Brattle Street (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, called the "King's Highway" or "Tory Row

Tory Row

Tory Row is the nickname historically given by some to the part of Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts where many Loyalists had mansions at the time of the American Revolutionary War, and given by others to seven Colonial mansions along Brattle Street...

" before the American Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

, is the site of many buildings of historic interest, including the modernist glass-and-concrete building that housed the Design Research store

Design Research (store)

Design Research or D/R was an innovative retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts; later it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States; it went bankrupt in 1978...

,
and a Georgian mansion where George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

both lived (though at different times.) Samuel Atkins Eliot

Samuel Atkins Eliot

Samuel Atkins Eliot, A.M., D.D. was an American Unitarian clergyman, son of Charles W. Eliot and grandson of Samuel Atkins Eliot, the politician. For more on his lineage see the Eliot family....

, writing in 1913 about the seven Colonial mansions of Brattle Street's "Tory Row," called the area "not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most historic streets in America." "As a fashionable address it is doubtful if any other residential street in this country has enjoyed such long and uninterrupted prestige."

Origins of Brattle Street as a forest path

Even before the settlement known as "Newe Towne" was planted on the site of the modern Cambridge, at the first good Charles River

Charles River

The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...

crossing west of Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, the path or trail from Charlestown to Watertown

Watertown, Massachusetts

The Town of Watertown is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 31,915 at the 2010 census.- History :Archeological evidence suggests that Watertown was inhabited for thousands of years before the arrival of settlers from England...

ran past the site of the current Harvard Square

Harvard Square

Harvard Square is a large triangular area in the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Street. It is the historic center of Cambridge...

and westward along much of what is now Brattle Street.

In early 17th century Newe Towne, according to historian John Fiske

John Fiske

John Fiske was an American philosopher and historian.-Biography:John Fiske was born Edmund Fiske Green at Hartford, Connecticut, March 30, 1842. He was the only child of Edmund Brewster Green, of Smyrna, Delaware, and Mary Fiske Bound, of Middletown, Connecticut...

, "On the north side of Braintree Street, opposite Dunster, and thence eastward about as far as opposite the site of Linden, stood a row of six houses, and at their back was the ancient forest. Through this forest ran the trail or path from Charlestown to Watertown, nearly coinciding with the crooked line Kirkland - Mason - Brattle - Elmwood - Mount Auburn; this was the first highway from the seaboard into the inland country." Where the current Ash Street intersects the current Brattle Street stood Newe Towne's West Gate, a palisaded fence to keep cattle out of the town.

Eighteenth-century Brattle Street and "Tory Row"

During the 18th century, seven mansions were built along the main road to Watertown (which included not only the modern Brattle Street but also what is now Elmwood Avenue). Because many of their owners were Loyalists during the American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

, these houses got the nickname "Tory Row". During and after the Revolution, many were confiscated by George Washington's army. Some of these were, however, later restored to the families of their former owners.

Even as the Tory Row mansions were being built, however, the forest remained a nearby presence in Cambridge. As late as 1759, a Harvard student writing home reported "many bears killed at Cambridge and the neighboring towns about this time, and several persons killed by them." In the same year, 1759, the house at 105 Brattle Street was built, of which more below.

Provincial militia leader William Brattle, at one time the wealthiest man in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...

, is thought to be the Brattle for whom the street was named. He had the house at 42 Brattle Street

William Brattle House

The William Brattle House is an historic house at 42 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of the seven Colonial mansions described by historian Samuel Atkins Eliot as making up Tory Row.-History:...

built for him in 1727. Brattle tried to keep peace between patriots and the British, but after the 1774 incident known as the Powder Alarm

Powder Alarm

The Powder Alarm was a massive popular reaction to the removal of gunpowder from a magazine by British soldiers under orders from General Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, on September 1, 1774...

, an angry mob surrounded his house and forced him to flee.

The Baroness Riedesel

Frederika Charlotte Riedesel

Frederika Charlotte Louise von Massow, Baroness Riedesel zu Eisenbach was the wife of General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel of Brunswick. She accompanied him during the Saratoga Campaign in the American Revolutionary War and kept a journal of the campaign.-Early life:Frederika was born in 11 July 1746...

, whose husband commanded the Brunswick regiments that supported the British, spent much of the wartime "imprisoned" at 149 Brattle Street, the old Tory Row mansion now commonly called the Lechmere-Sewall-Riedesel House. She has left a charming painting in words of the Tory society on Brattle Street before the Revolution came: "Never had I chanced upon such an agreeable situation. Seven families, who were connected with each other, partly by the ties of relationship and partly by affection, had here farms, gardens, and magnificent houses, and, not far off, plantations of fruit. The owners of these were in the habit of daily meeting each other in the afternoons, now at the house of one and now at another, and making themselves merry with music and the dance,— living in prosperity, united and happy, until, alas! this ruinous war separated them, and left all their houses desolate, except two, the proprietors of which were also soon obliged to flee."

