Following a multi-year effort, The Cambridge Historical Commission has made its extensive architectural survey records available to the public digitally through the Cambridge Digital Architectural Survey and History (CDASH) project!
In its original paper form the Cambridge Historical Commission’s Architectural Survey fills 10 filing cabinets of physical materials detailing the history of the city’s built environment. The collection documents nearly every building in the city, demolished or extant, through newspaper clippings, articles, photographs, atlas details, ephemera, correspondence, and more. Now available online, users can browse over 131,000 pages of information covering nearly 15,000 distinct places in the city. Explore this resource at cdash.cambridgema.gov.
Examples of resources that can be found in CDASH
The user interface and the administrative back end for CDASH have been created with the popular open-source repository and discovery platform Omeka-S. Customizations to Omeka-S showcase the versatility of geographic referencing as a means of linking data from diverse sources. In its current form, CDASH is best accessed with a computer. In the coming year, we hope to bring CDASH to small screens and in the field as a GPS-enabled mobile app.
We have recently processed a collection from our holdings and added its finding aid to ArchivesSpace . Currently, the Historical Commission is offering limited research assistance. Please see our main webpage for the most up-to-date information.
We have digitized a significant portion of this collection, so that it is available from the safety of your home. The items are available for viewing on our Flickr page here. If you would like to research this or any other collections, please email us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.
Alice Darling Secretarial Service letterhead. N.d.
Partial booklet of address labels. N.d.
The Alice Darling Secretarial Service Inc. Ephemera collection contains records of the business activities supplied by the corporation from 1948 to 1991. The bulk of the items were created between 1948 and 1955 when the Alice Darling Secretarial Services changed management and expanded its Alice Darling Secretarial School. Present are textual records that reflect the legal status, certification process, job descriptions, and financial costs involved in providing the vocational service of clerical work. Also available are draft letterhead designs and other evidence of the products of contracted work for clients, including correspondence and marketing tools. Of particular interest are the correspondence and business transactions connected to members of the Shia sect of Islam, some of which are written in Arabic. Scroll down to learn more about the historical background of this collection.
The Alice Darling Secretarial Service Inc. was started in 1913 at 1384 Massachusetts Ave. in Harvard Square, Cambridge. The founder, Alice Darling, born Azniv Beshgeturian in Turkey in 1883, belonged to a prominent Armenian family of clerks, bishops, professors, and ministers. She was brought to America in 1885 and attended Boston public schools and Bridgewater State Normal School (now Bridgewater State University), where she graduated in 1902. After graduation she taught for several years in Boston.
As a savvy businesswoman, Darling knew she’d find no lack of demand in Harvard Square. Typewriting began to supplant handwriting in business correspondence in the late 19th century. While many employers once employed male secretaries exclusively, women began to find employment opportunities as typists and stenographers, taking dictation in shorthand (coded language) and typing finished documents. Typing and stenography were skills that allowed women access to relatively high-paying office jobs, but were not widely valued by men; throughout the 20th century secretaries were almost always women. Many girls learned to type in high school, but men did not.
Typewriter diagrams and instructions, in Arabic. N.d.
While America’s growing businesses and industries were the major employers of secretaries, Cambridge’s academic community offered special opportunities for Darling’s services. Harvard students (entirely male until the 1940s) needed papers typed, often overnight; doctoral candidates required professional typists to prepare flawless dissertations meeting rigid standards for format, layout, and paper quality; and faculty authors needed assistance to prepare their manuscripts for publication. (It was cheaper to have a typist create a draft from an author’s longhand than to commission a printed page proof.) The gendered bias of mid-twentieth-century academia and its “approved” tasks made it undesirable for male students and scholars to type their own work.
In 1920 Darling expanded her business to include the Harvard Square Stenographers Bureau, also known as Miss Darling’s Business Employment Bureau, which facilitated job connections for secretarial services. In 1923 she founded the Alice Darling Secretarial School to provide women and college students with formal secretarial lessons. A person seeking to assume a role in Boston’s competitive secretarial market had to possess this knowledge. In the early years, the secretarial school only offered general stenography and typewriting courses, but it soon expanded its curriculum. In 1928 it introduced training in transcribing dictation from an Ediphone, an early recording machine.
