from his father, he went by Wright Goodhue, his middle and mother’s maiden name. Growing up in Cambridge, Wright spent most of his free time in his father’s studio, learning how to make stained glass windows the old way. Wright’s “studio” was described in a newspaper account published when he was 11 years old. “In a corner of the roomy studio where his father works, young Harry set up his easel and his drawing board. Here he spends long hours depicting the deeds of the Round Table knights, the battles of biblical heroes…”

He attended the Russell School before attending the Cambridge Latin School, leaving after two years. Instead of a conventional education, Wright attended evening classes at the Boston Normal Art School and worked as a draftsman at the architectural firm of Allen & Collins during the day at just 16 years old.

His first two professional projects were executed in 1921 at just sixteen years old. He designed the ornamental details for the wooden doors at Lindsey Memorial Chapel (an addition designed by Allen & Collens to Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury Street, Boston, and he designed his first stained glass window – the chancel window for his uncle Bertram’s First Cong. Church, Montclair, New Jersey. Soon after, while working as a draftsman under Allen & Collens, Wright was asked to design 36 stained glass medallions for the Teachers’ College at Columbia University, a commission the practice was working on. This commission allowed Wright and his mother to purchase a studio space in Boston, when Wright was just eighteen.

Soon after, when his employer received the contract to design the Second Universalist Church (now St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine) in Boston, he was asked to provide windows for the Gothic style building. Together with his mother, the artist, in his teens, furnished designs and made the windows. Soon after, stained glass commissions came in rapidly. Window commissions overwhelmed the small operation included an 18-foot rose window for the Sacred Heart Church in Jersey City. Wright completed three commissions in Cambridge. He designed six circular clerestory windows as part of Allen & Collens’ 1923 restoration of Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Josephine Peabody Marks window for Radcliffe College, and the Martha and Lazarus Window at St. James Church in North Cambridge. Wright began to regret his lack of formal education, and even as his workload grew, he began to study for the entrance exam for admission to Harvard. He was admitted to Harvard in 1927 at the age of 22. Spread thin between his work and schooling, he left at the end of two years, without a degree.

*^{1924 passport application photo of Wright Goodhue, then 19 years old.}*

As his prominence in the field grew, the young man became consumed with work. His career hit a crescendo when Allen & Collens were selected to collaborate on the design of the 22-story Riverside Church in Manhattan, with Wright asked to design and make some of the windows for the massive edifice. The Riverside Church was modeled after the 13th Century Gothic cathedral in Chartres, France, a building Wright understood well from his earlier trip to Chartres and other medieval towns and cities in Europe. Wright’s 1924 passport application explained he would be visiting France and England to “study”. This trip was possibly inspired by the Riverside Church commission and from his father’s writings about the Chartres Cathedral and it’s renowned 12th-century stained glass windows.

*^{Photograph of Mercy window in Riverside Church, Wright Goodhue. © Julie L. Sloan}*

*^{Clipping of Wright Goodhue with his mother, Mary Louise Goodhue, designing the Mercy window for Riverside Church, NY. Photo courtesy of Riverside Church Archives.}*

In 1930, Wright married Cornelia Evans, an academic and writer, who studied at Lasell Seminary for Young Women and Wellesley College, both in Massachusetts, and later Columbia University, New York City. The couple resided in Greenwich Village. Tragically, in 1931 just one month after his 26th birthday, Wright Goodhue died by suicide at a hotel in Providence. He was buried in the family plot in the Old North Cemetery in Pomfret, Connecticut. After his death, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, featured his work in an exhibition. His mother also donated some of his works to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In his 1936 autobiography, Ralph Adams Cram, an architect who worked with Wright on numerous commissions, recalled Wright’s “great, unhappy, and unique genius”. Cram reminisced about Wright’s genius in a 1932 piece in Stained Glass Magazine, where he mentioned Wright’s final completed piece, a wood sculpture “Madonna and Child”. Cram writes, “There is something mystical about this last work of his which, in a way, links it with the shadow that came heavily and increasingly upon him during the last years of his life…”

^{Photograph of Wright’s final completed work, “Madonna and Child”. From Stained Glass Magazine 09-1932.}

A Pickle Post

Posted on November 14, 2021November 18, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In Honor of National Pickle Day, established by the Pickle Packers Association in 1949

Final stanza: poem in *New England Farmer* May 8, 1824

The word “pickle” in English comes to us from the Dutch pekel or northern German pókel, meaning “salt” or “brine.” Pickles have been around for at least 4,000 years. Some accounts say they are native to India, others that they were invented in Mesopotamia. They made their debut in the Americas via Christopher Columbus. He (or someone) had figured out that brine-soaked pickles had the advantage of preventing scurvy on long voyages. Cleopatra liked them. So did Napoleon. So do we, if for no other reason than “pickle” is a fun word to say.

PICKLE FACTORIES IN CAMBRIDGE:

The Harvard Pickle Works, Inc., located at 172 Thorndike Street.

