Our publication All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, Cambridge, Massachusetts is a collection of more than 125 oral histories that explore the tightly knit neighborhood of East Cambridge from the perspective of its residents.
Anna Scolles’ birthday, ca. 1949
Manuel Rogers, Sr., behind the soda fountain at the Paradise Spa, 352 Cambridge St, 1931
The book, illustrated with historic and family photographs, offers a vivid picture of the diverse cultures that coexisted in East Cambridge during the 20th century and examines the social, economic, and political changes in this rapidly evolving neighborhood.
Day of Portugal Parade, June 1990
To hear stories of those who lived, grew up in, immigrated to, and built their lives in East Cambridge, stop by our office or click here and obtain your own copy of this rich oral history book! For more information, email us at histcomm@cambridgema.gov.
Cover of All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2005)
Event alert! You’re invited to attend a special unveiling and celebration on Friday, November 29 at 2pm at the intersection of Third and Binney Streets in East Cambridge.
Dr. David Shane Lowry and Ms. Sage Carbone hold one of the new street signs installed in East Cambridge, displaying both the Massachusett and English languages
The City of Cambridge and members of the local Massachusett tribe will unveil newly installed street signs in East Cambridge that will be presented in both the Massachusett and English languages.
With the goal of expanding recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Cambridge, the community voted through the City of Cambridge’s Participatory Budgeting (PB) process to fund a series of markers and signs that acknowledge the continuous presence of Native Peoples, both before and after white settlement, and to educate residents and visitors about their lives and traditions. The first phase of this PB project was to translate the numbered street names in East Cambridge into the Massachusett language and install new street signs from First to Eighth streets. A dedicated City of Cambridge website will also introduce the project and serve as a landing page for future project elements and programming. View the new Native Spaces webpage here: https://www.cambridgema.gov/nativespaces
The event will include remarks from local Indigenous advocates and representatives with the City, an unveiling of the street signs, and a group photo opportunity.
The event location is accessible via the MBTA’s Red Line and the Kendall Square Station. Interpreters will be available upon advanced request. Please call (617) 349-4396 or email accesshelp@cambridgema.gov to request assistance.
If you are interested in learning more about this project and event, please contact Sarah Burks at the Cambridge Historical Commission: sburks@cambridgema.gov.
In honor of National Fire Prevention Week, check out the description below and accompanying images of “Spectacular Fires” that ravaged Cambridge buildings in the 20th century. The account appeared in the January 16, 1969 edition of the Cambridge Chronicle:
Fire at Memorial Hall, Harvard, 1956 (Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection)
Fire at Squire’s meatpacking plant on Gore Street, April 14, 1963 (Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection)
Fire at the Jordan Marsh Warehouse on Commercial Avenue, July 15, 1965 (Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection)
“Firefighters battling a fire from the truck in Kendall Square” [Warren Bros. Construction Co. on Potter Street], May 6, 1966 (Brearly Collection, Boston Public Library Arts Department)
This spring, the staff of the Cambridge Historical Commission will offer walking tours exploring the history, development, and uses of neighborhood conservation districts. What is an NCD? How are they created and by whom? What makes a neighborhood special and worth preserving?
The four-part series will begin on May 14 with a walk through the Half Crown-Marsh NCD in Old Cambridge. Tours on June 4, 11, and 16 will explore the proposed East Cambridge NCD. Each tour will take about 90 minutes.
Saturday, May 14: Half Crown-Marsh Neighborhood Conservation District at 11:00am. Meet on Mt. Auburn Street at the corner of Brewer Street (in front of Darwin’s). Tour leaders Eric Hill, the CHC’s survey director, and Jim Van Sickle, a longtime member of the district commission, will provide an overview of the Half Crown-Marsh NCD and highlight some of the area’s history and architecture. This NCD of approximately 200 buildings represents a blending of what were once two separate NCDS. The district is west of Harvard Square between Brattle Street and the river; it is bounded by Hilliard Street on the east and Lowell Street on the west and bisected by Longfellow Park.
Saturday June 4: East Cambridge History and Architecture at 11:00 AM. Meet at Centanni Park, Third Street at Otis Street. East Cambridge is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. It was developed in the late 18th century by Andrew Craigie, a land speculator, who convinced Middlesex County to build its new courthouse not in Old Cambridge but in East Cambridge. The tour will be led by the architectural historian Susan Maycock, the author of Survey of Architectural History: East Cambridge (1988) and co-author of Building Old Cambridge (2016).