Alice Darling Secretarial School pamphlet pages. N.d.
Darling’s school went above and beyond teaching classic secretarial competencies. Her school incorporated a psychological component, business ethics, and personality training. The Alice Darling School implemented a “tutorial system” that integrated office procedures and practical applications. Known for its talented secretaries and stenographers, Darling’s school drew people who wanted to make clerical work their vocation. A Cambridge Chronicle article from June 29, 1928 stated that the school “aside from enabling pupils to have confidence in themselves, which is an essential requisite for ultimate success, is also a means of increasing on a large scale their earning capacity.”
The school grew throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The Great Depression saw a rise in attendance because pupils were drawn to learning viable skills and networking through real world jobs in the public stenographic department. Graduates at this time were likely to earn a monthly income of $100, according to a Cambridge Chronicle article. During WWII, the school expanded again to accommodate war emergency courses. After the war, many women college graduates found that their employment opportunities were limited if they lacked secretarial skills.
Marston’s Office Service’s business card. N.d.
In the late 1940s, Alice Darling Secretarial Services was taken over by Theodora L. and John S. Marston, who had a prior business, Marston’s Office Services, at 1735 Massachusetts Ave. Theodora and John lived at 60 Brattle Street, Cambridge, and later at 17 Spring Street in Lexington. They received their state license to conduct business services in 1949. They were active participants of Cambridge’s Lesley-Ellis School, with John acting as treasurer of the Parents Association in 1954.
At this time, the Alice Darling Secretarial Services Inc. served as a licensed intelligence service for major clients, including the Internal Revenue Service. Its role as an employment facilitator extended to other state and federal positions because the company provided its workers certification by issuing the Civil Service Exam.
Letter from M. Beguel to Mr. and Mrs. John Marston. M. Beguel was the private secretary to the Aga Khan. 1959.
In the 1950s, the business served Prince Shāh Karim al-Husayni, the current Aga Khan (IV) of the Imāmate of the Nizari Ismāʿīli Shias, a sub-sect of Shia Islam. He was attending Harvard University at the time and his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, provided the school with an endowment to create the Aga Khan Professorship of Iranian. When Aga Khan III died in 1957, Karim Aga Khan assumed the tenure of the religious leadership position while still attending school. Addressed as Karim Aga Khan in this collection, some of his business transactions are available for research.
Alice Darling published a “semi-autobiography” two years before her death in 1966. She recalled that she had typed papers for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his sons; Henry Cabot Lodge and his sons; John F. Kennedy; John DosPassos; and many others. She typed so many papers for law students that she became interested in field and took a law degree from Northeastern University, graduating in 1939. Her profession, she said, had enabled her to acquire “a college education, free of charge, in one of the leading universities in the country.”
In 1998 Alice Darling’s long-time location in the Read Block in the heart of Harvard Square was sold for redevelopment. Now operating from an office on Mifflin Place, Alice Darling Secretarial Services offers transcription services via electronic media for “conferences, interviews, focus groups, meeting, film, press conferences etc.”
We have recently added three new collection finding aids and five old but newly updated finding aids to our website. Check out the list below, and email us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov to research any of these collections.
New!
Scully Family Collection
This collection relates to two generations of the Scully family, beginning with Daniel Scully, a Cambridge cooper who emigrated from Ireland in 1872. He married another Irish immigrant in Cambridge, Mary Tackney, who worked as a waitress. They had 8 children and the collection heavily focuses on two of their sons, James and George. Topics include service in WWII, the St. Mary Church of Annunciation in Cambridgeport, Irish heritage, U.S. citizenship, and Norumbega Park in Auburndale, Mass. The records in the collection were created between 1872-1970 and consist of official documents, commemorative pins, photographic materials, a newspaper, and large objects.