Harvard Brand Pure Cider Vinegar bottle, ca. 1930s. (Cambridge Historical Commission Objects Collection)

Detail: 1930 Cambridge Bromley Map showing Harvard Pickle Works

170-174 Thorndike Street at Eighth St. Photograph 1944. CHC collections.

Fickle Pickle fact: In 2020 Americans were eating 20 billion pickles a year.

H.J. Heinz & Co. Warehouse, located at 201 Vassar Street.

H.J. Heinz an Co. was founded in 1869 in Pittsburgh, PA by Henry John Heinz, the “Pickle King”. In 1915, the company built a plant at 201 Vassar Street in Cambridge. In 1968, the property was sold to MIT.

H. J. Heinz pickle lapel pin via Heinz History Center Shop

Detail: 1930 Cambridge Bromley Map showing 201 Vassar St. (Heinz Warehouse)

Exterior view of 201 Vassar Street, photographed by Christopher Hail (Sept 1984)

Fickle Pickle fact: In 2018 someone calculated if each pickle sold in America that year were about 6” long it would take 2.4 million pickles to get to the moon.

Advert from the *Cambridge Chronicle* January 21, 1954. Two jars for only 49 cents!

Sanborn, Parker & Co., a Boston pickle concern with a manufacturing plant in East Cambridge.

Fickle Pickle fact: During WWII 40% of all pickle production was allocated to the ration kits of the armed forces.

ADVICE FOR PICKLERS

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 30, 1847

Fickle Pickle fact: pickle crunches can be heard from ten paces away.

It wasn’t just cucumbers that were pickled. Here is a “Receipt” for pickled peaches:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 16, 1847

“Receipts” for what we now call “recipes” was the usual term through much of the 18th century. In the 19th century, the term “recipes” outpaced “receipts” although both words can still be found in usage until the early 20th century.

NOT JUST FOR CRUNCHING: OTHER USES FOR PICKLES AND PICKLE JUICE

We now know that because of its high sodium content, sports players often drink pickle juice to replace what they used in sweating. Pickle juice also stimulates a “neurological reflex that prevents muscles from cramping.” But did you know that it is effective at putting out fires?

VINEGAR

Of course, you can’t talk about pickles without talking about vinegar. One of the largest purveyors of vinegar in Cambridge was Joseph A. Holmes & Co:

In the 1880s, vinegar became a hotter topic than you might imagine. In 1879, Congress passed the “Whiskey Vinegar Law.” While aimed at prohibiting the adulteration of foodstuffs (in part by stating that all vinegar had to contain at least 5% acidity), it also allowed whiskey distillers to use whiskey in the manufacture of alcoholic vapor vinegar, which they called “white wine vinegar.”

A big complicated hoo-ha ensued, involving charges of illicit distilling, food adulteration, tax avoidance and undercutting the apple cider market, and it all got tangled up with a regional Eastern vs Western issue. Most “whiskey vinegar” was produced in the west, and the “alcoholic vapor” process was cheaper. To combat what they saw as undercutting the market for their apple cider vinegar, the eastern apple growers focused on the idea that the law allowed anybody to open a “vinegar distillery” which, while cranking out vinegar, would also be able to crank out barrels of nefarious illicit whiskey without taxation.

The result of the controversy caused Cambridge (and other cities) to create the position of “Inspector of Vinegar,” a job often combined with the “Inspector of Milk.” It is not clear if the law was ever repealed.

THE MANY USES OF VINEGAR

Now that you know more about the vinegar crises than you ever thought you would need, here are some entertaining articles about the uses of vinegar.

To prevent smoking lamps…

As a teeth-cleaning solution…

As a wart remover…

As fascinating entertainment…

As a cure for poisonous wounds…

MORE FICKLE PICKLE FACTS FROM THE INTERNET

You want to avoid being in “de pekel zitten” (Dutch) if you can avoid it. It literally translates as sitting in the pickle, and has come to mean just plan ole drunk.

But you can also be “in a pickle” if you are in a quandary. Shakespeare used the phrase in The Tempest when Alsono asks: “How camest thou in this pickle?” and Trincuclo responds “I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones.” Poor Trinculo meant he had been drunk, but eventually the phrase came to mean being in a tricky situation, or a quandary.

Nutritional facts: Pickles provide 20% of the daily recommended amount of vitamin K, which helps your blood clot, 6% of the calcium adults need for strong bones, teeth and healthy nerves, and
6% of your daily requirement of potassium, which also helps your nervous system.

Pickleball, a sort of paddle tennis game, was founded in 1965. Its creators called it “pickleball” in recognition of the “pickle boat” – – a hodge-podge thrown together crew in in crew races. And that reference, in turn, was to the last boat in English yacht races which was called the “fisher,” because that boat, coming in last, would stop along the way to fish for herring which were then – – you’ve got it – – pickled.

