Join us in front of the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday for a fun-filled afternoon as we hit the road for the Open Archives 2024: Archives Road trip! This free annual event hosted by the Cambridge Historical Commission invites you to explore the history of our city with the help of archivists from multiple repositories.
What’s on the itinerary?
Family fun: We’ve got scavenger hunts with prizes and unique crafting opportunities. Come make cyanotypes with the Harvard Plate Stacks Collection, color your own Egyptian stained glass with MIT Libraries’ Distinctive Collections or get a free certified copy of your birth certificate from the City Clerk’s Office. With activities and engaging exhibits for Cantabrigians of all ages, it’s a day of fun for the whole family.
Meet the archivists: Chat with the passionate archivists and historians who keep our city’s history alive. They’ll be on hand to answer questions, share stories and give you a peek behind the archival curtain. This year’s event features a dozen of Cambridge’s major archives:
Cambridge Department of Public Works
Get ready to laugh at the bumps and blunders of transportation history in old field books filled with comical tales of bicycles, cars and carriages caught in all sorts of predicaments, highlighting the amusing side of historical transport planning gone awry.
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is a gateway to history, boasting an archival collection that documents generations of the Longfellow family. Alice Longfellow, daughter of the poet, lived in the Cambridge home her entire life and traveled the world from here, including road trips across French communes and the Roman Campagna in the 1910s and 1920s. Journey alongside Alice through her letters, with highlights including her purchase of a custom Rolls-Royce and her experience in France as World War I broke out around her.
History Cambridge
Playing off the theme of “Road Trip,” History Cambridge highlights “staycations” from Cambridge’s past. Historically, Cantabrigians would beat the heat at such places as Jerry’s Pit or Fresh Pond. Explore these well-loved recreation areas through hands-on crafts for all ages.
Harvard Art Museum
The museums’ archives shares stories about fresco-making, art costume parties and the Fogg Museum’s former guard dog, Rex – and supplies a scavenger hunt for Rex’s canine friends in the museum galleries to bring with you on a next visit. Admission is free to all visitors every day.
MIT Libraries’ Distinctive Collections
Take a trip around the world! Learn about Warlpiri, an at-risk Aboriginal Australian language; try your hand at coloring Egyptian stained-glass windows; read letters from Eiichiro Honma, MIT’s first Japanese student; and discover MIT’s connection to the quest to find the Loch Ness monster.
The Schlesinger Library
The Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a special collections library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The collections document diverse women’s lives in Cambridge and across the nation and will share examples of women crossing borders.
Lesley University Archives
The archive showcases materials from the history of Lesley’s Audubon Expedition Institute, which was named one of the “Top 5 Outdoor Education” programs by Backpacker magazine in 2004.
Cambridge Black History Project
This all-volunteer organization of citizen historians with significant professional expertise and deep roots in Cambridge has an Expand Massachusetts Stories Initiative and a mission to research, document, preserve and illuminate the journeys, accomplishments and challenges of Black Cantabrigians and to raise awareness of their stories through educational outreach to the Cambridge community and beyond. Though established in 2017, it is a rejuvenation and evolution of a predecessor organization, the Cambridge African Heritage Trail, founded in 2000.
City Clerk’s Office
Learn about the collections dating from the 1600s, including birth, death, marriage and legislative records. If you were born in Cambridge from 1953 to the present or if your parents lived in Cambridge when you were born, you can get a free certified copy of your birth certificate. If you were born before 1953, you can request a copy and it will be mailed to you. There’s also a raffle giveaway of a $50 Amazon gift card.
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn was founded in 1831 with a dual purpose: to provide practical and respectful burial space for the people of Boston and to welcome visitors from all walks of life to find comfort and inspiration in nature and in a beautiful, designed landscape. Just nine months after the consecration of Mount Auburn, in June 1832, the New England Farmer wrote “Carriages, in great numbers, now pass with ease through every part of the ground and ascend to the summit of the hill. No place in the environs of Boston has been more frequented with visitors, in the pleasant days which have occurred during the month past.” Local and national newspapers described it as “one of the most instructive, magnificent, and pleasant promenades in our country.” The 1848 Boston Directory simply stated: “It should be visited by everyone.”
Harvard Plate Stacks Collection
The Harvard Plate Stacks is the largest archive of analog photography of the visible universe and tells the stories of women pioneering and persisting in science, technology, engineering and math in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At this event, you can create your own cyanotypes of images from the Harvard Plate Stacks collection using the power of the sun!
Historical Commission
Dive into the city’s automotive and travel history, uncover top local hotels, discover car manufacturers and mechanics and revisit iconic drive-ins, all designed to inspire your perfect journey to or from historic Cambridge!
Join us for a journey through time that’s as thrilling as a road trip, but with fewer gas station stops. We promise a drive down memory lane that’s educational and entertaining. Mark your calendars, pack a picnic and let’s make history together! For details, follow the Instagram hashtag #CambridgeOpenArchives and check out our Instagram account @cambridgehistoricalcommission or contact histcomm@cambridgema.gov with questions.
About History Cambridge
History Cambridge started in 1905 as the Cambridge Historical Society. Today we have a new name and a new mission. We engage with our city to explore how the past influences the present to shape a better future. We recognize that every person in our city knows something about Cambridge’s history, and their knowledge matters. We listen to our community and we live by the ideal that history belongs to everyone. Throughout 2024, we are focusing on the history of North Cambridge. Make history with us at historycambridge.org.
History Cambridge is a nonprofit organization. Our activities rely on your financial support. If you value articles like this one, give today.
Viv Williams is archivist for the Cambridge Historical Commission.
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With the layers of new re-zoning that seem to ignore the history of Cambridge, this is a time when one can see what is at stake when it comes to material culture which helps document significant buildings, and why there should be a way to both protect and repurpose them for today’s pressures. American History and historic preservation are serious certified professions (full educational programming, degrees, city planning, documentation) with great influence and should be part of the development discussion as the city moves forward. It is not frivolous or elitist.
It can’t literally be a road trip, since there’s no way to visit this many sites in two hours. I assume it’s actually a bunch of popup exhibits at the library.