Noteworthy items include a water-front port pass, a cooper’s mallet, and a grappling hook that connect Daniel Scully to the Goepper Bros. Co. and the Revere Sugar Refinery, two companies with locations in Cambridge. There is also an encased tintype and photographs that display the family’s residence on Spring Street. Find out more about the collection and the background history of the family here.
Daniel Scully’s cooper’s mallet and grappling hook. Image from our Flickr album, photograph by John Dalterio.
Watson Funeral Home Collection
The Watson Funeral Home Collection consists of photographs, certificates, clippings and ephemera related to the Watson Funeral Home, a 20th century business in Cambridge that was once on Magazine Street. The funeral home was run by Charles Burnett Watson and the collection holds content about his conversion of the Greek Revival house into his business. Other items include his Old Farmer’s Almanac, newspaper clippings about the house, and matchbook advertisements. Click here to learn more about Watson’s biography and read the collection’s inventory.
Carter’s Ink Collection
This collection contains ephemera relating to the Carter’s Ink Company that was collected by John Hinkel, a “labeled master inks” collector from Missouri. The Carter’s Ink Company was a nationally-prominent manufacturer of inks and office supplies. The bulk of this collection consists of advertisements, internal corporate documents, and external publications. The independently produced advertisements range from cardstock illustrations, postcards, bottle-shaped adverts, a calendar, and a dictionary. The corporate documents have information pertinent to general workers, including employee rules, as well as the official company newsletter.
To get a taste of what is present in this collection, some of the items have been digitized and uploaded to our Flickr. Click here to view the album.
Carter’s Ink Advertisement Card. Image from our flickr.
Updated or Digitized Collections:
Alfred E. Vellucci Snapshot Collection:
Vellucci was once mayor of Cambridge and this collection reflects a public relations project from 1976. Images are now digitized and available for viewing on our Flickr page here. Click here to read the original post highlighting this collection.
Rindge Technical School
We have uploaded two albums to our Flickr page concerning the school. The Rindge Technical School Collection album contains digitized images selected from Box 1 of the collection. This box holds sports photographs from 1912-1922. Click here to see players from the football, crew, hockey, track, swimming, and baseball teams. If you would like to learn more about the entire collection, click here.
The other album, Rindge Technical School Construction – 1932 includes a selection of large-print negatives that reflect the school demolition and construction project conducted in 1932-1933. The new building was designed by architect Ralph Harrington Doane and built by the George A. Fuller Company. These negatives and others have been printed and bound in “Rindge Technical School, started Feb. 2 1932, completed Jan. 12 1933” by George A. Fuller Co. The book is available for viewing in the CHC Library. Click here to view the album.
Cambridge Objects Collection – new objects and new photographs on Flickr
Additional images of objects from the Cambridge Objects Collection have been uploaded to the Flickr album. This is an artificial collection of objects relating to various aspects of Cambridge history. Click here to check them out and click here to read the finding aid!
An Ashton Valve Company pressure gauge, ca. 1923-1924
Rindge Technical School Bowl and Mug
Curtis Mellen Photograph Collection
This collection has recently been reorganized and an updated finding aid has been published here. The collection consists of photographs of the family as well as interior and exterior views of the family’s homes in Cambridge. The Mellens were a very prominent family in Cambridge, and their soap business, Curtis Davis & Co., became the American branch of Lever Brothers, the largest soap manufacturer in the world at the time. To see what is available in the collection, we uploaded select images to a Flickr album here.
Harry Havelock Hanson Collection
Recently, we created the Handsome Harry Hanson StoryMap. It tells the story of occasional Cambridge resident Harry Havelock Hanson in a walking tour format. This StoryMap allows you to follow an online map and images around Harvard Square as though you were actually there. Follow the tour to learn about the exciting exploits of Harry Havelock Hanson, as recorded in his calendar entries between 1891 and 1919. Click here to check it out!
This collection is primarily composed of the daily pocket diaries of Harry Havelock Hanson, occasional Cambridge resident and career railway man. It also contains some personal papers belonging to Hanson and his family. The finding aid for the collection is available here.
