Cambridge

Cambridge is an independent city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, situated directly across the Charles River from Boston. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, and its population as of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the most populous city in the county, the fourth-largest in Massachusetts behind Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, and ninth-most populous in New England. Harvard University, an Ivy League university founded in Cambridge in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, and MIT, Lesley University, and Cambridge College are also based in the city. Often called the "City of Squares" for its commercially vibrant neighborhood centers, Cambridge has evolved from a colonial settlement into one of the world's foremost hubs of academic research, biotechnology, and technology innovation.

Founding and Early History

Founded as Newtowne, the town was renamed Cambridge in 1638 to honor Cambridge University in England, where many of the new town's Puritan leaders and inhabitants had attended. The site of present-day Cambridge was chosen for development because it was safely upriver from Boston Harbor, making it easily defensible from attacks by enemy ships. The city was founded by Thomas Dudley, his daughter Anne Bradstreet, and his son-in-law Simon Bradstreet, and the first houses were built in the spring of 1631.

Native Americans inhabited the Charles River basin for thousands of years prior to European colonization of the Americas. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited by Naumkeag of the Pawtucket Confederacy to the north and Massachusett to the south. The contact period introduced European infectious diseases which decimated native populations in virgin soil epidemics, significantly depopulating the Charles River basin upon the arrival of large groups of English settlers in the 1630s.

Stephen Day (Daye) set up the first printing press in the British colonies at Cambridge in 1638, a forerunner of the city's modern publishing and printing industry, and the first books to be printed in America came from this press. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the densest settlement surrounded Cambridge Common and Harvard College. When this settlement — known as Old Cambridge — joined with Cambridgeport, East Cambridge, and North Cambridge to form the city of Cambridge in 1846, each neighborhood had developed a distinct identity and demographic makeup.

The American Revolution

Although not as well known as Boston, Cambridge played an important role in the Revolutionary War even before George Washington arrived. Charles William Eliot II, presiding over the Cambridge Historical Society, once said that "the Revolution started in Cambridge in 1774." Wealthy Tory families who had moved to Cambridge from Boston for the wide stretches of land on which they could build their estates fled back to Boston when sentiment in Cambridge became fervently patriotic. Townspeople vandalized the house of the Massachusetts attorney general, Jonathan Sewall, and a handful of Tories who brought tea into Harvard Hall were nearly lynched by students.

In May 1775, approximately 16,000 American patriots assembled in Cambridge Common to begin organizing a military retaliation against British troops following the Battles of Lexington and Concord. On July 2, 1775, two weeks after the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia formally established the Continental Army and appointed George Washington commander of it, Washington arrived at Cambridge Common to take command of the Patriot soldiers camped there. Many of these soldiers played a role in supporting Washington's successful Siege of Boston, which trapped garrisoned British troops from moving by land, forcing the British to ultimately abandon the city. Cambridge Common is thus celebrated as the birthplace of the Continental Army.

Washington chose the mansion of John Vassall, Jr., a Tory who had fled to Boston, as his headquarters, and from this location he coordinated the Siege of Boston. After seven months, the British forces finally fled Boston on ships bound for Halifax and Great Britain. That mansion, known today as the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, later became the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The first Massachusetts Constitutional Convention met in Cambridge in 1779–80.

Industrialization and Immigrant Communities

In 1793, private developers opened the West Boston Bridge on the site of the present-day Longfellow Bridge. With the opening of the bridge, the distance from the west to Boston had gone from eight miles to three miles. In short order, Cambridge became a major thoroughfare to Boston and a second community began to arise east of the Common, named after one of the greatest failed ventures in Cambridge history, Cambridgeport.

Connected to Boston by the Canal Bridge in 1809, East Cambridge was an industrial hub throughout the nineteenth century. Glass-making was the top industry at mid-century, but it was later supplanted by woodworking, meatpacking, and metalworking plants that drew on a growing Irish immigrant workforce. John P. Squire's slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant was the largest employer in the area in 1880, when nearly 80 percent of East Cantabrigians had two foreign-born parents.

Manufacturers also produced musical instruments, rubber, soap, and candy. The confectionary industry in particular flourished, and by the 1930s and 1940s, there were 25 or more candy companies in Cambridge, mostly in Cambridgeport. Among the largest businesses in Cambridge during the period of industrialization was Carter's Ink Company, whose neon sign long adorned the Charles River and which was for many years the world's largest ink manufacturer.

