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The Cambridge Trotting Park: Part 1

Posted on February 12, 2019May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

This post is the first in a series of four written by guest author, Dan Sullivan, owner of The Book Oasis in Stoneham.

Part 1

Just a casual glance at an 1854 map of the city makes it clear that North Cambridge was a very different place than it is today. Now the map is crowded with streets, and the houses on them are built on small lots. Massachusetts Avenue is lined with businesses. By contrast, 1854 shows an area with very few streets. Most business in the area consist of a few farms and the brick industry. The one area that is beginning to show some ‘crowding’ is the village of Dublin, which is made up of Rindge Avenue, Sargent Street, and Dublin (now Sherman) Street. Few landmarks would be recognizable by a modern visitor. The most prominent feature on that map is something that has left little trace on today’s landscape; the Cambridge Trotting Park.

NW_Camb2019 — Aerial view of Northwest Cambridge, 2019

From 1837 until 1855 North Cambridge had a sports arena that often drew thousands of spectators and had such a high level of talent that it regularly generated national news. Famous horses such as Black Hawk and Lady Suffolk raced on the track. The strange thing is, it got almost no coverage from the Cambridge Chronicle, and the stories that did appear in that paper seldom focused on the actual sporting events. Many did not even mention them.

NW_Camb1854 — H.F. Walling & Co. map of Northwest Cambridge, 1854

The course was one mile around and followed a route that was just inside what are now Rindge Avenue, Harvey and Cedar streets, and about one hundred feet beyond Clifton Street. The name ‘Trotting Park’ is slightly misleading. Yes, that was the principal type of event held on the course but not the exclusive type. Besides being the site of multiple types of horse racing, the park also hosted many foot races, or what was known at the time as ‘Pedestrianism.’ I have found descriptions of a greased pig chase, two boxing matches, and multiple mixed event ‘handicapped’ races. In addition to these there was one event that came close to what we would call a track and field meet today. It consisted of a hammer throw, a mile run, and the one-hundred–yard dash with other less traditional events.

Pedest — *Beadle’s dime hand-book of pedestrianism : giving the rules for training and practice in walking, running, leaping, vaulting, etc., etc. Together with a full account of the great Weston feat*, 1867

running — Detail of ‘Running’ section, Beadle’s hand-book, 1867

My principal sources for information for these events are out of state newspapers. Why, you might ask, would these papers cover the events at the Cambridge Trotting Park and yet the hometown paper almost completely ignore them? The answer was an ethical one. You see, the principal activity at the Park was not sports competition, but rather the gambling that took place on those events, and Cambridge in the 1800’s would rather have ignored that.

Check back next week for Part 2…

Photo Morgue Digitization

Posted on July 10, 2018November 19, 2018 by Meta Partenheimer

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.

ellsburg — “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.

“Courtroom cages outlawed” (1963). Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.

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_DC — Screenshot from the Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection image “Cambridge ‘Sparks’ and his radio scooter”. Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.

We hope the opening of this collection will bring interest to the images and inspire additional exploration. For further resources, check the Library of Congress list of Newspaper Photograph Morgues.

References:

McCann, Laura. “The Whole Story: News Agency Photographs in Newspaper Photo Morgue Collections.” The American Archivist 80, no. 1 (2017): 163-188.

Now Open: The Boston Globe Cambridge Clippings Collection

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Meta Partenheimer

Last June, the commission received a donation of newspaper clipping files from The Boston Globe clipping library. Although The Globe was clipped from around 1900 until it went electronic in 1977, the clippings in this collection date from around the 1920s with some items dating into the 2000s.

collection_box_view — The Boston Globe Cambridge Clippings Collection contains nearly 1,900 individual subject envelopes.

During the time when the clippings library was active, groups of clippings were organized by subject into single or multiple envelopes depending on the breadth of information on a given topic.

restaurant_files — A selection of files related to Cambridge restaurants.

Envelopes can include stories of community interest to crime investigations, and originated not only from the Boston Globe, but from other newspapers and publications including the Boston Herald and the Transcript.

flim_flam — Vestiges of the past can be seen through use of less-modern terms, as this 1971 clipping from CAMBRIDGE: MASS: CRIME: FLIM-FLAM illustrates.

Some envelopes even included photographs once published in the newspaper, many depicting prominent Cambridge architecture or buildings that no longer exist.

childrens_museum001 — Cambridge Children’s Museum, 1919.

The newspaper clippings have now been processed and a finding aid will soon be available to researchers on our website. Each title has been transcribed into a spreadsheet, and ordered via separate tabs for quick searching and topic browsing.

A selection of clippings regarding a new bridge over Broad Canal, 1928.

The next step in the Globe clippings collection will be to cross-index relevant clippings about buildings, social clubs, and other pertinent addresses with our architectural inventory files to facilitate an even more comprehensive history of Cambridge.

mansion_house001 — Mansion House, a restaurant and ice cream saloon once at the corner of Gore and Bridge (now Monsignor O’Brien Highway) Streets, 1905.

We look forward to welcoming patrons interested in researching this collection! To make a research appointment, contact our archivist, Emily at egonzalez@cambridgema.gov or stop by the CHC during our research hours: Mon: 4:00-7:00pm and Tue-Thur: 9:30-11:30am & 2:00-4:00pm.

New! Boston Globe Donation

Posted on June 6, 2017May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Last week, we received a special visit from Richard Pennington, a former librarian for the Boston Globe. Mr. Pennington and Lisa Tuite, the Globe’s Head of Library, donated seven boxes of newspaper clippings from the Globe’s newspaper clipping morgue. The clippings date from 1900 to around 1977 (with some from the 1980s) and include interesting news stories and information pertaining to Cambridge. The stories come not only from the Boston Globe, but from other newspapers and publications, including the Boston Herald and the Transcript.

The newspaper clippings are arranged by subject, and they run the gamut of topics related to Cambridge history: from specific Cambridge buildings (of particular interest to the Commission), to local politics, to schools, historic riots, and Cambridge businesses.

According to Pennington, “The Globe was clipped from around 1900 until it went electronic in 1977 – it was the first newspaper to store its content in a computer for retrieval.” The content of the clipped, indexed and filed newspaper clippings often depended on the preference of the librarian at the time. Pennington also added that, “The city desk also had a decades-long policy of sending ephemera to the library to be added to the clipping files, and this included small photographs. Occasionally odd book chapters and magazine articles were added to the files.”

Pennington helped with the recent and ongoing transition of the Boston Globe Library’s collections to new institutions, as the Globe relocates from their Morrissey Boulevard location back to downtown Boston. Pennington was assistant librarian at the Globe when he left in 2007. The large majority of the Boston Globe clippings collection was transferred to Northeastern University — however, the Cambridge Historical Commission was fortunate enough to receive a great portion of this collection for our research files.

The newspaper clippings will be processed, cross-indexed with our architectural inventory files, and a finding aid will be created for researchers. The collection is currently not open for research.