On Saturday October 27th at 1:30pm, the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association will lead a walking tour of the 12 religious buildings nestled into the neighborhood of Cambridgeport. The tour will meet at the intersection of Magazine Street and Green Street (at the area in front of the First Baptist Church) at 1:30pm and proceed from there, lasting about 2 hours. The event is co-sponsored by the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Cambridge Peace Commission, as well as C-port’s own Gallery 263.
The tour will end at the gallery (263 Pearl St, Cambridge MA) for some refreshments and an exhibition of architectural drawings of these buildings. During the tour, we will have the privilege of going inside some of these buildings, and we will be joined by representatives from several of the churches along the way. For questions about accessibility or to request accommodations please contact GABE@MIT.EDU
Celebrate American Archives Month with us at the Historical Commission!
This month we are offering a special tour of our archives, featuring an in-depth look at some of our many historical resources.
Join us this Wednesday, October 10 at 1 pm, OR Monday, October 22 at 6pm. Email egonzalez at cambridgema dot gov to reserve a spot. Tours will run around an hour.
Attendees of the tour will:
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Commission’s archives and library space
Get an up-close look at a variety of historical resources, including: atlases, survey files, city directories, historic photographs, postcards, objects, and architectural drawings.
Learn how to research their house, building, or organization using the Commission’s files.
Receive helpful tips on preserving and caring for their own family papers and photographs.
This year marked the 10th anniversary of Open Archives, and for over 2 weeks in June, 15 libraries and archives in Cambridge opened their doors to the public to show off selected items from their collections – all for free.
Folks who were unable to attend Open Archives might wonder: what is Open Archives, and what does it mean?
Cambridge Open Archives, sometimes called the Cambridge archives crawl, is a free event in which members of the public are invited behind the scenes at various Cambridge archives, libraries, and collecting institutions. It is a fun way to promote the unique collections of our city’s wonderful archives, while also raising awareness of historic materials, larger historic themes, and preservation.
Open Archives is also based on the belief that archives and collections should be free and open to everyone. The idea that information be free and accessible, that you can find out about a community’s history, or simply explore the holdings of a unique archive, is often still seen as a radical idea. We always hope that after Open Archives is over, attendees go back and make research appointments with some of the sites they visited.
Cambridge Open Archives was started in Cambridge in 2010 by the former Cambridge Historical Society Executive Director, Gavin Kleespies (now Director of Programs at the Massachusetts Historical Society). Here’s what Kleespies has to say about the early days of Open Archives:
When it started, I had just moved back to Cambridge from Chicago and [was] in the process of getting re-acclimated. CHS was an institution that had a low public profile so I was going around the city and introducing myself and the Historical Society to organizations and community leaders. As a part of this, I met with Jim Shea and Anita Israel at the Longfellow House and Bree Harvey and Meg Winslow at Mount Auburn Cemetery. In both cases they invited me into their archives and pulled amazing examples from their collections. I thought, the Cambridge Historical Society has a great collection, but very few people use it and many people aren’t even sure it is available to them. Longfellow House and Mount Auburn have huge visitation numbers and are known across the country, but many people are unaware of the great archival collections they hold. It just struck me that there are these three great collections, that people would be really excited about if they saw them, but they just don’t come in contact with them. Then I thought, well, we’re basically all on the same street [Brattle], let’s just have a tour.
The first year was a lot of fun, so I started reaching out. I think CHC was added in the second year, but that was a little odd, since it was just on its own and was not walking distance to CHS, Longfellow or Mount Auburn. So I worked with Kit [Rawlins] and Charlie [Sullivan] and we came up with a group of city departments that had collections and were close to CHC. After that we put together a group to help plan the tour each year. Working with Alyssa [Pacy], Kit, Charlie and a group of other folks, we reached out to Harvard, MIT, churches and masons etc. I think at its largest, we had 13 institutions participating one year.
After the first year or so, Cambridge Open Archives began to be planned around a specific theme. Some of those themes have included “Adventures in Gastronomy,” which highlighted cooking and food themed collections, such as the Julia Child collection at the Schlesinger Library; “Cambridge in the 1860s”; “Spaces: Profane and Sacred”; “Living and Dying in Cambridge”; and “New Acquisitions & Old Treasures.”
Asked about one of his favorite past Open Archives themes, Kleespies talked about the MIT Lewis Music Library’s take on “Adventures in Gastronomy.” Kleespies was very interested in seeing how the Music Library would incorporate gastronomy into their collection presentations — food and music? But according to Kleespies, the Music Library’s archivist took the creative route and set up a whole “dinner table” complete with candles, tablecloth, and a full menu featuring different musical compositions, including the German Vegetable Orchestra.
Since 2015, the staff here at the Cambridge Historical Commission have served as the coordinators of Cambridge Open Archives. This year, the Open Archives theme was “Archivists’/Curators’ Choice.” Staff from participating archives were encouraged to choose collections items that they loved or that possessed special meaning; that fit a certain theme within that specific archive or museum; or some of the more unique, bizarre, or interesting materials in their collections.
