Tip-toeing Through North Cambridge

From Dave Brigham:

OK, let's get my headline explanation out of the way. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who served in those hallowed halls for 34 years, was a North Cambridge guy. Born and bred. Below I'll feature a great mural dedicated to the man known for the quote, "All politics is local."

I knew about O'Neill's connection to this area of Cambridge, but I learned plenty on my exploration. For instance, I stumbled across the one-time location of a locally famous recording studio, and discovered that North Cambridge was once a major player in the brick-making industry.

Let's start this tour on Massachusetts Avenue, just outside Porter Square, which I recently featured (see November 26, 2022, "Drinking in Porter Square").

I was drawn in by the sign above the front door of Rinaldo Realty Company. It's simple and clean and looks like it's been there for quite a few decades.

The Mansard-style house dates to 1880, according to the Cambridge assessor's database. The real estate firm was established in 1923, per Dun & Bradstreet, which tracks business information. A Google search indicates that the business is temporarily closed. There are apartments in this old building, which would look a LOT better with some colorful details.

Moving along, on the opposite side of the avenue is a North Cambridge institution: Pemberton Farms Marketplace.

Begun in 1930 as a fruit and vegetable shop run by Tofic Saidnawey, Pemberton today is run by his descendents, and sells produce, seafood, garden products, cheese, beer and wine, and much more. The assessor's office indicates that at least one of the buildings on the site dates to 1923. I'm not sure if that's that main structure seen in my photo above, or the brick building at the rear of the property.

Directly across the four-lane boulevard is Foodland, a Bangladeshi, Indian & Pakistani market with a halal butcher.

I love small markets like this, which are the lifeblood of so many immmigrant communities.

Right next door is Scholars Guest House.

I haven't found much online about this place, which seems to be a boarding house/inexpensive solution for travelers on a budget. The house dates to 1910.

Back across Mass. Ave., at the corner of Meacham Road, is Cambridge Greenhouse Antiques & Collectables, which was founded in 1980.

There is a sign in the window indicating this place is open by appointment, but I'm not sure that's still true. The shop's Facebook page hasn't been updated in 13 years. The assessor's database lists the house as dating to 1890, and the greenhouse to 1936. I assume there was a florist/garden shop there prior.

(I like the carriage house at the back of the property.)

Pinballing back across the street, we find a beer supply business that was ahead of its time, but which unfortunately is now tapped out.

Modern Homebrew Emporium opened along Mass. Ave. in 2001, the third in a small chain run by two entrepreneurs. The store's history actually goes back to 1990, when it was founded under different owners, according to this Boston.com article. "'Twenty-five years ago there was no good beer,' says [former owner Roger] Savoy. 'If you went to the beer market you had American crap beer, and European stale beer. If you wanted something good you made it.'"

With so many local breweries offering a wide variety of beers these days, and taprooms opening over the past decade or so, the need to brew your own tasty suds has waned, I guess.

A store named Momma's Grocery & Wine is slated to open here.

Next, another North Cambridge mainstay, Frank's Steakhouse.

Around since 1938, the restaurant has an interesting, if apocryphal, origin story. "According to local legend, originally there was no name of the restaurant in its beginnings; however, there was a neighborhood friendly drunk named Frank who was always on the first stool in the bar. Evidently the owners looked at each other and said 'why not?' and named the place after the friendly lush," according to the eatery's web site.

In the building next to Frank's is the Notre Dame Association French Club.

Established 1920, the club seems to be a pretty social place, based on signs in the windows that include ones advertising Bud Light ("COLDEST BEER ON THE BLOCK") and "POOL, LOTTERY AND MORE INSIDE."

Across Mass. Ave. I spied a cool architectural detail on the facade of a circa-1920 house that is now law offices.

Slingshotting across the avenue once again (understand this: the way I'm presenting things here isn't the way I checked them out during my tour), I loved the signage for Greek Corner, a restaurant that's been in business since 1989.

Across the way is an MBTA bus garage, which is located where car barns of one sort or another have stood since 1874.