Saturday, June 11: East Cambridge Preservation and Development at 11:00 AM. Meet at 11:00 AM at Gold Star Mothers Park, corner of Winter and Fifth streets. East Cambridge is one of the oldest and most densely settled neighborhoods in the city, with a rich mixture of early- to mid-19th century architectural styles, traversed by a traditional neighborhood shopping street. It is also a source of naturally occurring affordable housing. Trends in Cambridge real estate often increase the pressure for development, which can lead to inappropriate alterations or destruction of significant buildings. Charles Sullivan and Eric Hill of the Cambridge Historical Commission will discuss the current proposal to establish a neighborhood conservation district in the area.
Thursday, June 16: East Cambridge Preservation and Development. Meet at 6:00 PM at Timothy Toomey Park, Third and Bent streets.
Before there were Funeral Directors, there were carpenters, who, after measuring the deceased, made and delivered coffins to the family parlors where funerals took place. As time went by, coffin makers “undertook” for grieving families more of the duties associated with interment. Many became known as “Undertakers.” Although fitting, the term was not a reference to placing he departed six feet under. Because talking about any aspect of death was considered awkward, “undertaker” became a euphemism for those who organized the process. Undertakers soon were advertising as “Funeral Undertakers” with ready-made coffins available.
The term “Funeral Director” emerged after undertakers took on all of the social, health, and legal burdens of death. This included a change in where funerals were held. Rather than continuing the tradition of holding services in personal homes, funeral directors now provided “funeral homes” for these services. The funeral director received the body, embalmed or preserved it, provided the coffin, and arranged for viewing at the funeral home. They wrote obituaries, transported or shipped bodies, and arranged religious services and interment. They even extended their services to renting door wreaths and selling memorial books, gloves, and black armbands.
Cambridge Chronicle November 21, 1885
At the same time, embalming, first used on a mass scale during the Civil War, was becoming increasingly popular, which led to the development of both the profession of undertaker and that of mortician. The U.S. National Funeral Directors Association was founded in 1882, the same year that the first school of “mortuary science” was opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eventually, the terms Undertaker and Mortician became interchangeable, although it is interesting to note that no one cared to list themselves as a mortician in the Cambridge City Directory.
Amos P. Rollins was one of those whose career followed the path from carpenter to undertaker. In 1848, he was listed in the City Directory as “carpenter” and in 1850 as “coffin maker” – even though he had been advertising himself as a “funeral undertaker” since 1849.
Cambridge Chronicle May 31, 1849
Interestingly, even though Rollins was an undertaker, in the federal census he consistently listed himself as “carpenter.” He also held the posts of Constable and City Messenger.
Roland Litchfield Jr. was another of those undertakers who started out as a carpenter while simultaneously holding the posts of City Messenger and Superintendent of Lamps. Once he became an undertaker, Litchfield took full advantage of advances in technology, as described in this advertisement the City Directory of 1859 regarding preserving bodies that could be “conveyed hundreds of miles”!
Cambridge City Directory 1859
Many in the undertaking profession were also appointed by the Mayor as City Undertakers. As such, they handled arrangements for persons who died unidentified or were considered indigent. By 1852, there were twelve appointees listed in the City Directory, including Amos P. Rollins and Roland Litchfield, Jr.
Cambridge City Directory 1852
CASKET OR COFFIN?
Why coffins became referred to as caskets is a little murky. The general consensus seems to be that the magnitude of death during the Civil War is what drove the change in terminology—and the shape of containers for the deceased. The English word “coffin” derives from the French “cofin” which originally meant a basket. The primary difference between coffins and caskets was that early wood coffins had six sides and were hexagonal to accommodate the width of shoulders. Caskets, on the other hand, were and continue to be rectangular.
What about the connection to the Civil War? There are varying views, but most agree that changes in funeral rituals were created in response to the personal and national heartache caused by the unprecedented death toll. People desired more significant ways to pay homage to the deceased. More elaborate coffins— caskets—were part of that impulse. Over time, elaborate caskets were also meant to convey the social standing and wealth of individuals.
Cambridge Chronicle November 2, 1901
William Lockhart, who had emigrated from Nova Scotia to the U.S. at age 16, was yet another carpenter turned coffin maker. By 1885, Lockhart had a large manufactory on Bridge Street in East Cambridge.
