Sir Richard’s Landing
We recently spent time at the Mt. Auburn Hospital and found ourselves in a room with a scenic view of the Charles River along Memorial Drive. An occasional sculler glided along the Charles in the early morning, a walker or runner followed the path by the river on some of the milder days, and we could see buildings on the Boston skyline reflecting the rose-colored light of winter sunsets.
We were impressed by conscientious and caring members of the medical staff and observed the camaraderie and team effort among the doctors and nurses during our two visits to the emergency room. While some of that positive behavior and collegiality may be a result of the smaller size of the hospital, administration is usually responsible for setting the tone of an organization, and this experience also seemed to reflect Mount Auburn’s mission statement of “Competence with Compassion.” Looking into the history of the hospital, I found that it was established in 1886 as the Cambridge Hospital, the first hospital in the city, housed in the red brick Parsons Building that faces Mount Auburn Street.
The history of the area around the hospital began in 1630 with the arrival of Sir Richard Saltonstall and Congregational minister George Phillips who sailed from England on the Arbella and proceeded up the Charles river in a rowboat with orders from Massachusetts’ first governor Winthrop to found a church and establish a community of believers. They docked at the bottom of a high bluff where the fresh water of the Charles River mingled with the tidal water of the Atlantic, “…winding its way among marshes and making a wide lake as far as [the town we now call] Brighton..,” 1 This event is memorialized with an engraving on a small stone along the river behind the Mount Auburn Hospital and in front of the Cambridge Boat Club next to the Eliot Bridge and also on a metal sign posted in front of a wooden fence bordering a walkway along Mount Auburn Street (Route 16), a short distance from the Mount Auburn Cemetery.
During the 1630s Watertown and neighboring Newtowne were founded (the latter renamed “Cambridge” in 1635). In later years, the Richard Saltonstall landing site was incorporated into Cambridge and many years later was called Gerry’s Landing after nearby resident Eldridge Gerry, a former Revolutionary soldier and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Gerry served two terms as governor of Massachusetts with a little help from changes in the boundaries of one of the state districts in Essex county (a relative claimed that he had reluctantly signed the redistricting bill put before him by his Republican party). At that time, a political cartoonist for the newspaper of the opposing Federalist party drew a cartoon of the county, noting that its outline resembled a salamander and came up with the term “gerry-mander,” and so the word became a part of our lexicon. Later, Gerry would become Vice President under James Madison.
When not in Washington, Gerry lived out his life in Cambridge in a lovely Victorian home at 33 Elmwood Avenue. Noted writer James Russell Lowell also lived at “Elmwood,” and today it is on the list of the National Historical Landmark District in Cambridge.
Later there would be major changes where once the waters of the estuary nearby had risen and fallen with the tides. With the building of more homes, the high bluff was lowered, land fill was added to the river (a common activity in the Boston area from its earliest days) creating most of the riverbank we have today, and the first Charles River Dam in 1910 was constructed, preventing tidal water from flowing upriver. The Charles River has undergone many changes as people’s needs and desires have literally shaped its course.
Also in the “neighborhood” of Sir Richard’s Landing site is another road that borders the Charles River from Route 2 to Arsenal Street – Greenough Boulevard. This four-lane road was constructed in 1965 when automakers ruled and the trolley tracks in some areas of Boston were being torn up to facilitate car travel. As this road has never had heavy use, and drivers tend to speed along its one-mile course, past the last remaining wetland within the Charles River basin, a project has been undertaken to “narrow” the road and create more space and a safer pathway for pedestrians and cyclists. The future Greenough Greenway is expected to open in the spring of 2016 with the addition of new plantings along the contours of the land that will provide better vistas of the river and a safe walkway through the Mount Auburn Cemetery all the way to Fresh Pond in Cambridge.
Where Greenough Greenway, Mount Auburn Street, Route 2, and Memorial Drive (Route 3 in this area) all converge, there is also Gerry’s Landing Road, one that I have trouble locating even though it comes up on my GPS. I do know that the Cambridge Boat Club is numbered “2 Gerry’s Landing Road,” the street name on a sign in front of the building, and that the Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols school has “900 Gerry’s Landing Road” as its address. Recently, I even came across an online real estate posting about a home on Gerry’s Landing Road that had sold for $3 million dollars!
So it could be said that a number of changes have occurred near Sir Richard’s landing site.
1 The history of this area was located in an online publication by the Cambridge Historical Society “Gerry’s Landing and Its Neighborhood” presented by a Mary Isabella Gozzaldi, in 1918, then published in print form in 1925. She talks about some of the families who lived there.
2 Memorial Drive was named in honor of veterans from the first World War.
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