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

Sources
https://www.history.com/news/pickles-history-timeline
https://www.mtolivepickles.com
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2010/06/09/snap-crunch-that-s-a-pickle/
Middlesex South Registry of Deeds
Cambridge Public Library: Digitized Newspapers
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/health-benefits-pickles
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/408287/recipe-vs-receiptps:
https://medium.com/@specialisedgeneralist/
https: //www.mtolivepickles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/G2-3-Pickles-Are-Popular.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-pickles/

The Scottish Monument Maker and the Irish Mayor of Cambridge, William F. Brooks

Posted on October 28, 2021October 27, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In the mid to late 19^th century, virtually all of the monument makers in Cambridge hailed from Scotland, Ireland, and England, as did virtually all of their employees. In 1855, 22% of Cambridge’s citizens were born in Ireland and by 1865 the number of Irish had increased by an additional 20%.[i] Of course it’s difficult to make assumptions about origins based on surnames, but some are pretty clear. In 1885 the City Directory listed approximately 1600 individuals with names beginning with “O’” or “Mc” or “Mac”. And that doesn’t even include all the other Irish and Scottish names that begin with other letters! 70 men identified themselves as working in the marble, granite and monument making businesses that year. One of the earliest, and the most nationally prominent, was Alexander McDonald (not to be confused with an earlier Alex McDonald, a stone worker on Western Ave in 1849.)

Alexander McDonald (1829-1906) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the major exporter of granite world-wide—including to the United States. Young Aberdonian granite laborers would frequently work summers overseas, returning to Scotland in the winter to prepare granite for the next year’s export. Beginning around 1865, the shortage of skilled workers in the U. S. led to more and more of these young men emigrating permanently.[ii]

The exact date of McDonald’s arrival in the U.S. is unclear. His obituary states he arrived in New York in 1852, and subsequently moved to Albany, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Lyall. He appears to have arrived in Cambridge in 1856, apparently with enough capital, at age 27, to start his business.

McDonald proved to be an acute businessman. Given his almost immediate success in Cambridge, it is more than likely he worked as a stone cutter in Aberdeen. In 1867, ten years after starting his monument business, he purchased a granite quarry in Mason, N. H. This he ran “entirely by steam-power without the use of horses or oxen,” and where he put in action the “McDonald Stone Cutting Machine” which he had invented and patented.

From: *The collection of building and ornamental stones in the United States National museum*
by Merrill, George P. (George Perkins), 1854-1929, p.328.

McDonald’s first place of business was on Rice Place (later renamed Maynard Place). He built a wharf on the Charles River directly across from Rice Place—one of only two wharves this far upriver. McDonald’s advertisements first appeared in the Cambridge newspapers in 1857:

Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873. McDonald’s Wharf across from Rice Place (later Maynard Place) can be seen bottom right

McDonald’s Wharf. Image: Historic New England

A team of 18 oxen moving a piece of marble for Alexander McDonald, date unknown. Image: Cambridge Historical Commission

Detail: the sign reads “Alexander McDonald Mount Auburn Marble & Granite Works Cambridge Mass.”

McDonald lived for a while further west, in the Jonas Wyeth homestead, and in 1868 purchased land from the Wyeth estate for $4,000.[iii] The land was strategically located across from the front gate to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and became the permanent location for his business at #583 Mt. Auburn Street, at the corner on what is now Aberdeen Avenue. On the atlas detail below you can see the Reception House belonging to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, just across from their main gate. In 1896 when the cemetery closed the reception house (in favor of one inside the cemetery gates), McDonald moved his office and “wareroom” into the building. It still bears the sign stating the date his business was established, “1856”.

Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873

In 1873, a dead-end street called McDonald Street had been constructed through his property. In 1895, McDonald sold land to the town to enable extending it through to Huron Ave, thereby providing electric street cars a “turn around.” Thereafter it was renamed Aberdeen St, after the County in Scotland that McDonald was from.

An amusing notice appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle highlighting the use of his marble yard for target practice:

McDonald’s own house was at #643 Mt. Auburn Street. He had permission to raise cows on the premises and, it appears, advertised the services of his bull:

The house can be seen below, second building from the right. Also visible is the rectangular entrance sign for his marble yard along with a couple of monuments on display. The large building on the right is the Mt. Auburn Cemetery Reception House. The image is presumably of a ceremony at the cemetery. The building is now owned by W. C. Caniff and Sons, monument makers, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Parade on Mount Auburn St, ca. 1890 (Cambridge Historical Commission)

The Reception House yoday:

Alexander McDonald also provided a shed on his property to house sculptor Martin Milmore’s mammoth Sphinx monument for the Cemetery:

*Boston Evening Transcript* August 16, 1872

And now we get to the mayor…

WILLIAM FRANCIS BROOKS, LATER MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGE

The May 10, 1899 edition of Trenton Evening Times stated that McDonald had “some 40 artists in his employ.” Many of McDonald’s workers lived on McDonald Street, in the area called The Upper Marsh and across the street from the McDonald Wharf, or further west on Holworthy and Cushing Streets.