If you attended any of the Cambridge Open Archives repositories this year, feel free to comment on this blog with your thoughts, or send us any pictures you may have taken.
We hope you enjoyed this quick history of Open Archives, and hope to see you at next year’s event!
Happy New Year! We here at the CHC hope everyone had a lovely and restful holiday season. To kick off the new year, we’d like to share a fun event series hosted by our friends over at the Cambridge Public Library (original post at the Cambridge Room’s blog):
Are you looking for something fun to do in the new year? Join the Cambridge Public Library for our popular 4-week beginner’s genealogy workshop series. Classes will be held at CCTV, located at 438 Massachusetts Avenue.
Join us for a 4-week, beginner’s genealogy workshop. For two hours each week, we will demystify the overwhelming process of sorting through online records as well as give tips for how best to make use of research visits to local repositories. We will help you find ancestors, organize your research, and start a family tree. Come with a new question every week and leave with an answer and something tangible to bring home, such as a copy of a birth certificate. By taking this class, you will be automatically eligible to enroll in a FREE, two-part course on digital storytelling taught by CCTV. Learn how to make a digital film about your family’s history based on your genealogical research. Create a treasured digital keepsake to pass on to family members. Registration is mandatory for the series. To register, please contact Keaton Fox at keaton@cctvcambridge.org.
Yesterday marked the last official day of American Archives Month (October), and we wanted to thank everyone who participated in some of our own celebratory archives events here at the CHC.
In case you missed it (ICYMI):
On October 4, the CHC archivist – with the help of the City of Cambridge’s Director of Communications – took over the City of Cambridge Twitter account for Ask An Archivist Day. Anyone with questions about any and all aspects of archives – not just in Cambridge – could tweet to @CambMA and use the hashtag #AskAnArchivist to get a response. Check out some of the great questions and other interesting Cambridge history tidbits here!
We featured a couple of “behind the scenes” looks at some interesting collections in our archives via our Instagram.
Our new research series, “Researching the History of Your House in Cambridge”, took place from October 16 to today, November 1. This was a collaborative three-week event highlighting house history resources at the Cambridge Room (Cambridge Public Library), the Historical Commission, and the Department of Public Works.
Research series attendees browsing and learning at the CHC
If you missed this year’s research series, stay tuned, as we’ll be offering it again in a couple of months. And don’t forget, you can always make an appointment with us to research your building or house: histcomm@cambridgema.gov or 617-349-4683.
Close-up of architectural inventory form for an address on Hampshire Street, CHC
Join staff members from the Cambridge Historical Commission, the City of Cambridge Department of Public Works and the Cambridge Room at the Cambridge Public Library for a three-week series on researching the history of your house or building.
Registration is mandatory, though you do not have to attend all three sessions (though we highly recommend it!). For your convenience, each department will offer two days of the same session – one in the evening and one in the afternoon.
To register, please check out the schedule below and contact the person listed. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Session 1: The Cambridge Room at the Cambridge Public Library This hour-long, hands-on workshop will guide you through a variety of online resources that will help you research your home from the comfort of your home. Discover when your building was built and by who. Find out who lived in your house and how your neighborhood has changed. We will provide laptops. Registration is mandatory.
Monday, October 16
6:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: Community Room, Cambridge Public Library
Max. 16 participants
or
Wednesday, October 18
3:00 – 4:00 PM
Location: Beech Room, Cambridge Public Library
Max. 13 participants
Led by Alyssa Pacy, Archivist at the Cambridge Public Library. To register, email: apacy@cambridgema.gov or call 617-349-7757
Session 2: Cambridge Historical Commission The Commission’s research collection is founded on an architectural inventory that contains survey forms, photographs, and documentation on all 13,000+ buildings in the City. Participants will learn how individual homes can be researched using these inventory files, as well as the Commission’s collection of city directories, atlases, maps, photographs, books on the City’s different neighborhoods, and some deed, tax, and building permit records.
Led by Cambridge Historical Commission staff. To register, email: egonzalez@cambridgema.gov or call: 617-349-4070
Session 3: Cambridge Department of Public Works The public works collection is primarily focused on sewer & drain utility drawings and plans showing the boundaries of the public rights of way. But many of these and other records, which go as far back as 1840, also include interesting historical facts such as previous building, street, and water body configurations as well as ancient industries, property owner names and assessment values. Participants will learn how individual locations can be researched with geographic, database, and online indexes and they’ll see how those indexes have evolved.
Monday, October 30
6:00 – 7:00 PM
Location: Department of Public Works, 147 Hampshire Street
Max. 12 participants
Or
Wednesday, November 1
2:00 – 3:00 PM
Location: Department of Public Works, 147 Hampshire Street
Max. 12 participants
Led by George Stylianopoulos, City of Cambridge Department of Public Works. To register, email: sgeorge@cambridgema.gov
General questions about the series? Call 617-349-4683.