"The first carbarn on this site, a handsome brick building with a great clock and monumental doors, was built in 1874 by the Union Railway and remained in use until the introduction of electric streetcars in 1889," per the above plaque, which was placed here in 2002 by the Cambridge Historical Comission. "The West End Street Railway put up a larger and more impressive carhouse around the original structure in 1897, but this was razed by the Boston Elevated Railway in 1937. The present structure was built in 1979 to house the trolley buses that replaced streetcars on this route in 1958."

Just up the street, at the corner of Mass. and Cameron avenues, is a boring old building and a bland new apartment development. Would you guess that this corner was once the home of a groundbreaking Americana and bluegrass record label, as well as a Civil War training camp?

I lived in Somerville from January 1995 to November of 1997, and had friends who lived in the city as well. One of them lived at the northeastern end of Cameron Ave., so I drove down this street with some regularity. The photo above shows the southwestern end, which is, duh, in Cambridge. Behind the odd little brick building that is home to a law office (perhaps Bob Loblaw?) once stood the headquarters of Rounder Records.

Founded in 1970, the independent label "first struck musical gold with the 1975 release of J.D. Crowe & The New South (featuring future stars Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas and Tony Rice)," per Rounder's web site. "[T]his seminal recording revitalized bluegrass music and inspired a generation of artists including Rounder's own Alison Krauss, the most decorated female artist in the history of the Grammy Awards."

"Rounder's catalogue of more than 3,000 titles includes records by Alison Krauss and Union Station, George Thorogood, Tony Rice, and Béla Fleck, in addition to re-releases of seminal albums by artists such as the Carter Family, Jelly Roll Morton, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie," per Wikipedia. "...Rounder releases have won 54 Grammy Awards representing diverse genres, from bluegrass, folk, reggae, and gospel to pop, rock, Americana, polka and world music."

The label was acquired by Concord in 2010, and has been based in Nashville for many years.

The Rounder building sat vacant for a while before a developer knocked it down and put up 7 Cameron, a development of one- and two-bedroom apartments. There is also a nice park there.

Looking at this site on Google Maps before my trek, I noticed "Camp Cameron" listed there. "What the heck is that?" I wondered. Here's what I found at The Cambridge Room, a blog offering "Historic tidbits, facts, and notes of interest on Cambridge, Massachusetts brought to you by the Cambridge Public Library's Archivist."

"In 1861 North Cambridge and West Somerville was a very thinly settled area. Camp Cameron (Later named Camp Day) was a Civil War camp of Rendezvous and Instruction located on the North Cambridge / West Somerville town line. The Massachusetts First Regiment occupied the camp on June 1, 1861 and the last troops left in January 1863. The camp sat between what is now Mass. Ave. and Broadway. Cameron Ave. runs through the center of it.

"For twenty months thousands of troops were both recruited and trained at Camp Cameron. The camp consisted of thirty permanent buildings and several smaller temporary buildings and tents."

Cool, right?

Boy, that's a lot of words about a building and an old military camp that don't exist anymore....

Cameron Ave. crosses Mass. Ave. and becomes Harvey Street, which is where I found the storefronts below.

Optometrist David Conway has been in business since 1992, according to the Better Business Bureau.

Two doors down is New England Friends of Bosnia and Herzogovina.

Founded in 2012, this organization promotes Bosnian-Herzegovinian heritage, through cultural, educational and festive programs; runs the Bosnian Language School; raises genocide awareness through human rights campaigns, lectures and commemorations; and fosters partnerships and collaborations with like-minded organizations, State and City institutions, in the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and elsewhere, according to its web site.

Back out on Mass. Ave., heading northwest, is Norton's Liquors, which has been in business for an amount of years that I have been unable to determine.

I'm happy I spied a brick building as I peeked down Edmunds Street. "Is it an old factory or mill?" I asked myself, full of hope. Before I got to that building, however, I stumbled across The Bridge Sound and Stage, a recording studio founded in 2009.