Cambridge City Directory 1885
Lockhart died in March of 1902, just six months before his new plant was erected on First Street. His brothers carried on the business, until in 1906 the company was absorbed by the National Casket Company, which operated out of the East Cambridge plant for several decades before closing its doors in 1976.
National Casket Co. at 120 First Street, ca. 1968 (Cambridge Historical Commission)
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox
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.
Cambridge Chronicle May 7, 1892
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”:
Cambridge Chronicle June 25, 1870
“…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.”
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.
Cambridge Chronicle November 16, 1872
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.
Image: 1963 fire. CHC collections
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.
Cambridge Chronicle January 14, 1893
Cambridge Chronicle April 19, 1951
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 7th 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.”
[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
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.
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.
Cambridge City Directory 1882
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
Cambridge Chronicle September 4, 1858
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?
Cambridge Chronicle December 24, 1859
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:
Cambridge Chronicle August 6, 1846
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.
Boston Globe April 5, 1881
New England Farmer November 11, 1882
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.
Cambridge Chronicle August 27, 1846
To prevent smoking lamps…
Cambridge Chronicle July 8, 1847
As a teeth-cleaning solution…
Cambridge Chronicle November 18, 1847
As a wart remover…
Cambridge Chronicle October 18, 1848
As fascinating entertainment…
Cambridge Chronicle April 11, 1850
As a cure for poisonous wounds…
The Cambridge Press, August 13, 1887
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.
The Orne pharmacy was established in 1838 by Charles G. Wells. When Charles A. Orne (1823-1850) took over the business around 1840 he renamed it “Charles Orne & Co.” His brother Joel Stone Orne joined him and succeeded Charles in 1842. Joel’s obituary states that at that time Cambridge had 8,000 residents served by only two drugstores.
The pharmacy was at 395 Main Street in Lafayette Square (now no. 427) near the intersection of Main Street and Massachusetts Avenue. The Ornes operated the store for 65 years, from 1841 to 1906.
Detail of 1903 Cambridge Bromley Atlas
The brothers lost no time in advertising in the Cambridge Chronicle:
Clippings from Cambridge Chronicle, Volume I, Number 5, 4 June 1846
Sherman’s Worm Lozenges, Smithsonian National Museum of American History. ID number MG.293320.1370.
Bottle for Dr. Kennedy’s Medical Discovery, manufactured in Roxbury, Mass. From vtmedicines.com
Bottle for Bogle’s Hyperion Fluid, manufactured in Boston. From hairraisingstories.com
The Ornes were a prominent family whose ancestors arrived in Marblehead, Massachusetts, around 1630. Their father John Gerry Orne (1786-1838) was the great grandnephew of the fifth Vice President of the United States, Elbridge Gerry. J.G. Orne was married to Ann Stone. Her father, Moses Stone, arrived from England in 1735 and owned a large portion of the land that is now part of Mount Auburn Cemetery. Their sister, Caroline (1818-1905), was a well-known poet who hobnobbed with Longfellow and James Russell Lowell. She was the librarian of the Dana Library at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Pleasant Street and became the first librarian of the Cambridge Public Library. The Orne house on Auburn Street had been in the family since 1816 and served as a barracks during the Revolution.
Not much information is available about Charles A. Orne apart from the fact that he died in Panama on March 23, 1850, while returning home from California. He was 27 years old.
Joel S. Orne began in the pharmacy business at the age of 13 when he apprenticed to the druggist Isaac Snow of Boston and was only 16 when he joined his brother’s company.
Joel married Rachel Atwood Brown in 1852, and they had three children. Charles Parker Orne (1853-1912) became a “manufacturing chemist” and druggist at 837 Main Street (now Massachusetts Avenue), at the corner of Trowbridge Street. Daughter Maria became the first licensed pharmacist in the city, practicing alongside her father. Daughter Jennie married Charles Smith Brooks, a boot and shoe salesman.
Joel S. Orne was active in the Cambridge Veteran Firemen’s Association, a member of various Druggists’ Associations, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Amicable lodge of Masons. He died in 1906.
After his death the business was bought by John Minon:
Clipping from Cambridge Chronicle 8 September 1906
Clipping from Cambridge Chronicle, 20 October 1906
In 1907 the pharmacy was described as having “…a marble floor, walnut fixtures, a neat and attractive soda fountain, and the generally well-ordered appearance of an up-to-date and prosperous place” (Cambridge Chronicle 27 July 1907).
It is unclear what happened to the Orne/Minon Pharmacy after 1912. By 1916, there is no pharmacy listed at 427 Mass. Ave. By 1920, Minon is listed in the Boston Directory as a druggist.