Granite workers went out on strike in 1892, but McDonald’s operation seems relatively immune to its effects:

William F. Brooks, future Mayor of Cambridge, was one of those workers, who, like his father, had a long association with the company. His father, Patrick Brooks, had emigrated from Ireland in 1851 at the age of 17, ending up in Cambridge 1852[iv]. The family lived at #35 McDonald Street. Patrick worked for McDonald’s Marble and Granite Works for 40 years, purchasing the business after McDonald’s death and passing it on to his son William. William Brooks worked at McDonald’s from 1885 to 1900 before leaving to found a real estate company (Brooks & Conley) and to dedicate more time to his political career. Active in Democratic politics, Brooks had been elected a City Councilman in 1896, President of the Common Council in 1899, Alderman, and Principal Assessor in 1902. In 1909, he was elected Mayor. Brooks held the position for two terms through 1911. William F. Brooks owned the Marble and Granite Works from 1916 until his death in 1925, after which his son, also William F. Brooks, was at the helm until sometime between 1938 and 1940.

Mayor William Francis Brooks Square: Brooks was a friend of MIT President Robert C. Maclaurin, and instrumental in bringing MIT from Boston to Cambridge. In honor of this (and his other achievements), in 2012 the Cambridge City Council dedicated the corner of Vassar St. and Massachusetts Avenue as Mayor William Francis Brooks Square.

MCDONALD’S MONUMENTS: FROM COAST TO COAST

Alexander McDonald & Sons, and his son Norman McDonald’s separate company, were responsible for approximately 850 monuments in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery between 1856 and 1900. The two monuments below to slain Civil War soldiers are good examples of his work:

Lieut. Edgar Newcomb, Battle of Fredricksburg. Image: Stone and Dust

Detail: Waldo Merriam, Battle of the Wilderness. Image via Mount Auburn Cemetery

Through his intricate work, McDonald gained a national reputation. At the end of the 19^th century, McDonald’s business occupied an office at the gates of Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey, and one in Paterson, North Carolina next to the Cedar Lawn Cemetery.

Many of his monuments were of truly monumental proportions. The 70 ft tall obelisk in commemoration of dentist H. D. Cogswell of San Francisco (designed by Cogswell himself) cost $100,000, weighed 400 tons and cost $5,000 to ship. The Oakland Tribune (July 15, 1887) declared it was “the largest shipment ever made across the continent.” A month later, the San Francisco Examiner ran an article (August 11, 1887) describing the monument:

“The mammoth monument of Dr. Cogswell recently arrived overland…laden upon twenty-one freight cars…The base block of stone, weighing twenty-five tons, was loaded upon a truck specially sent from the East to transport the heavy pieces. Eighteen horses were required to haul the base block. In loading it the streetcar rails were bent and the cross walks were broken by the great weight, and a tire ten inches wide came off one of the truck- wheels….the heaviest piece of stone is the shaft, thirty-three feet long and weighing over thirty tons. Thirty six horses will be required to pull the truck….In addition to the twenty-one carloads of stone (granite and marble) of the monument, ten more carloads of coping for the lot are on their way higher across the continent.”

The Mercer County Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Trenton, N. J., completed after McDonald’s death, was “the largest obelisk at that time ever manufactured in the United States” at 50 feet high.[v]

In Cambridge, McDonald and his then partner Jonathan Mann were the contractors for the Cambridge Soldier’s monument on the Cambridge Common. (Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor.)

Civil War Monument on the Cambridge Common photographed by Richard Heath (April 17, 2014)

A side note: McDonald and Mann shared a patent on a thoroughly unlikely product: an improved hoop for ladies’ hoop skirts:

*Annual Report of the Commission of Patents*, Part I, Vol. I., 1866

In 1872, the partnership between McDonald and Mann was dissolved, although Mann continued to be active in the stone business with McDonald, remaining on the board of the McDonald Stone Cutting Machine Company.

PRIVATE LIFE and DEATH

Alexander McDonald married Elizabeth Lyall (of Albany, N. Y.) in 1859. They had two daughters and five sons.

Two of his sons followed in his footsteps. Frank, who was taken into partnership with his father in 1887, died in 1905 after complications from surgery. His father died Just a month later. Norman McDonald went out on his own the same year (1887) establishing his own company at 212-214 Brattle Street (the current location of Lowell Park on Fresh Pond Parkway). Just three years later, in 1890, his business failed.

After over half a century in business, Alexander McDonald died of pneumonia on January 11, 1906. By now his name had become a brand. Patrick Brooks took over the company, continuing to list it as Alexander McDonald & Sons. when his son William F. Brooks took over in 1916 the name was changed to the Mount Auburn Monumental Marble and Granite Works. Brooks’ son, also William F. Brooks, took over after his death. sold the business at some point between 1938 and 1940 to Nino P. Zapponi. In the late 1950’s the business was bought by William Canniff, whose family still owns the property at #583 Mt. Auburn St.

Alexander McDonald is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery on Angelica Path, Lot #3471.