105 Brattle Street, Washington, and the Longfellows

Another Loyalist who fled Cambridge in 1774 was John Vassall, owner of the handsome yellow Georgian house at 105 Brattle Street, built for him in 1759. This vacant house was turned over in 1775 to George Washington

George Washington

, who took command of the Continental Army

Continental Army

The Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in...

there. Washington used the rooms at the building's southeast corner, upstairs and down, for his private apartments, where his wife Martha Washington joined him in December, 1775. Washington lived in the house until July 1776.

In the summer of 1837, a young Harvard professor named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

began renting some rooms in the house at 105 Brattle Street, now being run as a boarding house by the widow of Andrew Craigie, Washington's Apothecary General. Longfellow proudly wrote to a friend, "I live in a great house which looks like an Italian villa: have two large rooms opening into each other. They were once Gen. Washington's chambers".

In 1843, Longfellow was given the house as a wedding gift by his father-in-law Nathan Appleton

Nathan Appleton

Nathan Appleton was an American merchant and politician.- Biography :Appleton was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, the son of Isaac Appleton and his wife Mary Adams. Appleton's father was a church deacon, and Nathan was brought up in "strictest form of Calvinistic Congregationalism." He was...

, when Longfellow married Nathan's daughter Frances. The price of the house at that time was $10,000. Longfellow's wife Frances, also called Fanny, was the first American woman to receive anesthesia during childbirth, giving birth in the house at 105 Brattle Street.

Longfellow and his wife Frances had two sons as well as the three daughters memorialized in his 1860 poem "The Children's Hour

The Children's Hour (poem)

"The Children's Hour" is an 1860 poem first published by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the September 1860 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The poem describes the poet's idyllic family life with his own three daughters, Alice, Edith, and Anne Allegra: "grave Alice, and laughing...

" as "grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair." All three daughters later had houses on Brattle Street, Alice inheriting her parents' home while Allegra and Edith had stylish homes built for them, at 113 and 115 Brattle Street, respectively, in 1887.

Brattle Street in the 19th century

During the early days of the 19th century, Brattle Street saw just a few houses added to the "Tory Row" mansions on its northern side, while the south side was still "meadow-land and orchards."

Between 1805 and 1812, a decision was made and finally carried out to straighten the end of Brattle Street, where it joins Mount Auburn Street, renaming a part of the original Tory Row "Elmwood Avenue." As a result, the Brattle Street of today is different from the original Watertown highway, whose original route went along what is now Elmwood Avenue. This is why "Elmwood

Elmwood

-Places:Canada*Elmwood, Winnipeg, Manitoba*Elmwood , provincial electoral district in Manitoba*Elmwood—Transcona, federal electoral district in Manitoba*Elmwood, a community in West Grey, Ontario*Elmwood, Edmonton, Edmonton, Alberta...

," one of the seven original Tory Row mansions ("on Elmwood Avenue, then a part of the Watertown highway, which here made a sharp serpentine sweep to the southward, lived Lieutenant-Governor Oliver") no longer has a Brattle Street address.

James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...

, writing in 1868, conjured up Brattle Street (the "Old Road") as it was in the 1830s, seen from the top of a hill near where Mount Auburn Hospital stands now:

On your right, the Charles slipped smoothly through green and purple salt-meadows, darkened, here and there, with the blossoming black-grass as with a stranded cloud-shadow. Over these marshes, level as water, but without its glare, and with softer and more soothing gradations of perspective, the eye was carried to a horizon of softly-rounded hills. To your left hand, upon the Old Road, you saw some half-dozen dignified old houses of the colonial time, all comfortably fronting southward. If it were early June, the rows of horse-chestnuts along the fronts of these houses showed, through every crevice of their dark heap of foliage, and on the end of every drooping limb, a cone of pearly flowers, while the hill behind was white or rosy with the crowding blooms of various fruit-trees. There is no sound, unless a horseman clatters over the loose planks of the bridge.

As the 19th century lengthened, Brattle Street continued to attract wealthy families who built houses in the newest architectural styles, such as Greek Revival (#112 built in 1846), Stick style (#92, built in 1881), and Colonial Revival (#115, built in 1887). The Shingle style Mary Fiske Stoughton House at 90 Brattle Street has been called "the best suburban wooden house in America ... comparable only to the finest of Frank Lloyd Wright's."

Brattle Street after 1900

In 1969, the architect owners of the Design Research store

Design Research (store)

created a four-story glass and concrete Modernist building at 48 Brattle Street to showcase the Scandinavian

Scandinavians

Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...

clothing and housewares they had been selling on Brattle Street since 1953.

During the summer months, Harvard Square