Today we are highlighting some archival photographs that we recently digitized. In our archive’s stacks there is a flat box housing seven mounted photographs associated with the T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc., a 20th century Cambridge business.
Life raft metal cross-section. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.
The earliest reference to the company was in 1914, when Thaddeus J. Flynn’s T.J. & Sons Co., Sheetmetal Works, was located on Albany Street in Cambridgeport. This family company witnessed many location changes from 1914 to the 1930s. In 1918 it was at 37 Albany Street, then it moved to 18-20 Portland Street in 1925, and in 1930 it was located at 49 Albany Street. By 1918, the name of the company changed to its more well-known version, T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc.
Associated with this larger business was Flynn Roofing and Metal Co., run by Flynn’s son, Edmund T. Flynn. It also moved around the neighborhood – residing at 37 Albany Street in 1917, 8 Portland in 1920, then 35 Albany Street between 1921-1922, and subsequently 49 Albany Street in 1937. Unfortunately, none of the original buildings have photographic references in the CHC files and the larger company was officially unincorporated by 1968-1972, although its final locations are unknown.
During the heyday of the T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc., Thaddeus married Mary A. Flynn. Their son Edmund invented a life-raft design in the early 1900s. The photographs in the CHC’s archival box are accounts of his work.
A polygonal-shaped testing model raft created by Edmund T. Flynn. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.
It is unknown when these images were taken since they do not reflect Edmund’s patent approved by the U.S. Patent Office on July 16, 1918. His final design notes emphasize how the official raft was “substantially pointed” at each end and that the “buoyant member is non-circular in cross-section.” The polygon version reflected in the photographic images could have been an earlier design Edmund scrapped during his tests at Scituate Harbor. Or, it could have been a later revision since his patent was updated in 1941.
Two unidentified men standing in a raft to demonstrate the submerged section. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.
Nevertheless, Edmund’s patented life-raft was a success. It was used in both World Wars and it was officially approved for use on ocean, coast, bay, lake and sound vessels by the Department of Commerce.
E.T. Flynn’s patent design authorized by the U.S. Patent Office on July 16, 1918. Patent # 1,272,412. Source: USPTO PatFT database.
Thaddeus also gained a patent in 1929 for a roof drain. A year later, on September 9, 1930, Thaddeus died, and his wife Mary became president of the company. She was assisted by J. Henry Flynn and his wife Belinda S. Flynn, who were first referenced as additional owners of the company in 1925. However, by 1968-1972 the family business had dwindled out. Edmund’s son, Jonathan, opened European Engineering in Belmont, MA in 1958 but it was ultimately a failed venture. Jonathan’s son, Nick, recounts his father’s subsequent journey in “The Button Man,” published in The New Yorker in 2004.
This blog post was authored by our spring Simmons University archives intern, Brittany Fox.
Sometimes the life-cycles of records must come to an end. Despite unremitting efforts to preserve our holdings, the nature of the material can lead to irreparable damage. Recalling that April 21-27 was Preservation Week, today we are highlighting how sometimes items must be removed from a collection to protect the safety of other records.
Certain negatives from our Cambridge Engineering image collection have deteriorated due to improper chemical processing during their creation. The negatives have seized, buckled, and bubbled, which has compromised their physical integrity. There is no way to stabilize this type of deterioration and the mutation can cause damage to other negatives in physical proximity. When negatives undergo this type of decay, they can give off acetate gas. This anomaly, also known as Vinegar Syndrome due to its vinegar-like smell, can initiate similar decay in nearby negatives. Therefore, we have decided to discard these negatives.
But fret not, we have digitized and saved them as high-resolution images. Although they will no longer be preserved in their original form, we have maintained access to the content through digitization. Print copies have also been created as a backup precaution.