Image via Mount Auburn Historical Collections

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

SOURCES

Ancestry

Cambridge Historical Commission architectural survey files

Cambridge Public Library historic newspapers database

The collection of building and ornamental stones in the United States National museum:
by Merrill, George P. (George Perkins), 1854-1929

Commissioner of Patents Annual Report, United States Patent Office, 1886

The Doric Columns blog: Granite Masons

Genealogy.com

Mindat.org – Mines, Minerals and More

Mount Auburn Cemetery Historical Collections

National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Riverview Cemetery

Riverview Cemetery Historian’s Blog: Alexander McDonald Company

Smithsonian American Art Museum: Art Inventories Catalog

[i] Cambridge Historical Commission, draft of Maycock and Sullivan article.

[ii] History of Granite workers in Aberdeen

[iii] Middlesex South Registry of Deeds Bk. 1973,Pg. 168

[iv] Policy Order Resolution in City council, September 10, 2012, naming “ William F. Brooks” Square

[v] National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Riverview Cemetery

We’re hiring!

Posted on September 30, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

The Commission seeks a full-time Archivist to organize and maintain its public archive and create in-person and online programming that promotes the archive and highlights Cambridge history. The archive is founded on an architectural inventory containing survey forms, photographs, and documentation on all 13,000± buildings in the city that is currently being digitized. Other collections include both historic and contemporary materials, such as atlases, papers and manuscripts, books, objects, and ephemera. The photograph collection is estimated to contain more than 60,000 images in all forms. These unique resources are used daily by staff, residents, researchers, and building professionals. The Archivist will oversee the Digital Projects Archivist, who also coordinates the Commission’s social media presence, and supervise relevant interns and volunteers.

Click here to view the full job posting and application instructions.

Queen Anne in Cambridge

Posted on September 15, 2021September 9, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Of course, Queen Anne never actually set foot in Cambridge. But the style of architecture named after her arrived from England in the late 1800’s. The predominant architect of the style in England was Richard Norman Shaw. It was named “Queen Anne” because of a slightly misconceived idea that the style popular during her reign (1704-1714) was conglomeration of renaissance ornament glued to essentially medieval buildings. But, as it turns out, Shaw and others, while interested in medieval architecture, were far more influenced by Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings. Many Americans first saw the Queen Anne style at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1875, where the British government built several houses in that style. It took off in popularity soon after.

Balanced asymmetry, and abundance of building materials and decorative details are the most predominant exterior features of Queen Anne style. Towers, gables, wrap around porches, Palladian windows, and an assortment of decorative shingles, terracotta tiles, decorative brick work, dentils, columns, spindles, bay windows, balustrades, set back entrances, and wood or slate roofs might all be included. The excess of decoration frequently came to be referred to as “gingerbread.” One might almost call the style “hodge-podge,” except that the asymmetrical variations and exaggerated decoration were intentional design decisions.

Clipping of example Queen Anne diagram from “A Field Guide to American Houses” by Virginia McAlester.

The three examples below demonstrate varieties on the theme.

298 HARVARD STREET

Designed in 1888 by Boston architect J. A. Hasty and built for William Haskett Wood, (1846-1912) on the “Old Morse Estate.”

This house includes six varieties of window treatment, two triangular pediments, a large corner tower with conical roof, decorative millwork, and standard and fish-scale shingles. The exterior front façade features a decorative triangle gable on the left with intricate acanthus carving and recessed panels, supported by shingled brackets. This is balanced on the right by a round tower with an “eyebrow-like” segmental dormer. In between on the roof, and slightly set back is a classic gabled dormer with shingled brackets.

*Gable detailing. Photo courtesy of The Harder Group.*

Across the second floor are several horizontal courses of shingles, followed by many more courses of fish scale shingle. The three second floor windows reflect the decorative styles and millwork of the windows above them. On the left sculpted millwork, the center more classic, and on the right curved lintels as above in the tower, with fish-scale and other fretwork.

The first-floor porch joins a bay window on the left with the round tower window on the right. Four sets of double turned posts supporting the porch roof, and just below the porch gutter runs a decorative panel of millwork. The deeply recessed front door is bordered by two Palladian style windows. The article below (Cambridge Chronicle, November 3, 1888) describes the luxurious interior. And, should you be concerned, “the plumbing will be of the most approved pattern.”

Interior architectural detail at stairhall. Photo courtesy of The Harder Group.

William Haskett Wood was one of those fortunate businessmen whose name matched his profession: lumber dealer. He arrived in Cambridge in 1867 and clerked with lumber dealers Gale, Dudley & Co. Within five years he had formed a partnership with George W. Gale. When this firm dissolved in 1881 Wood went on to buy out Burrage Bros. (wharf at the junction of Broadway, third and Main streets) center of operations. He married Anna M. Dudley. The family lived in the house for approximately 25 years, it passing out of the Wood family at some time between William Wood’s death in 1912 and 1916, when Joseph E. Doherty, Cambridge Water Commissioner lived in the home. In its lifetime this building has been a private home, a Jewish Community Center, the Castle School, (a residential program for troubles children 13-17), and the KLH Day Care Center. In its present incarnation it is a condominium complex.