After the completion of subway connections to Boston in 1912, the city experienced rapid industrial expansion. Most manufacturing industries had declined in importance by the late 20th century, but they were replaced by firms developing computer software, electronics, and biotechnology. The city's population reached a peak of 120,740 in 1950 but then entered a period of decline attributed to the movement of people and industry to farther suburbs; the population stabilized in the 1980s and early 1990s, partly owing to the growth of high-technology companies.

Education and Universities

Cambridge is home to some of the world's most distinguished institutions of higher learning. Newtowne became Cambridge in 1638 and it was this same year that John Harvard, a Puritan minister, bequeathed his library and half of his estate to the college. Named after its benefactor, Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Today there are more than 360,000 Harvard alumni living in the United States and 190 countries around the world, and the university offers degree programs for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students with an average enrollment of 20,000 students per year.

Scientific and industrial research is further stimulated by the presence of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was founded in Boston in 1861 and moved to Cambridge in 1916. Radcliffe College, a women's liberal arts college, was based in Cambridge from its 1879 founding until its assimilation into Harvard in 1999.

The headquarters of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, formerly in Washington, D.C., was moved to Cambridge in 1955 and is now part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Cambridge has been home to many notable people, and its Mount Auburn Cemetery contains the graves of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet-diplomat James Russell Lowell, the physician-author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science), and the actor Edwin Booth.

Neighborhoods and the City of Squares

Cambridge is often called the "City of Squares" because its main business areas are at street intersections known as squares, each functioning as a small neighborhood center. City government identifies five major squares: Central, Harvard, Inman, Kendall, and Porter.

Harvard Square, centered around the convergence of Massachusetts Avenue and Brattle, Mount Auburn, and John F. Kennedy Streets, is a commercial center for Harvard students, Cambridge residents, and tourists. Visited by more than 8 million people every year, Harvard Square is where visitors can enjoy a meal, shopping, street performances, and a variety of cultural entertainment.

Central Square is an area centered on the junction of Massachusetts Avenue, Prospect Street, and Western Avenue, with Lafayette Square also considered part of the Central Square area. The section of Central Square along Massachusetts Avenue between Clinton Street and Main Street is designated the Central Square Historic District and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990; the square was also designated an official Cultural District in the state of Massachusetts by the Mass Cultural Council in October 2012. Central Square is known for its wide variety of ethnic restaurants, churches, bars, and live music and theatre venues. Central Square serves as the seat of government in Cambridge.

Cambridge is served by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), including Porter station on the regional Commuter Rail, Lechmere station on the Green Line, and Alewife, Porter, Harvard, Central, and Kendall Square/MIT stations on the Red Line.

Kendall Square and the Innovation Economy

Kendall Square, near MIT in the eastern part of Cambridge, has been called "the most innovative square mile on the planet" due to the high concentration of startup companies that have emerged there since 2010. In 2022, Cambridge was home to over 250 biotech companies, with more than 120 located within the Kendall Square ZIP Code.

The area's transformation from post-industrial wasteland to global innovation hub was shaped by deliberate municipal policy. In 1977, the city council passed the first legislation in the U.S. that allowed and regulated research into recombinant DNA, and the neighborhood transformed into a bustling hub. Discussions between scientists at MIT and Harvard ultimately led to the creation of Biogen in 1978. By the time Biogen opened its doors, fears about recombinant DNA research had subsided in the face of the prosperity of the biotech research community.

What was once a bustling industrial district along the Charles River, home to soap factories and power plants, has transformed over the last three decades into what is now known as "the most innovative square mile on the planet," with offices for 13 of the top 20 global biopharma companies — in addition to tech power players — making Kendall Square one of the world's leading centers for biotech research and innovation. Industry leaders and household names like Moderna, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft maintain a presence in Cambridge and often expand or invest more in the area.

The Greater Boston area has been described by regional leaders as "the life science, biotech capital of the world," with advocates noting that the concentration of talent and capital in the region has been "by design — it's not an accident." The Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), located in Kendall Square and a prominent hub since 2001, is home to over 300 life science and biotech organizations, including startups, accelerators, innovation arms of global pharmaceutical companies, and venture capitalists.