East Cambridge

This tour is a 90 minute walk through historic East Cambridge, the neighborhood built upon a glacial hill. Discover the place where the continental flag adopted by the 1775 Continental Congress flew first at Fort Putnam during the Revolutionary War and where a beautiful square in the heart of the neighborhood hosts the Charles Bulfinch courthouse and several striking buildings that once comprised the Middlesex County seat. Learn about the complicated Andrew Craigie, considered to be the creator of East Cambridge, and his planning and building strategies that have left a legacy that is still visible today. Historic houses, churches and storefronts hold many stories of the lives lived in this vibrant neighborhood that became home to so many Europeans who immigrated from the beginning of the nineteenth into the twentieth centuries to make East Cambridge one of the nation’s industrial powerhouses that produced the first great glass industry in the country as well as multiple manufacturers of many things, among them: soap, rope, barrels, caskets, firecrackers, steam pumps, hats, furniture and candy.