39 GARFIELD STREET

Built 1885-1886 for Edward Augustus Shepherd (1859-1945)

A much simpler version of Queen Anne Style can be seen in the house at 39 Garfield Street. Although the asymmetry is not as great as 298 Harvard Street, it is evident in the offset entrance and variety of windows and their placement. The peak of the gable is “standard” shingle, but around and below the Palladian windows is fish scale shingle. Other typical decorative features include the cutwork on the eaves, decorative spandrels on the wrap around porch and carving in the tympanum over the front porch stairs. Rosettes (or sunflowers?) featured in the spandrels and tympanum are common decorative details of the style. The skirt below the front rail is also decorative cutwork.

Edward A. Shepherd was a wholesale hay and grain dealer in Boston, and served as both auditor and treasurer of at the Boston Chamber of Commerce. He was married to Helen D. Strean. The family lived in the house for approximately 58 years. His house is surrounded by several other Queen Anne style homes on the street.

33 AGASSIZ STREET

Built 1890 for Horace Phelps Blackman (1833-1917) by Boston architect Eugene L. Clark

The first thing one notices about this house is the use of fieldstone on the first story, “from the fields of Arlington and Lexington.” The usual asymmetry is reflected in the placement a gable with an oriel window on the left, with a tower on the right. Two imposing stone arches surround a window and front door on the first floor. There are a variety of shingle applications: fish scale on the gable and pediment of the gable window, with variegated horizontal courses on the second floor. Tall chimneys with decorative brickwork are another common feature of the style, and one can be seen here on the Lancaster Street side of the house. The side façade also includes a gable with Palladian windows, second floor balcony and a porch. The interior is lavishly finished with mahogany and oak, and described in the newspaper article from 1891 below.

Interior stairhall, photo courtesy of real estate listing.

Horace P. Blackman was a piano forte and organ maker, first with Chickering of Boston, and subsequently with the Mason & Hamlin Organ & Piano Co. He retired from business in 1892 and served as Alderman in 1893. He became involved in real estate investment. By 1900 he listed himself as “capitalist” of the census that year. He was married to Lydia Lucretian Flint. The Blackman family lived in the house for approximately 32 years.

National Oyster Day: Part 2

Posted on August 26, 2021August 18, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Welcome to the second and final installment of our series about the evolution of eating oysters and the Cambridge restaurants and eateries that served them in the 19th century.

And now THE BIG QUESTION: Are Oysters an Aphrodisiac?

Jacob Ochtervelt, *The Oyster Meal*, 1664-65. Private collection.

Eating oysters frequently raises a slight naughty twinkle in one’s eye. Remember Albert Finney in the classic Tom Jones movie? The jury is out on scientific proof about the oyster’s aphrodisiac qualities. These days, it is thought the zinc and amino acids in the bivalve might possibly stimulate sexual desire. So, who knows—the legend might be true. At least Casanova thought so.

OYSTER NEWS
Oysters were so popular that items about their origin regularly made the news:

New York: *Cambridge Chronicle* January 4, 1849

Long Island Sound, New York: *Cambridge Chronicle* October 15, 1859

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 19, 1868

Cape Cod: *Cambridge Chronicle* June 7, 1879

Virginia: *Cambridge Chronicle* January 1, 1870

Providence River: *Cambridge Chronicle* March 15, 1879

PRIORITY ON THE MENU

Eduoard Manet, *Oysters*, 1862. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

“An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.”
M. F. K. Fisher

Oysters became so popular that they were often the first food highlighted in restaurant advertising, ahead of meats, fruits, ice cream, etc. They were also featured various celebrations.

George Teague again:

AND WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE OYSTER SHELLS?

What happened to all those oyster shells, you might well ask? They were added to cement, road beds, railroad beds, ground up for chicken feed for hens (for digestion and calcium for egg shells), compost for vineyards, and cleaning the insides of coal burning stoves. Oysters were not allowed to be dumped just anywhere:

Excerpts: *Cambridge Chronicle* July 2, 1846

THE DROP IN CONSUMPTION

Susan Koolman, in the “Great Oyster Craze” writes: “Whereas New Yorkers in the 1800s ate an average of 600 oysters per year, today Americans eat an average of less than three oysters per year.” Several factors were in play: over-harvesting native beds led to importing oysters, which brought disease with them, which diminished the supply. There were concerns about the sanitation of oyster processing facilities. These concerns were addressed in 1906’s Pure Food and Drug Act. The new regulations were costly, and many oyster houses went out of business. In addition, the 1924 typhoid outbreak in New York, Washington, and Chicago was associated raw oysters.

*Madera Tribune* (California) December 11, 1924

Then along came Prohibition, closing a lot of the saloons and taverns that specialized in oysters. All in all, these factors put the “kaybash” on consumption. Later in the 20th century, evolving expectations about environmentally correct and ethical oyster farming have elevated the cost of raising oysters once again.

