History Café: “Once Almost an Island”

“Once Almost an Island”: Changes in the East Cambridge Landscape

Thursday, March 27
Doors open at 5 pm
Program from 6-7 pm
First Street Market, 59 First Street
Cash Bar

Over the course of several centuries, the East Cambridge neighborhood has undergone many changes, especially its landscape and topography. Once a “near-island” separated from the rest of Cambridge by rivers and tidal marshes, the area began to change in earnest in the early 1800s, when Andrew Craigie and the Lechmere Point Corporation purchased much of the land, surveyed it, and sold it off as individual parcels for homes and industries. The leveling, grading, and filling that accompanied this process underpinned the neighborhood’s economic, political, and demographic development for the next two hundred years.

Join us for an interactive History Café discussing what East Cambridge looked like before the arrival of English colonists, how its landscape has evolved over the past four centuries, and what those changes mean for the East Cambridge of today.

We’ll be joined by Conrad Crawford and Dennis Carlone.