Cambridge’s Black Community: Seizing Freedom and Creating Community A 3 week courseOctober 6, 13, and 203-5 pmCambridge Center for Adult Ed42 Brattle StreetRegistration required Joins us for a fall co...

By Beth Folsom, 2026 For most Cantabrigians, Fresh Pond is a natural resource, providing drinking water and green space to the city. For centuries, the Indigenous peoples who lived here used the pond ...

Thursday, June 11 at 10 amMeet at Jerry’s Pit/the bus stop at Rindge Ave @ Russell FieldFree. Please pre-register! Well-behaved furry friends welcome Our Neighborhood History Center initiative keeps u...

Dorothea Dix was nearly 40 when she first stepped foot inside the East Cambridge Jail in 1841 to teach Sunday school to women incarcerated there. Dix was born in 1802 in Hampden, Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. When she was a child, her family moved to Worcester, where her struggling parents could get […]

Mayflower Memories: Gathering Stories of East Cambridge Wednesday, December 106-7 pmEast Cambridge History Center625 Cambridge StreetFree Join History Cambridge for “Mayflower Memories,” a special pro...

Book publishing, particularly textbooks, was already well represented in Cambridge by the end of the 19th century, largely because of the city’s universities. Then came Ginn & Co., led by a Universalist on a mission.

The Multicultural Arts Center opened its doors in 1985 and has committed itself to providing a diverse array of artistic programs. Its season begins Thursday.

The nature of the 1891 killing of Bridget Ryan and its immediate aftermath was more salacious and appealing to the public than whatever happened in the months and years after his conviction – of which nothing is known.

Guided tour of East CambridgeSaturday, October 4 at 11 am(Rain date Sunday, October 5 at 11 am)Free Taking requests and sharing the mic! On October 4, History Cambridge is trying out a new type of gui...

Examining the “big picture” view of East Cambridge over two centuries underscores how important local news coverage is to an understanding of an area.

Cambridge and Eighth streets close to cars Sunday as East Cambridge hosts Le Grand Prix Elmendorf du Pain, a competition that celebrates French bread-baking traditions. But there are many ways French and French-Canadian culture have enriched Cambridge over the centuries.

In planning a reunion of current and former East Cambridge residents, it was a contention that to belong one must live east of the train tracks. Those “dearos,” it was said, risked being replaced by “...

In a season of graduations and weddings, it is worth noting Cambridge’s history of building the instrument that provides the soundtrack: the church organ. 

Saturday, May 3, 2025 2-3:30 pmFree; registration required Limited space availableWeather date: Sunday, May 4 at 2 pm About the tour East Cambridge is a neighborhood whose role in the Revolutionary Wa...

The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution seems a good time to revisit the story of Fort Putnam and its role in driving British troops out of Boston.

Popular uprisings, no tax without representation, a royal governor imprisoned - long before 1776, Massachusetts resisted royal rule.

Saturday, April 26, 20252-3:30 pmFree; registration requiredLimited space availableWeather date: Sunday, April 27 at 2 pm About the tour Join authors Karen Weintraub and Michael Kuchta for a series of...

On the afternoon of April 14, 1963, Easter Sunday, a spectacular fire consumed the Squire’s meatpacking plant on Gore Street in East Cambridge. More than 500 firefighters from Cambridge and surrounding communities worked to subdue the flames. Hot embers were carried by the thick smoke and fell onto buildings as far as a mile away; […]

A steam shovel clearing the foundation for a new meat-packing plant in East Cambridge uncovered timbers in April 1929 that were far older: They turned out to be the causeway over which the British troops marched in 1775. 

It’s a small miracle that photos of Russ’s Kitchenette Diner sat so patiently in a basement for decades, thought lost, coming back to a changed East Cambridge.

An English professor; theater advocate and retired Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School social worker; and artisan and hand-poke tattoo artist join the board.

As we reflect on the fifth anniversary of the start of the Covid lockdown, and as we mark the end of March as Women’s History Month, History Cambridge looks back on our exploration of women’s roles as essential workers in Cambridge past and present. In our last installment, we examined the role of Cambridge teachers […]