FOR FUN

More on the love of oysters is best demonstrated by following samples of ads and commentaries over the years. Have you ever considered that thunder might kill oysters? An opposite theory is that thunder inspires oysters to spawn…

“Never serve oysters in a month that has no paycheck in it.” – P. J. O’Rourke, political satirist and journalist
“A good oyster cannot please the palate as acutely as a bad one can revolt it, and a good oyster cannot make him who eats it live forever though a bad one can make him dead forever.” – Rebecca West, author
“Give me oysters and beer, for dinner every day of the year, and I’ll be fine.” – Jimmy Buffett
“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” – Federico Fellini, Italian film director
“Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. They stay in bed all day and night. They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them.” – Hector Bolitho ‘The Glorious Oyster’ (1960)
“Animal rights, taken to their logical conclusion, mean votes for oysters.” – Bertrand Russell, polymath
“You ought to try eating raw oysters in a restaurant with every eye focused upon you – it makes you feel as if the creatures were whales, your fork a derrick and your mouth Mammoth Cave.” – Lillian Russell, actress
“I prefer my oysters fried; That way I know my oysters died.” – Roy Blount, Jr., writer

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

SOURCES
About the Oyster. Union Oyster House, Boston, MA :: Seafood and history at America’s Oldest Restaurant. (n.d.). http://www.unionoysterhouse.com/pages/oysters.html.

The American Restaurant. (1873, December 27). Cambridge Chronicle, p. 4.

Babatunde, K., & Robinson, M. (2020, March 8). ‘The world is your oyster’ saying origin & meaning. No Sweat Shakespeare. https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/famous/the-worlds-your-oyster/.

The Great Oyster Craze: Why 19th century Americans Loved Oysters. MSU Campus Archaeology Program. (2019, January 17). http://campusarch.msu.edu/?p=4962.

The History of Oysters: Its Rise as a Delicacy and a Staple Food Beloved by Many. Food Worth Writing For. (2020, May 8). https://foodworthwritingfor.com/2018/07/31/the-history-of-oysters-its-rise-as-a-delicacy-and-a-staple-food-beloved-by-many/.

Oyster Quotes. Oyster Quotes: Quotes About Oyster Foods. (n.d.). http://www.foodreference.com/html/qoysters.html.

Uteuova, Aliya (2018) “The World is Your Oyster,” The Catch: Vol. 6 , Article 10.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/the_catch/vol6/iss1/10

Torn Down Tuesday: 42 & 48 Quincy Street

Posted on August 24, 2021August 24, 2021 by Brittany F.

It’s #TornDownTuesday (or is it #TransferredTuesday)! Today’s Gund Hall is located on the site of multiple buildings on Quincy Street, with the original 48 Quincy Street structure being relocated in 1968.

Images from Dudley Borland Card Collection, no date

42 Quincy Street

To start, 42 Quincy Street was a wood-shingled square house with a rear ell that was built in 1844. In July 1844, the President and Fellows of Harvard College granted Henry Greenough the land known as the “Delta”.

Daniel Reiff image, before fire, ca. 1968

Henry Greenough of Boston (1807-1883) was a merchant and amateur architect who was brother to Horatio and Richard Saltonstall Greenough, both sculptors. Henry attended Harvard from 1823-1826 and then studied architecture in Italy. 42 Quincy St, also known as the Greenough House, was built by Greenough for his mother, Mrs. David Greenough (Eliza Ingersoll). This pattern-book Italianate style house is the earliest known house designed by Greenough. He also designed the First Church in Cambridge (1830) and the Cambridge Athenaeum (1851). After his Italianate on Quincy St, he made houses in 1854-1856 with low mansard roofs. Greenough designed his mother’s home with a brick basement, 4 wooden risers for the front stoop, and an unusual canopy with arched openings. It was originally painted brown.

Daniel Reiff images, 42 Quincy Street after fire and demolition, ca. 1968

Greenough House was passed down through the family until 1891 when it was sold to the Corporation of the New Church Theological School, who used it as offices. In 1966 it was obtained by Harvard for its Economics Department offices. Unfortunately, on January 8, 1968 the house was destroyed by a major fire likely caused by a defective boiler. The house was scheduled for demolition later that year to make way for Gund Hall.

48 Quincy Street

Next door was 48 Quincy Street, which has a more pleasant conclusion. Built in 1838 by William Saunders for Prof Daniel Tredwell, 48 Quincy was a Regency Greek Revival style house. It featured wide, flat pilasters on flush boarded walls and a square, hip roof. In 1847, it was bought by Jared Sparks who started living at the address in 1849 when he became president of Harvard. Sparks is considered one of the earliest modern historians. Subsequently known as the Jared Sparks House, it was purchased by the New Church Theological School and in 1901 was moved on the site to make room for the Swedenborg Chapel. However, in October 1968 it was again moved, but around the corner to 21 Kirkland Street, to make way for Gund Hall. You can still see the home today at its new address!

Many of the images from this post come from our newly available Dudley Borland Card Collection. Keep an eye out for future posts featuring this collection! Would you like us to make it a weekly or biweekly feature?

For more information on these buildings, email us at histcomm@cambridgema.gov.

