negatives - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

We have recently processed a collection that was donated in October, and its finding aid is now available on ArchivesSpace. Currently, the Historical Commission is offering limited research assistance. Please see our main webpage for the most up-to-date information.

The Gooch Family Photographs (P029) contains 49 glass plate negatives that we have digitized so that the collection 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 collection, please email us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.

The Gooch Family Photographs comprises images related to 11 Fayerweather Street in Cambridge; Harvard University buildings; Mt. Auburn Street in Watertown, Massachusetts; and non-Cambridge locations. The collection was donated by the wife of a photographer who bought and sold photography related items on Ebay and specialty photographic sites. While cleaning out her basement, she found the boxes and explained that “thought the negatives might be important to the history of an area.”

11 Fayerweather Street, front facade, ca. 1900.

Initially the content of the glass plates were unidentified, but through research the CHC staff has determined that the images are likely connected to the Gooch family, who were lived at 11 Fayerweather Street (no. 3 Fayerweather at the time of their residency). The negatives include images of family members, but the names of individuals have not yet been determined.

The Gooch Family

The story of the Gooch family in Cambridge starts with Nathan Gooding Gooch (1835-1919), a descendant of the colonial settler John Gooch. In the 1850s bachelor Nathan Gooch boarded with John Bridge Dana at 3 Fayerweather Street (renumbered 11 Fayerweather by 1930). Dana (1800-1888) worked for the Charles River Bank and later became a Harvard steward. His daughter, Ellen Coolidge Dana, married Nathan Gooch on June 14, 1860. Both generations lived in the house, presumably with the house divided by the partition shown on a 1900 remodel plan.

Woman and dog on front porch of 11 Fayerweather Street during winter, undated. The woman may be Ellen Coolidge Dana, who married Nathan Gooch

Nathan Gooch initially worked as a bookkeeper for W.T. Richardson near Harvard Square and became a lumber dealer in Brighton in 1857. Nathan worked with his brother at their lumber firm, J.G. & N.G. Gooch; he also became a coal dealer on Kilby Street in Boston in 1865. During the Civil War he served in the Massachusetts 12th Company from November 12, 1863, to August 15, 1864. Nathan Gooch was also a Cambridge City Council member from 1865-1866 and a deacon of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, a position he occupied until 1908. In 1906 he worked for Cox Bros. & Co., anthracite coal dealers in Boston.

A man holding a toddler next to a dog at 11 Fayerweather Street, undated. This could be Nathan Gooch and his granddaughter Margaret.

Nathan and Ellen Gooch had two children, William D. Gooch and Ellen M. Gooch. The family moved to Watertown in 1900 to a house that was once part of the Adams estate. Built in 1900, 35 Adams (or Fairlawn) Avenue was designed by F. Bryant & Co. It would continue to be the family’s home until the 1930s.

Aerial view taken from the Oakley Country Club showing Shattuck Avenue in Watertown before Adams Avenue was laid out.

The Gooch family also owned a summer residence in Marblehead on Marblehead Neck (sometimes called Nanepashment). Their first summer home was at the corner of Harbor and Harvard streets (formerly Spring Street). In 1892 Nathan Gooch had the house moved 25 feet. He later sold the property to Maria M. Stone and in 1901 moved the family to Ocean Avenue (likely located is now 372 Ocean Avenue). His brother, Johnson G. Gooch, also had a summer place in Marblehead on Atlantic Avenue.

A child holding a doll in a field with a man behind in the middle-ground. Beyond is the sea. The man may be William D. Gooch and the toddler his daughter, Margaret. This location could be in Marblehead. The image is undated.

The Gooch’s daughter, Ellen, married G.F. Rouillard, and they had sons Robert G. and Clarence D. Their son, William, worked as a bookkeeper before becoming an auditor for a drug and chemical company. He owned a motorboat named Dixie and continued to summer in Marblehead for a few years after his father’s passing in 1916. At some point William married Mary A. Pearce, and they had two children, Dana Appleton Gooch (1897-1972) and Margaret Caroline Gooch. Dana worked as an office clerk but was unemployed by World War I; his subsequent occupations are unknown. He was married in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1934 and died in Florida on March 6, 1972.

A woman holding a baby on the porch steps of 11 Fayerweather Street. The woman is possibly Mary A. Pearce Gooch, William’s wife, and the baby may be Margaret or Dana.

Margaret Caroline Gooch (1891-1988), William’s daughter, is likely present in this collection since one of the original glass plate boxes was labeled with her name. While employed as a teacher, she married Eugene Judson Barney on December 10, 1917. Eugene was a refrigerator electrical engineer from Dayton, Ohio, and by 1920 they had moved back to his hometown. According to census records, they lived at 12 Seminary Avenue in 1920; 1438 Catalpa Drive in 1930; and 1827 Harvard Boulevard in 1940. Eugene and Margaret were the parents of Edward Barney.

Dana Gooch with a dog in a sandbox in Marblehead, ca. fall 1900. According to the *Marblehead Messenger*, Dana caught his finger in a bicycle spool on September 3, 1900, and had to get it sewn and bandaged; the bandage is visible on his left hand.

11 Fayerweather Street

In 1850, 3 Fayerweather Street was built as a 2½ story house for John B. Dana. After the Dana and Gooch families moved, the house was purchased by Mrs. Archibald Howe (Arria Sargeant Dixwell) in 1900. Mr. Howe (1848-1916), a lawyer and former member of the House of Representatives, ran for Vice-President in 1900 on the “National Party” ticket. His cousin Lois Lilley Howe (1864-1964), a pioneering female architect, remodeled 3 Fayerweather Street that year. The new design removed the interior partition (mentioned above), extended the house by four feet, and added three dormers to the front façade. It is likely that Lois Howe was the photographer of image G-2161: it is strikingly similar to photographs she took on April 30, 1900. (For a lot more information on Howe, get in touch with the Historical Commission.) The house was renovated by Lois’s architectural firm, Howe, Manning & Almy, in 1916. (No. 3 was renumbered 11 some time between 1916 and 1930.) The house was later owned by Louise McLennan, who altered it again, in 1939.

The collection includes images of beaches, fields, and mountain landscapes, possibly at Marblehead Neck and in New York state. There are also photographs of Harvard’s Memorial Hall, the Washington Elm, and the Old Cambridge Baptist Church after the fire of 1897.

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.

33-35 Pearl St 1971 — Scanned version of negative, 33-35 Pearl Street

Mass Ave at Everett St E-1983 — 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.

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.

Belmont Bird St E-9092A — 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.

Tag: negatives

New Collection Available: Gooch Family Photographs

The Gooch Family

11 Fayerweather Street

Deteriorating Negatives