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen Fox.
Sources:
Cambridge Public Library Newspaper database Ancestry.com FamilyHistory.com Newspapers.com
Located at the intersection of Binney and First Streets in East Cambridge, a man named Adolph Sommer lived and died for his business. Adolph Sommer, born and educated as a chemist in Germany, later worked as a druggist in California, where he first studied and then taught at UC Berkeley. There he discovered the formula from which he afterwards made his principal product, Viscol. By about 1890, he removed to Cambridge, and opened a small wooden factory building in the rapidly developing industrial area of East Cambridge. The history of “Viscol” as a trademark began by Adolph Sommer in 1889, as “leather-grease”. Sommer was at the time a resident of California, and the product to which the mark was applied was a liquid preparation made principally from vegetable or animal oils and chloride or sulphur. There is evidence that this preparation was being advertised in California as early as 1891 for sale in cans as “Viscol dressing” for softening, waterproofing and preserving boots, shoes, harness, belting, etc.
Viscol can, CHC Objects Collection.
Viscol box and can, CHC Objects Collection.
Sommer was actively engaged in the operation and development of the Viscol business in Cambridge and during this period of over 40 years, the product was advertised nationwide under the “Viscol” mark in shoe and leather journals and in Montgomery Ward catalogs. Sales during the period were made in small cans to merchandising outlets for retail distribution, and in 5-gallon cans and 50-gallon drums to tanneries for use in processing leather. Sommer oversaw the expansion of the company which coincided with the need for more manufacturing space and employees. The complex consisted of three buildings along First Street.
1930 Atlas map showing extent of Viscol Mfy in blue.
Undated flyer depicting multiple uses of Artgum, an artificial rubber developed by Viscol Company. Original located in CHC Ephemera Collection.
Undated flyer depicting multiple uses of Artgum, an artificial rubber developed by Viscol Company. Original located in CHC Ephemera Collection.Enter a caption
In Cambridge, Adolph lived alone, had no social relations, worked an unusual number of hours everyday, never took a vacation nor allowed his employees to take any, permitted no conversation or cooperation among his employees, and even lived in the manufacturing plant. He was known as being industrious, alert, keen, strong willed and stubborn; yet, he was kind to his employees when they got into financial difficulties, and many worked for him for decades. In 1922, when seventy-one years old, Sommer married a widow of fifty-one, Emmeline Harnden, who had worked in the factory for more than twenty years. At the time of their marriage, Sommer was actively looking for someone to take over his business and generated a written contract with his new wife that upon his death, the company and all holdings would go to his legal heirs, which apart from his widow, were two children of a deceased sister in Germany.
200 First Street, built for Adolph Sommer and Viscol Manufacturing Co. Building constructed in 1904, razed in 1986. Photo taken 1970, CHC Survey Photo.
185 First Street, built for Adolph Sommer and Viscol Manufacturing Co. Building constructed in 1913, razed in 1986. Photo taken 1970, CHC Survey Photo.
On October 1933, 82-year-old Sommer and his plant superintendent, Hans Bloomberg, picked up over $1,000 from the Lechmere Bank on Cambridge Street before driving back to the factory to pay the workers. Upon arriving to the factory, five robbers with pistols trapped the car and demanded the money. One man pointed a gun at the face of Sommer, who was sitting in the driver seat of his vehicle. When he saw the pistol, 82-year-old Sommer is said to have swung the door open and lunged at the robbers gathering his pistol from his pocket. Upon lunging he was shot three times and died, but not before shooting one of the thieves, who got into a get-away car and fled over the Prison Point Bridge to Charlestown.
Boston Daily Globe clipping from October 21, 1933 detailing crime scene.
Boston Daily Globe clipping from October 21, 1933 depicting Mr. Adolph Sommer.
There were few leads besides the witnesses, one of which identified the gunman to Cambridge Police as James Deshler. It was soon after unveiled to the public that Edward Galvin of 22 Lambert Street, was the witness who placed Deshler as the gunman. Within a week of the arrest, three men attacked Galvin in a parking lot, seemingly as retribution and were never identified. Two men were eventually imprisoned for the robbery and murder of Mr. Sommer, James Deshler and Marshall “Hickey” Bowles. After the death of Sommers, the company and properties were sold in 1936 to the Stamford Rubber Supply Company, a Connecticut corporation located at Stamford, Connecticut, which operated the business as one of its own departments until January 1937, later selling again. The complex was used for other industrial and storage uses until they were razed in the mid 1980s.