The Buzz About Bees: World Honey Bee Day

Posted on August 21, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

According to an article in the Scientific American (April 25, 2014), honey bees arrived on the scene about 130 million years ago, having evolved from wasps at a time when “The vast supercontinent of Gondwana was beginning to break up, with South America drifting off to the west of Africa, and Australia moving majestically off to the east. Antarctica decided to head south…”

Fast forward to humanity entering the scene. Honey bees buzzed their way into the culture of civilizations as symbols of:

-the sun, community & celebration: Druids.
-royalty and power: Egyptians.
-the attributes of Christ: Christians.
-Mother Goddess, representing mutual support and fertility: Minoans.
-Aristaeus, god of bee-keeping: Greeks.
-immortality and resurrection: Merovingian royalty.

They were the Italian Renaissance sculptor Bernini’s symbol, and, in general, a symbol for industry, hard work and dedication.

Because of that hard work and dedication, honey bee communities have often served as a model for human society. They appear on the seal of the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), which “features a beehive with several honeybees buzzing around it.” (MassHist.org)

Massachusetts Historical Society seal, via masshist.org

The inscription reads “sic Vos Non Vobis” which translates roughly to “you work, but not for yourselves.” It was chosen in 1833 to represent the mission of the MHS.

Of course, the main attraction of honey bees is what they produce: honey.

TO GET THE HONEY YOU GOTTA KEEP THE BEES

Instructive articles about raising bees in Cambridge can be found as early as 1847 in the Cambridge Chronicle. Here is a startling idea—bees rob one another (who knew?)

There was the advice to add salt to their diet:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 21, 1848

And in 1850, E. W. Stewart was advertising his newly patented “improvement in the rearing and feeding of Bees, for the production of honey.”

The article goes on: “…the food comprises a compound from which the bees will feed very eagerly, and in preference to any flower or artificial food ever before discovered: and sometimes in a single day the value of ten swarms has produced a hundred lbs. of honey, which readily brings the highest price in any market making it a source of very great profit to anyone who should keep bees enough to make a business of it. The honey is the best flavored and is as white and clear as any ever beheld….”

Here’s a comment about women’s suitability as bee keepers that would hardly fly today:

While E. W. Stewart extolled the profitability of raising bees in 1850 (above), by 1918 keepers were being admonished that standard “box hives” were definitely not profitable.

AND NOW TO THE MAIN EVENT: THE HONEY

Honey became a part of cuisine as soon as humans discovered it. It is believed that mead, which is made with wine and honey, may have been the “first alcoholic beverage known to man.” Greeks and Romans referred to it as “the nectar of the Gods.” In mid nineteenth century, buying honey in the comb seemed to be Cantabridgians’ favorite way to obtain the delectable nectar:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 22, 1850

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 25, 1852

“Extracted honey,” which was less sought-after, came predominantly from California as in this advert of 1890, and mentioned in the following article.

Philip Seymour Crichton, an accountant and émigré from Canada, was keeping bees at his home on Hammond St. near the Harvard Divinity School. The article mentions the general preference for honey on the comb rather than extracted honey from California:

*Cambridge Chronicle* September 17, 1910

PRACTICAL AND MEDICAL USES OF HONEY

Honey wasn’t just for sweetening food and drink. It was also used as a main ingredient in toothpastes:

For treating burns:

And as an ingredient in soaps:

HONEY AND WAR

Honey bees just fly around doing their business, oblivious to the fact that their efforts played a part in supporting the war effort in both WWI and WWII, when citizens were exhorted to save sugar by substituting honey:

World War II

*Cambridge Sentinel* March 7, 1942 (excerpts below)

FUN BEE FACTS

“Honey Bee” by wwarby via Creative Commons

*Cambridge Sentinel* March 7, 1942 (excerpts)

BEES IN 2021

“Commercial honey bee operations are essential to agricultural production in the U.S., pollinating $15 billion worth of food crops each year. Honey bee colonies are moved around the country to pollinate important agricultural crops such as almonds, blueberries, and apples. Minimizing their losses and ensuring the health of both commercial and backyard colonies is critical to food production and supply.” (BeeCulture.com)

Alarmingly, these days honey bees are in decline. According to the annual survey by the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) “beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021.” (Auburn University Jun 24, 2021.)

Some bees abandon their hives for no apparent reason, a condition called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It is speculated that a combination of pesticides, limited space, inadequate food supply, parasites or a virus targeting bees’ immune systems may be the cause. Fortunately, this has led to an uptick in interest in beekeeping.

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox

SOURCES

Bee Symbolism. History of HoneyBees. (n.d.). https://historyofbees.weebly.com/bee-symbolism.html.

Cambridge Online Newspapers Database

Clifford, G. C. (2021, August 4). Bee symbolism & meaning (+Totem, spirit & OMENS). World Birds. https://www.worldbirds.org/bee-symbolism/.

Goulson, D. (2014, April 25). The Beguiling History of Bees [excerpt]. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-beguiling-history-of-bees-excerpt/.

Woods, J. (2021, June 25). US beekeepers continue to report high colony loss rates, no clear progression toward improvement. The Newsroom. https://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/news_articles/2021/06/241121-honey-bee-annual-loss-survey-results.php.