Scanned version of negative, 33-35 Pearl Street
Mass Ave at Everett St
While the preservation of our negatives is a major priority, it is also important to learn about their context as well. They were part of a collection of over a thousand 5” x 7” negatives dating from the late 1920s through the 1960s that were given to the Commission by Cambridge former City Engineer James Rice in the early 1980s. Between the 1920s and 1940s a member of the City Engineer’s staff functioned as the city’s official photographer, collaborating with the City Solicitor, the Department of Public Works, and the Cambridge Police Department. Whenever a citizen filed a claim or directed attention toward an issue or hazard that arose in the city, such as potholes, dangerous sidewalks, and motor vehicle accidents, the City Engineer send a photographer to the site. These photographs were used when the complaints were taken to the city courts to be rectified.
Graflex Speed Graphic Camera
The negatives were acquired by the CHC along with the City Engineer’s Graflex Speed Graphic camera. In order to make an image the photographer would have inserted a sheet of unexposed film into a film holder in the darkness of a light-proof bag. Once secure so that no light would inadvertently expose the negative, the film holder would be inserted into the camera. A film holder could accommodate two pieces of film, so to make a dozen images the photographer would have to prepare and carry six bulky film holders. This particular type of camera has a focal plane shutter and a removable dark slide. It was meticulous work to get just one photographic negative and we have hundreds in the collection! Executive Director Charles Sullivan took several photos with this camera for publication in the Commission’s 1988 book, East Cambridge. Large format film and photo-processing labs are difficult or impossible to find today, so the camera will probably never be used again.
Some of the damaged negatives pulled from the collection exhibit automobile accidents, buckling sidewalks, and an exposed pipe in a giant hole. While they were intended as evidence for court hearings, the images also have secondary uses. They incorporate everyday snapshots of life in Cambridge between the 1920s-1940s, from the fashion of the passersby to the models of the cars. While these few images do not tell a very broad story, the collection in its entirety has a high future research value.
Automobile crash, Belmont and Bird St.
If you are interested in this collection or any of our other resources, please make a research appointment at histcomm@cambridgema.gov. Our research hours are: Monday: 4:00-7:00 pm | Tuesday: 2:00-4:00 pm | Wednesday – Thursday: 9:30-11:30 and 2-4 pm.
In a recent study published in The American Archivist, Laura McCann details the history of photo morgues, and their importance considering the newspaper industry’s shift from print to digital media. Ms. McCann is a conservation librarian in the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation and Conservation Department at New York University (NYU) Libraries. In light of our own newly-opened photo morgue collection (detailed below), her article has been summarized here.
When the use of photographic images began to appear alongside news print, only larger newspapers could afford full-time photography departments. Thus, many small establishments turned to news agency photography departments to compete and meet the growing demand for photographic images.
“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). Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.
While the negatives and their copyright were usually maintained by the parent agency, the smaller papers developed “photo morgues” to organize and manage photographic print assets obtained from the news agencies and other parties. A caption or tag line, along with copyright information and a date, would usually be recorded on the verso of a print or on an affixed section of paper.
“Cambridge, Mass., June 17 – Ellsberg residence” (17 June 1971). Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.
Over the past few years, the CHC has collected many prints from various newspapers in the greater-Boston area. This collection, Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection, contains black-and-white prints taken by newspaper photographers to illustrate stories regarding the city of Cambridge. Images in this collection represent a wide breadth of topics including protests, political figures, buildings, and city projects, thus documenting the social change and architectural evolution of Cambridge in the 20th century.
In an effort to reach those interested in Cambridge history, we recently sent these images to undergo digitization by Digital Commonwealth. The entire collection can be viewed by clicking here. This process is ongoing, and we plan to add more digitized content in the coming months.
Screenshot from the Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection image “Cambridge ‘Sparks’ and his radio scooter”. Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.
Cambridge is a city rich with so much history, so many museums, libraries, and schools, that it can be hard to know where exactly to go for specific historical materials. The new Cambridge Archives website aims to help researchers, history lovers and curious citizens figure out which Cambridge archive holds what kinds of materials.
The new Cambridge Archives site was created with the generosity of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati (Anderson House), and through a collaboration with the Cambridge Historical Society, the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Cambridge Room of the Cambridge Public Library. Check it out, and watch for more updates over the next couple of months as we add more archives and collecting institutions to the site (add yours, too!).
