A Brief History of Arlington

A Brief History of Arlington Fifty thousand years ago, Arlington was covered by glaciers almost a mile deep. As the glaciers melted, starting about 15,000 years ago, they left kettle holes, depressions that filled with water. Kettle holes in Arlington include Spy Pond and the Mystic Lakes. The Massachusetts tribe of Native Americans, a part of the Algonquin tribe, lived near the Mystic Lakes and Alewife Brook. They (and later the colonists) cut down most of the forests in this area for agriculture and to improve hunting. They called this land “menotomy,’ meaning “swift, running water.” A woman named Squaw Sachem was the leader of the tribe at the time that colonists arrived. She eventually sold the land of her tribe to the colonists for ten pounds and the provision that she could remain on her homestead land around the Mystic Lakes to continue hunting and farming. She also was to be given a new winter coat of wool each year for the rest of her life. The waters of the Mill Brook were an important resource to early settlers who used its power in gristmills and sawmills. Caption George Cooke built the first water-powered mill in 1637 to grind corn into flour. Because the only other local mill was a windmill in Watertown, which would work only during an east wind, Cooke’s mill brought farmers from many other towns to Menotomy. Some of the first roads in Menotomy led to Cooke’s mill. Today, nothing remains of this mill. The Schwamb Mill (1650) however, stands as a relic of this early settlement. It is active today, manufacturing oval wooden picture frames. The area retained the name Menotomy throughout the revolutionary period until it was renamed West Cambridge upon being set off as a separate town in 1807. The Revolutionary War was fought around and through what is now Arlington. A number of homesteads still stand in town from this period. Information and self-guided tours can be found at the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center and from the Historical Society. Most of the fighting on the first day of the war, April 19, 1775, took place here in Menotomy. Almost half of the forty-nine Minutemen who were killed on that day fell during the fighting here. Benjamin Locke was the captain of the local Minutemen company. His house still stands on Appleton Street (the former route of the main east-west thoroughfare, now called Massachusetts Avenue). Locke fought at Bunker Hill as well, and his gun is preserved at the Jason Russell House. The Jason Russell House, on Jason Street, was the site of the bloodiest encounter of the day. Bullet holes can still be seen in the house. Reenactments of this fight take place in alternate years shortly before Patriot’s Day celebration in April. The Old Burial Ground contains the headstones of Arlington’s first settlers and Revolutionary patriots. It is located behind the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church at the corner of Pleasant Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Uncle Sam, the national symbol of the United States, was a real person named Samuel Wilson, born in Menotomy in 1766. He was eight years old when Paul Revere rode by on his midnight ride. Wilson left Menotomy at the age of nineteen and eventually settled in Troy, New York. There he became a meatpacker for the U.S. Army in the war of 1812. By marking his casks of meat with the “U.S.” stamp, he became immortalized as Uncle Sam. A statue of Samuel Wilson can be found near the corner of Mystic Street and Massachusetts Avenue, near the site of his boyhood home. Through the 1800’s, the population in West Cambridge (as it was known until 1867) increased as the area became known for its market gardens. These gardens, along with the coming of the railroad in 1846, allowed the fertile Mill Brook Valley to supply much produce to the City of Boston and other east coast towns. A few market gardens remain in Arlington even to this day. Greenhouse gardening was introduced in 1880 by Warren Rawson. Using steam heat and electric lights, greenhouses greatly extended the growing season. In the winter, the cutting of ice on Spy Pond was also a major business, exporting ice to all parts of the world. The influx of immigrants to the Boston area added further to the growing settlement of the area. Saint Agnes Church, this area’s first Catholic parish division from Cambridge, was built by such immigrants around 1870 as their compatriots faced famine and strife in Europe. Our town is known as the site of the first public children’s library in the country. Through a $100 bequest from Dr Ebenezar Learned, who taught in Menotomy to earn his tuition for Harvard, this library was opened in 1835. The first librarian was Jonathan Dexter. His home, where the books were kept, was demolished in 1975 to make a parking lot for the now-defunct Arlington Five Cents Savings Bank (see plaque in Arlington Center). In 1837, with a $30 appropriation from the town for the purchase of adult books, adults could also become library patrons. The town library, which had been housed in various quarters, moved to its current site in 1892 when Maria Robbins gave the beautiful Italian Renaissance building to the town as a memorial to her husband as Eli. A recent addition and extensive renovation, completed in 1994, has increased the value of the library to the town. Over the years, the Robbins family gave the town several other Important buildings and properties including the Town Hall, the Whittemore-Robbins House, Robbins Farm on Eastern Avenue and the garden between the Town Hall and the library. This garden was redesigned by the Olmstead Brothers in 1939. Its focal point is the Dallin sculpture “Menotomy Indian Hunter” kneeling to get a drink of water from the small stream. In 1867, the Town changed its name to Arlington in honor of the fallen heroes of the Civil War buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This change was celebrated on May 1, 1867 with a huge parade, a banquet for 800 at which speeches were made by the state governor and others and a “regatta upon the lake.” The local Illustrated Newspaper reported that “the ceremonies throughout the day were marked by good taste and decorum, and the whole affair was as enjoyable as it was unique.” The beauty of Arlington, its hills and bodies of water, has attracted and continues to attract many artists, poets and sculptors. Most noted of these was Cyrus E. Dallin, an internationally known sculptor. For forty-four years, beginning in 1900, Dallin lived and worked in Arlington, producing a number of famous statues including “Appeal to the Great Spirit” in front of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and “Paul Revere” behind the Old North Church in Boston. Many of his Arlington neighbors served as models for his work. He acquired an interest in Native Americans through playing with them as children in his native Utah. He moved to Boston to apprentice himself to a respected local sculptor. Upon his death in November 1944, the New York Times called Dallin “the Dean of New England sculptors.” The town of Arlington owns 24 pieces of Dallin’s work and has an ongoing effort to preserve them and to establish a museum to house his works. As Arlington has grown, so has its form of government. Originally, the Town was governed by an open town meeting, where any man over age twenty-one could attend and voice his opinions. In 1920, this was changed to a representative town meeting. Now open to any woman or man aged eighteen or over, today’s Town Meetings still maintain the flavor of an earlier era, as any resident of the Town may be elected to add his/her voice to the operation of Town Government. Even residents who are not elected members may address the meeting. In 1952, Arlington adopted the “Town Manager” form of government. This ensures that our Town will be run on a daily basis by a full-time professional manager who reports to the Board of Selectmen. The post World War II period was one of tremendous growth for Arlington. The last remaining farms were subdivided and new houses sprouted everywhere. The increased population brought the demand for new schools, including the Dallin, Stratton, Thompson and Bishop elementary schools as well as the construction of many new streets. Due to a sentiment that higher-density developments would broaden the tax base, zoning changes were enacted allowing the construction of high-rise apartment buildings in many locations. By the early 1970s, it became apparent to many citizens that this trend, if left unchecked, would destroy not only many of the Town’s finest older buildings but also the ambiance and scale of its established neighborhoods. The Zoning By-Law, first enacted in 1924 and amended in a more or less haphazard manner as the occasion demanded, was completely revised in 1975 with zoning districts established to reflect extant uses and areas of desired development. By 1979, amendments were approved by Town Meeting to restrict new residential development to five stories. The subsequent acceptance of historic districts and the organization of active neighborhood groups encourage the preservation of residential areas at their present scale and density. .

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