Appendix B History

appendix The Historic Era The earliest European occupants of the Shawmut penin- Cambridge, lobbied successfully for the construction of the ,-foot B sula and of Cambridge and Charlestown to the north Craigie or Canal Bridge between that point and Leverett Street in Boston. tended to view the Charles River not as a scenic or recre- Further upstream, Cambridge and Brighton were connected by the River ational resource but as an obstacle to efficient movement Street Bridge in and the Western Avenue Bridge in . from town to town. Major improvements in the water- course during the seventeenth century attest to the domi- Population and commerce grew rapidly in the lower portion of the nance of this view. In Boston permitted entrepre- Charles River Basin, and both public officials and industrialists began the neurs to dam the North Cove—for the most part a process of altering the natural configuration of the river, largely in the Tsaltwater marsh separated from the Charles by a causeway visible only at interests of commercial and municipal development. One of the earliest low tide—and then build a canal to harness the ebb and flow of ocean such projects was the stone dam built in upstream of Galen Street at tides in order to power grist and saw mills. In the long causeway the fall line. The first land-making project in the West End of Boston known as the Great Bridge, the first bridge to span the Charles and thus was the construction of a seawall near Leverett Street and filling behind it to connect Boston and the region to the north, was built over mud flats to create land for Boston’s new almshouse between and . and salt marshes on the site of the present Anderson Bridge near Harvard Ropewalks lined the shore between Charles Street and the river by . Square. Until , when the Charles River Basin was created, the history of both History the Cambridge and Boston shorelines is one of constant efforts to con- Boston remained sparsely populated through the seventeenth and much vert the mud flats and marshes to dry land. Most of the new land was of the eighteenth centuries, but both population and commerce began to claimed by industrial and transportation interests like the Boston and accelerate after the American Revolution. Population grew from , in Lowell Railroad, whose depot was built on made land in . Twenty to , in . In the completion of the Charles River Bridge— years later the Grand Junction Railroad laid tracks on an embankment a private ,-foot toll bridge that stood on oak piers and crossed the and built a route from the Boston & Albany Railroad in Brookline 167 river just downstream of the present Charlestown Bridge—was com- through Cambridge, Somerville and Everett to the wharves in East pleted. Other bridges quickly followed, including the West Boston Boston; percent of its track ran over mud flats and marshes that entre- Bridge, a ,-foot causeway supported by piers that crossed the river preneurs filled over time. and broad salt marshes between Cambridge Street in Boston’s West End to Main Street in Cambridge in . It reduced the distance between The Back Bay, originally a vast tidal backwash that separated the Cambridge and Boston from eight miles to three and one-half. Sixteen Boston peninsula from the town of Brookline, was also an early site of years later Andrew Craigie, developer of Lechmere’s Point in East industrial development. In the Boston and Roxbury Mill appendix Corporation completed the .-mile Great Dam Institutions were also attracted by the river. river by annexing what became the Public along the present line of Beacon Street from In the Massachusetts General Hospital Garden to Boston Common and mandating Charles Street to Sewell’s Point in Brookline; chose a site in the West End on the verge of the that it be “forever kept open and free of build- toll-supported Western Avenue ran along the river’s mud flats, and in the Charles Street ings of any kind, for the use of the citizens.” B top. The dam enclosed acres of the Back Jail was built on made land next to the West Bay and created power for milling operations. Boston Bridge nearby. A military presence had In Scottish expatriate Robert Fleming Further upstream, the Brighton Abattoir was been established during the Revolution, when Gourlay advanced this more public view of the granted exclusive rights in for all cattle Cottage Farm and Fort Washington in Cambridge river in his “General Plan for Enlarging and slaughtering within a six-mile radius of Boston, were the site of batteries; it was strengthened on Improving the City of Boston.” Gourlay’s plan and acquired acres along the river. the Cambridge side when the state built a pow- would have filled the Charles’s mud flats to cre- der magazine in at Captain’s Island, now ate a public garden, built islands in the river to The industrial development of shoreline land part of Magazine Beach. Upstream the federal make a water park, and constructed boulevards in Cambridge was pursued with equal intensity. government established the Watertown Arsenal on both sides of the river. The plan was never By the Cambridge Proprietors had per- on the banks of the Charles in . The char- implemented, but its prescient recommenda- suaded the federal government to designate acter of the river was transformed when Harvard tions made their way into other plans that Cambridge an official United States port of University, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- ultimately were. entry and had begun to fill marshes and lay out nology, and Boston University determined to lots for industrial development. A system of locate on the river early in the twentieth century. By mid-century pollution problems along canals was also built in Cambridgeport with the the length of the basin had grown more seri- History hope that this industrial part of the city could ven as industries and institutions ous. Historian Walter Muir Whitehill noted compete successfully with the rest of Boston claimed much shoreline land, planners that the shore “was marred by industries merely Harbor and other East Coast ports. In on both sides of the river projected a in search of cheap land” and waterpower; the Cambridge Improvement Company trans- more public role for the Charles. As “squalid hovels, dump heaps and other nui- formed a muddy backwater in East Cambridge Eearly as Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy had sances” made it additionally unseemly. Indus- 168 into the Lechmere Canal for industrial use. In expressed concern over the dumping of residen- trial sewage and effluvia, especially from the the legislature authorized the construction tial and industrial waste into the tidal Charles. slaughterhouses, made the river unsafe and of the Harvard Bridge between West Chester As population and development exploded in extremely unpleasant at low tide. Park in Boston and Massachusetts Avenue in the s, the twice-daily tides were no longer Cambridge. The Charles River Embankment capable of flushing the river of sewage, and the By the first plans for filling the marshes Company also built granite seawalls on the stench of its mud flats at low tide grew intolera- behind the Great Dam (or Mill Dam, now river’s north shore as part of an effort to fill ble. At high tide the river was little more than Beacon Street) were advanced. In the state, the marshes and create developable land. diluted sewage filled with “floating putrescible the city of Boston, and private owners reached materials.” Quincy begin an effort to stem com- an agreement to remove the industrial develop- mercial and industrial development along the ments in the Back Bay in favor of filling the appendix area to end the public health problem and cre- and railroad bridges near the mouth of the river had come to be valued more highly. In the ate a new and fashionable residential district for had greatly impeded the ability of commercial firm of famed landscape designer Frederick Law the overcrowded peninsula. By then the dam vessels to navigate the channel. The Charles Olmsted proposed a plan for The Charlesbank had become a popular promenade, and the River Improvement Commission, created to in Boston’s West End that emphasized outdoor value of the river as scenery had begun to take consider the construction of a dam across the recreation. The firm envisioned a series of recre- B hold. Informal teams of students and clubs Charles, addressed the problem in its first ational spaces for such activities as quoits and began racing on the river as early as the s. report of . “The stream, which was once the gymnastics, then a popular import from In filling of the tidal flats began in earnest, only highway of the district, is become the Germany. The Charlesbank embraced almost and by the late s acres of land, still principal obstacle in many highways,” the com- twenty-six acres at the foot of the West End known as the Back Bay, were created. mission stated. “The bridges have been multi- slope. Five years later the firm completed a park plied until there are now twelve ordinary plan for Cambridge, advocated linking Boston’s Inspired by the Back Bay, Cambridge began bridges and five railroad structures crossing the riverside to the Olmsted-designed “Emerald to fill marshes on the north side of the river river and still there are not enough. the rail- Necklace,” and advised damming the Charles beginning in and laid out a grand boule- road bridges [near the Charlestown Bridge] downstream to create a freshwater basin for vard for a residential district, modeled on the have been widened of late years until they now boating and swimming.

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