Motor Tour: Cambridge
Local College Friend and I were going to do a walking tour together on Sunday. But it rained. So, with a little think-on-our-feet-ness, I bring you: The First 1937 Motor Tour To Be Done. I can already tell these are going to be adventures! Also, excuse my very, er, artistic photos. I will hopefully get better at the Motor Tour adventures!
The Motor Tour starts in the heart of Harvard Square. No motor tour in their right mind would direct the car first to the heart of Harvard Square. Ah, things were different in 1937...
46. Elmwood
The book first directed us to go down Mount Auburn Street and look for the house on the corner of Elmwood Avenue. We drive down Mount Auburn, eyes peeled for Elmwood Avenue, and never see it. We reached the Mount Auburn Cemetery--the next stop on the tour--and decide that Elmwood Avenue and its "fine three-story yellow clapboarded mansion with white roof-rail and square yellow chimneys" no longer exists. Sad, we turn onto Brattle Street, the next street in the tour, and I'm looking for the next address, and suddenly see...Elmwood Avenue! And a fine three-story yellow clapboarded mansion! I think this must be Elmwood, and how it ended up to be facing Brattle instead of Mount Auburn is just one of life's little mysteries.
Why are we looking at this house? Because it was the home of James Russell Lowell. I've vaguely heard his name before, but the Lowells were a major family, so maybe I'm just imagining that. Apparently, he was the U.S. Minister to Spain and England in the late 1870s? And he wrote "Vision of Sir Launfal" and "Biglow Papers." If you've read either of these, you are better than me. Anyway, history of the house (if this is indeed it): It was built in 1767 and was the home of the last royal deputy in Massachusetts, who fled in 1774. In 1810, Elbridge Gerry lived here before becoming Vice-President in 1812. But here is the most interesting thing in this paragraph of the book: HE CALLS INHABITANTS OF CAMBRIDGE "CANTABRIGIANS." I have never, ever, ever heard this before. I can't even say that word out loud. I was reading the entry to LCF and kept stumbling over it. This is the perfect name for the pretentious people who inhabit Cambridge! (Don't worry, I used to live in Cambridge and completely adore it, I'm just saying.)
47. Mt. Auburn Cemetery
Sorry, I was so busy being confused over not finding Elmwood that I forgot to take a picture of the cemetery. Oops. I am told that it "has famous graves of nearly every one of note who has died in or near Boston for the past hundred years." Why? Because it used to be the only garden cemetery around Boston. According to the book, "It is still one of the two most beautiful." Indeed, it apparently sits on a hill with "a dreamy view of the winding Charles River, Cambridge, Boston, and distant hills."
We didn't get out to walk around the cemetery, since it was raining and we were discombobulated, but I need to go back and see this dreamy view. Also, the book lists the graves of a bunch of people who are buried there, some of whom I know but many of whom I have no clue who they are: Mary Baker Eddy, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell ("next to the stone of the child immoratalized in 'The First Snowfall'"), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("next to Grave Alice of 'The Children's Hour' (Laughing Allegra and Edith with Golden Hair became Mrs. Thorp and Mrs. Dana, respectively)"), Charlotte Cushman, Charles Sumner, Louis Agassiz, Margaret Fuller, Edwin Booth, Phillips Brooks, William Ellery Channing, Julia Ward Howe, Samuel G. Howe, Edward Everett, Hosea Ballou, Joseph Story, Rufus Choate, and Prescott and Parkman. My favorite part of this is that, in the list, next to Charlotte Cushman's name, is this annotation: "the trustees of the cemetery would be glad to hear of any of her heirs." So consider this your notification! Descendants of Charlotte Cushman! The Mt. Auburn Cemetery was looking for you in 1937!
48. Nichols-Lee House
The house, built in 1660, was owned by Joseph Lee at the time of the Revolution. Lee sided with the British and so fled the area during the Revolution. However, he "was such a general favorite as a citizen that he was allowed to return after the war without confiscation of his property. When he died at over 90 years of age the entire city mourned."
49. American Thomas Lee's House
What's amazing to me is how well these houses still fit the 1937 descriptions. I think, actually, they might be prevented from altering their appearance? This house, built in 1685, "is a three-story, clapboarded house, with mansard roof, dormer windows, white roof-rail, and massive chimneys painted white with black hoods. It is set behind an ornamental white picket fence, on a lawn shaded by horse chestnut trees, and broken by a terrace with a low white rail." The book provides no other detail about the house, so I guess the author just liked it. He does not it "is one of several sumptuous and beautiful old mansions to be seen hereabout," and yes. Brattle Street is gorgeous.
50. Baroness Riedesel's House
During the Revolution, this was the home of the Baron and Baroness Riedesel, who were American prisoners of war. "The Baroness's gay and vivid letters about her social life in Cambridge are evidence that the city treater her well, in spite of its Revolutionary sympathies." This is my favorite part, though: "After the Baroness left, Washington gave the house to 'English Thomas Lee,' a former Tory who changed over to the American Cause. English Thomas was so named to distinguish him from his neighbor 'American Thomas Lee.'" This is just such a hilariously random story. I adore it. As for Baroness Riedesel's house, well...
