Cambridge Foot Tour #1 - Part Two

[earlgreytea68]

9. Longfellow Park

A gift to Cambridge from Longfellow’s family and friends in his memory.

The monument is a bust of Longfellow surrounded by bas-relief figures of some of the poet’s best-known characters.
The park also contained this mysterious message on the day I visited:

10. Campus of Radcliffe College

In 1937, this was exclusively a woman’s college. The architecture here matches some of Harvard’s architecture (it’s primarily Georgian, in case you want to know), but according to the 1937 book it has been “tempered with a strain of refinement—especially in interior work—which distinguishes and feminizes” the buildings.

Fay House is the oldest structure in Radcliffe, built in 1807 as a private home.

Aggasiz House, designed by Alexander W. Longfellow.

The Library, designed by Winslow and Bigelow.

Alice Mary Longfellow Hall was a new building in 1937, completed in 1931 and apparently winning an award for its architects. The design is supposedly based on the design of Harvard’s University Hall (a building I’m not sure I know). The brick is supposed to be a special “pink salmon color” that matches that used in the Fay House.

11. Site of the Washington Elm

So, the 1937 book tells me that there’s “a circular plaque with bronze letters” marking the spot where Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775. The things is, there’s a monument today claiming that it happened right under this tree.

So there might be some revisionist history going on by whoever put that marker in.

12. Christ Church

I had lived in Harvard Square many years and never once been in this building. This is one of the reasons why I love doing these tours. Anyhow, this building was built in 1761 and is the oldest church building in Cambridge. During the Revolution, colonial troops used it as a barracks. The 1937 book calls the design “not particularly prepossessing,” although having a “certain charm” in its “humility.” Talk about damning with faint praise. The book goes on to state that the outside does not prepare the visitor for how beautiful the interior is, and the book has a bit of point.

The book calls it “among the four or five best church interiors in or near Boston” and “a jewel of Georgian Colonial.” I feel like my photo doesn’t actually do it justice. The book praises it for having both dignity and warmth.

The crystal chandeliers were given in memory of Woodrow Wilson’s daughter, Mrs. Francis Sayre. The tower contains thirteen bells that were a gift from Harvard graduates in 1860, and while the original organ lofts remain, the original organ pipes were melted down into bullets during the Revolution. Want to know more about the church? Here you go:

13. Old Town Burying Ground

Between Christ Church above and the First Parish Church below, this burying ground dates from 1636, which was the year Harvard was founded. Most of the early settlers and earliest Harvard presidents are buried here.

14. First Parish Church

Christ Church is the oldest church building in Cambridge, but the Unitarians are the oldest church organization in Cambridge, dating from 1633, and this is their current church. Apparently Thomas Hooker was an early pastor here and, when he disagreed with the rest of the Massachusetts Bay clergy, he picked up his congregation and moved it to Hartford, Connecticut. The building you see here was built in 1833. Between 1833 and 1873, Harvard held its commencement here, and Harvard presidents were frequently inaugurated here (including Dr. Eliot, the 1937 book is careful to point out). Samuel McChord Crothers was its most popular minister, according to the book, a “genial wit and essayist, who after listening to the speeches at a certain Harvard Commencement remarked that he gathered that the world had been in great danger, but that all would now be well.”

15. George Washington Memorial Gateway

Dedicated on the sesquicentennial of Washington taking command of the Continental Army. My favorite thing about this gate is that it doesn’t connect to anything, it is purely decorative:

16. Common

Technically speaking, this is Cambridge Common, as opposed to Boston Common, but the 1937 book author, who is so clearly a Harvard alum, terms it the Common in the way Canterbridgians do call it the Common, as if it is the only one. Anyway, it was originally the “cow common,” the community pasture of the town of Cambridge. It was also used for executions in the days when public executions still happened.