The two-studio set-up was formerly home to Fort Apache, a locally legendary place where artists including Pixies, Radiohead, Juliana Hatfield, Dinosaur Jr., The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Weezer, Yo La Tengo and Warren Zevon recorded over the years, per Wikipedia. The studio's "first location was 169 Norfolk Avenue, a warehouse in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts," according to Wikipedia. "As Bill Janovitz of Buffalo Tom noted, it was the height of the crack epidemic, and Roxbury was a dangerous place. As a result, [founder Joe] Harvard [not his real name - D.B.] gave the studio its name after the 1981 movie 'Fort Apache, The Bronx,' which was set in a crime-ridden neighborhood."

Founded in 1985, Fort Apache moved from Roxbury to Cambridge's Camp Street (above a Rounder Records warehouse). This Edmunds Street location was a secondary studio. Eventually, the operation moved to Bellows Falls, Vermont.

After checking out the studio location, I found the brick building I'd spied from Mass. Ave.

Now a condo development called Emerson Lofts, this building rose in 1909 as a factory for the J.H. Emerson Company. The manufacturer was known for its improvements to existing "iron lung" machines, as well as for developing the galvanometer, which measures voltages using quartz fibers; "the micromanipulator, which made it possible to move a slide under a microscope"; and the BarcroftWarburg apparatus for the Harvard Botany Department, which held vials of liquids and shook them to keep them in motion, according to this History Cambridge article about company founder John "Jack" Emerson.

Back out on Mass. Ave., I spied Jack's Gas, housed in a building that dates to 1934, per the assessor's office.

Across the avenue is Fast Phil's Haircuts, which has been here around 20 years, I believe.

The business is one of a handful along this stretch of Mass. Ave. that's tacked onto the front of an older house. Notice the window tinting business next door.

My final stop on the avenue, just short of Alewife Brook Parkway, was an old service station that looks like it's been boarded up for quite some time.

The assessor's database says at least one of the buildings here dates to 1886. This was formerly home to Executive Automotive, Geno's Mutual Gas and Mass. Plumbing, Heating and Cooling. I'm not sure what the fate of this property is.

I hoofed it back southeast to Rindge Avenue, which is one of the main east-west thoroughfares in North Cambridge. It was here that I found the great mural featuring many scenes from the life of the aforementioned Tip O'Neill.

Located on the side of the O'Neill Branch of the Cambridge Public Library, which opened (not as the O'Neill branch) in 1902, this work was done by Joshua Winer and David Fichter (I have discussed Winer's work here and here; and Fichter's murals here, here and here).

Called "All Politics is Local: The Tip O'Neill Story," the mural "depicts the U.S. Congressman and Speaker of the House with family members, his constituency and his mentors, along with stories from O’Neill’s life and ties to the local community," per the library's web site.

(Verna's was a donut shop on Mass. Ave., located where Cafe Luna Catering is now. There is still a sign for Verna's on the exterior wall.)

We're going to take a detour down Sherman Street, which runs north-south from North Cambridge and into what is known as Neighborhood Nine. While researching North Cambridge ahead of my visits, I learned that this area was once lousy with brickyards.

"In the nineteenth century, most of North Cambridge was dug up for brickyards," according to the Cambridge Considered blog. "North of Harvard Square and west of Porter Square, the North Cambridge areas that became brickyards had always been thought undesirable," the blog continues. "The land was swampy and bad for farming, although most of it was owned by farmers. It turned out that this area was rich in clay, the raw material for a profitable industry. In 1844, Peter Hubbell and Almon Abott leased some of this land and created a brickyard. When it proved successful, it sparked a 'clay rush' as entrepreneurs took notice and entered the brick industry. Some of the most famous companies were the Bay State Brick Company and the New England Brick Company, but by the end of the century, the area had at least half a dozen companies operating side by side."

On Sherman Street, nestled between one- and two-family homes, apartment buildings and a large public park (the history of which I'll get to in a minute), is Brickyard Cambridge Office Park, which "is the renovation of a pottery manufacturing building built in 1930," according to the office park's web site. "Originally the building was part of the Cambridge brick industry with a kiln running the length of the building and clay pits in the rear."

