Cambridge, MA—A City of Squares

Cambridge has also been called the "City of Squares" by some, as most of its commercial districts are major street intersections known as squares. Each of the squares acts as something of a neighborhood center.

• Kendall Square
• Central Square
• Harvard Square
• Porter Square
• Inman Square
• Lechmere Square

Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England. Cambridge is most famous for the two prominent universities that call it home: Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 101,355. It is the fifth most populous city in the state.

Cambridge History

Cambridge was established in 1630 as the town of Newetowne (written in some accounts as Newe Towne). Located at the first convenient Charles River crossing west of Boston, Newetowne was one of a number of towns (including Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, and Weymouth) founded by the 700 original Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under governor John Winthrop. The original village site is in the heart of today's Harvard Square. The marketplace where farmers brought in crops to sell from surrounding towns survives today as the small park at the corner of J.F.K. and Winthrop Streets, then at the edge of a salt marsh, since filled. The town included a much larger area than the present city, with various outlying parts becoming independent towns over the years: Newton (originally Cambridge Village, then Newtown) in 1688, Lexington (Cambridge Farms) in 1712, and both Arlington (originally Menotomy) and Brighton (Little Cambridge) in 1807. Brighton was later annexed by Boston.

Source: Wikipedia

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