It now sits on the corner of Riedesel Avenue! The book doesn't mention that, and I think it's cute. Also:
Look at the house you own! Fix your shutters!
51. Cambridge Observatory of Harvard University
No longer exists. It now seems to be the Harvard Dance Center. Apparently, there used to be a public exhibit of astronomical pictures, and there were "photographic telescopes and sky-patrol cameras, which on every clear night swing the circuit of the universe, noting everything that happens for some billions of miles."
51. Botanic Garden of Harvard University
Also doesn't exist anymore. Here is what is on the site. Oh, and this:
Apparently, the Botanic Garden that used to be there was established in 1807, and Asa Gray, "the celebrated botanist," was the director for a while. It used to have a rock garden, a rose garden, a water garden, and a greenhouse.
53. Cooper-Frost-Austin House
Getting to this house was a bit of an adventure. The book told us to take a left from Garden onto Linnaean, but the traffic laws no longer permit a left there, and, because it's Cambridge, we couldn't just go around the block, we had to go around, like, seven blocks. Luckily, we were right near where I used to live, so we didn't get lost, just slightly inconvenienced, and we got there in the end. And it was worth it, because this house is apparently the oldest in the city! Who knew! Built in 1657. Well, it says, "except possibly for one block of the Belcher House at 94 Brattle Street." As the book neglected to point out this mysterious several-blocks-long house when we were on Brattle Street, I have no clue what he's talking about. The house is open to the public, but we didn't go inside.
54. Site of Oliver Wendell Holmes's Birthplace
The book tells me this "is marked by a granite tablet beyond the triangular green opposite the Common." Let me tell you something. The area around Cambridge Common is a complete nightmare to drive. And the books directions wanted me to do something that it is completely impossible to do in 2009, which was basically to take a U-turn around the area where Out-of-Town News now stands, so I was busy with the map trying to figure out a detour, and I have no clue where this granite tablet might have been. But, if you are someday walking by Cambridge Common, I suppose you can look for it. (I walk by Cambridge Common all the time, and I've never noticed it. But I've never been looking for it, either.) Anyway: "Here as a young physician he first displayed his shingle, on which considered inscribing: 'The smallest fevers thankfully received.'"
55. Shady Hill
This is apparently a mansion located on Irving Street. Irving Street turns one-way going the wrong way, so we tried to just go around the block so we could go down it the wrong, got totally lost because of the fact that no street runs in a straight line in Cambridge, and eventually just gave up. So we never saw Shady Hill. But we did see this:
That made it worth it.
If we had seen Shady Hill, we would have seen "a broad two-story mansion of 1790 with a long front piazza, crowning a landscaped knoll." Charles Eliot Norton, a Harvard professor of art, used to live there.
56. Cambridge Public Library
Yeah, it was pouring. So I took a really terrible photograph. It's artistic!
The library was built in 1889 in the Romanesque style. It apparently contains murals "and an original painting 400 years old" by an unknown artist. I studied for the bar in this library quite a bit, and I don't remember any of this. I clearly need to go back.
57. Site of General Putnam's Headquarters
Apparently, it's "marked by a tablet near the rear of City Hall." Again, we didn't get out of the car. This is no longer City Hall, but it's a City Hall Annex. And General Putnam's headquarters were here during the Siege of Boston.
58. New Towne Court
Very sadly, this no longer exists. It was supposed to be on the corner of Main Street and Windsor Street. We found Windsor Street, but we couldn't find Main. It's sad, because I really wanted to see this, which was "an attempt to provide attractive low-cost homes for people of small incomes." On this same corner used to stand the house where Elias Howe invented the sewing machine.
59. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
I was busy navigating at this point, so here is a corner of a random MIT building.
In 1937, MIT was an 80-acre campus with 46 buildings, all of which were connected by "interior corridors." Apparently, the buildings were known by their numbers. "All the buildings are illuminated by flood-lights at night, and with their reflection in the beautiful waters of the Charles they constitute an outstanding attraction of Boston and Cambridge." The book lists a number of interesting things at MIT: a ceramics collection, a ship model museum, wind-testing machines, and a model of the Cape Cod Canal. These are my favorites: "The Colossus of Volts, a giant electrostatic generator which created the highest steady direct voltage ever achieved by man," and "The Round Table of Light Camera, a great circular table, hollow at its core, with a grating of optical glass, which has no rival as an apparatus for spectroscopy." I have no idea if any of these things are still at MIT, but they were in 1937, evidently.
Because the photos were fairly terrible this time, I bring you: Cardboard!David in a leopard-print Snuggie.
Because I decided you couldn't tell he was wearing a Snuggie from this, I extended a sleeve, for your benefit.
A close-up on Cardboard!David's expression at being wrapped in a leopard-print Snuggie:
He looks a bit emo, but don't worry: it's not over the Snuggie, he just always looks like that.