Boston Daily Globe clipping from October 31, 1933.
In honor of National Nurses Week, today we are sharing the story of the Cambridge Visiting Nursing Association (CVNA), once headquartered at 35 Bigelow Street. The CVNA was established in 1904 by twelve Cambridge women in response to the community’s dire need for skilled home nursing care. As cities like Cambridge grew rapidly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and with neighborhoods becoming denser, it became even more necessary for nurses to travel to individuals to provide healthcare – especially at a time when most healthcare was provided in the home. An article in the Cambridge Chronicle states that the CVNA started when “a few ladies of old Cambridge supported a nurse who visited the very poor.”
“On this day in 1922, the Cambridge VNA kicked off a highly successful fundraising campaign for home health care. Nurses gathered in front of the agency’s 35 Bigelow St., Cambridge, office for this photo.” Caption and image used with courtesy of VNA Care’s Facebook page, 1/16/2020.
During the CVNA’s first year, $5000 was raised to provide for the salary of three visiting nurses to make house calls to Cambridge residents, and for the fitting up of a nurses residence. From 1904-1908, the CVNA took quarters at 35 and 48 Bigelow Street, where the first two or three nurses employed were housed. By 1906 there were seven or eight nurses in residence, and in 1908, the CVNA purchased the entire home at 35 Bigelow for their official use. They remained headquartered there until 1987, when they relocated to 186 Alewife Brook Parkway. In 1995 the CVNA merged with VNA North Shore and the parent companies of Visiting Nurse Associates to create the VNA Care Network, “a nonprofit home health care, palliative care, hospice, and wellness provider serving more than 200 communities in Eastern and Central Massachusetts.”
From the CVNA Seventh Annual Report, 1911.
From the beginning, the CVNA worked with people of all ages, though in its earlier days the nurses were chiefly involved with pre-natal care and home-births, instruction in infant care, and the treatment of tuberculosis, as well as polio and influenza. The CVNA supervisor would assign each nurse to a different case or neighborhood, discussing cases and patient plans with them.
Call for nurses – Cambridge Chronicle, February 14, 1920.
By the 1920s the CVNA collaborated with the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association in maintaining a health center at the Thorndike School in East Cambridge. The center offered a wide range of services, including “a nurse who gives all of her time to the district, a children’s clinic…a posture clinic…and an evening health clinic for adults.” The center also offered nutrition and hygiene classes, “training girls in the care of their younger brothers and sisters,” classes in physical exercise, mothers’ meetings, “and moving pictures and lantern-slide lectures on health subjects.”
Cambridge Chronicle, Aug. 17, 1920
The CVNA also participated in numerous citywide activities and programs, such as educational health exhibits at the YMCA and plays put on by local school children centered around health lessons.
“Visiting Nursing Association Makes 16,000 Visits Yearly.” Cambridge Chronicle, December 22, 1938.
As the needs of the community and healthcare delivery changed, the CVNA expanded their services to aid with the elderly and hospice services, and later added therapists, home health aides, social workers, and office personnel to their staff as well as the visiting nurses.
Cambridge Chronicle, May 6, 1971
In 1971 it was reported that the CVNA made 19,647 visits to 987 patients of all ages that year. They had 29 nurses on staff and worked alongside doctors and 35 other health services, including the Boston Visiting Nursing Association. The CVNA also provided disaster nursing relief alongside the Red Cross and were major caregivers during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Thank you to all nurses and caregivers!
Cambridge visiting nurses biking to patients’ homes in 1974, used with courtesy of VNA Care’s Facebook page, May 3, 2018.
About 35 Bigelow Street:
35 Bigelow Street today. Cambridge Property Database.
A three-story mansard style house with a handsome side porch/piazza, built in 1869. In 1908 there was a first-floor addition built for the CVNA, followed by a second-floor addition in 1916 by the firm of Howe & Manning. In 1927 the brick garage was built for the CVNA and was changed to a two-story dwelling in 1985, now 35r Bigelow. Today the home is divided into condos.
Sources:
VNA Care, vnacare.org as well as their Twitter and Facebook accounts
CHS Proceedings, v. 18, 1925
Numerous articles from the Cambridge Chronicle, particularly 7/17/1920 and 3/28/1991
For photographs of other Cambridge community nurses, check out the Benedict Daniels Scrapbook on our Flickr page.