Today, the office park is home to many small businesss, a restaurant and a Montessori school.

(The entrance and patio for Italian restaurant Gran Gusto.)

Across Sherman Street is Danehy Park, which features a splash pad, multiple baseball fields, a playground, a grilling area, a track and field oval and soccer field -- all of it built on fill covering a former dump that was built on old brickyards.

Sherman Street forms the eastern border of the North Cambridge Catholic Cemetery. Rindge Avenue defines the northern line of the graveyard. I checked it out for a few minutes.

Heading west along Rindge Avenue, I found a shuttered business.

Rigazio Dry Cleaners may have moved to Waltham.

Further along Rindge Avenue is another reminder of the former brickyard industry.

The Wyeth Brickyard Superintendent's House was built in 1848. "Nathaniel Wyeth, a local entrepreneur, was a key figure in the establishment of the brick industry in Northwest Cambridge," according to MACRIS. "He helped finance the railroad extension in 1840, so that ice could be transported from Fresh Pond to the markets in Charlestown. In the 1840s Wyeth opened his own brickyard and it was for this operation that the superintendent's house at 336 Rindge Avenue was built."

I believe it is a private home today.

Dominating this corner of North Cambridge, between Rindge Avenue, the Alewife Brook Parkway and commuter train tracks, is the Fresh Pond Apartments complex. Comprised of three, 22-story towers, the complex has 504 affordable-housing apartments. Completed in the late 1960s, the development rose on land that was once a clay pit for the brickmaking industry.

In the photo below, one of the Fresh Pond towers rises above New England Transmission, which features a nice Mobil Pegasus logo.

The last stop on this tour is Jerry's Pond (aka Jerry's Pit), another former clay pit that has been off limits to the public for decades.

"Jerry’s Pond sits at the heart of the Alewife neighborhood of North Cambridge and for nearly 100 years, it was a vital and thriving community resource for the working-class citizens of Cambridge," according to the Cambridge Community Foundation. "It attracted hundreds of daily visitors to swim and enjoy the natural habitat. However, since 1961 it has been fenced off from public access and has become an eyesore."

According to the sign in the photo below, which was erected by the Cambridge Historical Comission, "Soon after Jerry's Pit filled with water an icehouse was built nearby to store blocks of ice that were cut there each winter. In the 1920s, when ice was no longer harvested from the pond, the insulated buildings were occupied by J. B. Johnson, an ice cream maker.

"From 1946 to 1951, fifteen barracks-like buildings next to the pond provided temporary housing for returning veterans."

The obvious question here is, "Was it really safe for people to be swimming in a former clay pit filled with God-knows-what chemicals and other nasty stuff?"

In 1979, an Alewife Revitalization Plan proposed by the City of Cambridge called for the pond to "be cleaned up and expanded to act as an amenity for nearby W.R. Grace Company development. The pond needs dredging, and its banks need easing and landscaping. It could also be stocked to promote fishing and boating activities."

That never happened, and since W.R. Grace had manufactured chemicals nearby, I assume the company would have borne a significant portion of the cost to clean the pond up. More than 40 years later, IQHQ, a life sciences real estate development company, acquired the former Grace site, with plans to construct new buildings (demolition is under way) and "safely expand public access for the area surrounding Jerry’s Pond," according to a press release the company issued.

Meanwhile, there are "Signs of Life" near the pond.

I'm not sure who is responsible for this collection of signs, which includes ones extolling the virtues of Queen Ann's Lace, butterflies and the varieties of herons in Ethiopia, as well as ones about Haitian Creole vs. French, the distance from the Earth to the moon and information about the Great Wall of China.

Make sure to check back soon for a write-up of my exploration of the IQHQ demolition site, as well as all things Alewife in North Cambridge, from the subway station to the linear path, the surrounding commermcial/residential developments that have sprung up in recent years and much more, all of which abuts or is close to Jerry's Pond and Rindge Avenue.