Historical Cambridge MA Walking Tour (Self Guided), Boston

Completed in 1878, Memorial Hall is one of the older buildings on campus. Memorial Hall was funded by alumni who wanted a memorial on campus to honor Harvard men who fought and died for the Union during the Civil War. The building was designed by alumni William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt.

The building has a High Victorian Gothic design. The tower reaches 195 feet, making this an imposing and distinctive structure. The building has three portions: Annenberg Hall (originally known as Alumni Hall), Memorial Transept, and Sanders Theatre.

Annenberg Hall is a large open space that has mostly served as a dining hall. It is lined with pictures and sculptures of distinguished alumni and serves as a space of inspiration for students.

The Memorial Transept is the heart of the building. It has a marble floor and a towering 60-foot high gothic vault. It features black walnut paneling and stenciled walls, and large stained glass windows adorn the space above each exterior door. There are 28 white tablets engraved with the names of alumni who died fighting for the Union during the Civil War.

Sander's Theatre was modeled on Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theatre. This part of Memorial Hall was completed in 1875. It has a seating capacity of 1,000 people and has been praised for its acoustics. It hosts lectures, classes, concerts, and ceremonies. Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt have spoken in this theatre.

The Harvard Art Museum comprises three sub-museums; the oldest and best-loved being the Fogg which houses a rich display of paintings and sculptures that you really must see.

In this wonderful museum, you will find examples of 19th/20th-century Western decorative art, paintings, photos, prints and sculptures, as well as drawings dating back to the Middle Ages. You can admire drawings and paintings from the Italian Early Renaissance, British Pre-Raphaelite, and French and American art.

The Maurice Wertheim collection displays Impressionist and Post-impressionist works by Cézanne, Degas, Picasso, Manet, Van Gogh, and Matisse.

The Grenville L. Winthrop collection plays an important role in research and teaching programmes. This impressive collection includes drawings, paintings and sculptures by notable artists such as Blake, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Sargent and Rodin among many others.

You will also see a lovely collection of silverware made of Neo-classical arts and crafts silver and antique furniture, including a 17th-century Essex County chair, an original Harvard school desk, and an 18th-century intricately carved writing desk.

Why You Should Visit:
Basically an art history textbook you can walk through because each room has an overview of the period and each work has a concise explanation of why it's relevant.
The works on display are incredibly well-lighted and the flow from one room to the next is effortless in a building anchored by an atrium that reaches to the sky.

Tip:
Make sure to join to the guided tour which educates and illuminates the experience.

Opening Hours:
Daily: 10am-5pm

Harvard Square sees over eight million visitors a year. It's not only a hotspot for university students taking a break from their studies, but it's also a cultural melting pot, offering visitors an appetizing taste of everything.

This eclectic place is a wonderful setting to grab a coffee, browse through a bookstore, or listen to folk music.

There are restaurants to suit any taste, with cuisines from around the world. You can find Japanese, American, Italian, Middle Eastern, and Korean foods here. In nice weather, sit outside in a beer garden or outside on the street. Daedelus features a rooftop bar that's heated in the winter so that you can enjoy it year-round. At Santouka Ramen, you can sit at a communal table and feast.

Arthouse theaters play independent movies and show first-rate plays. For those seeking a challenge, the outdoor chess sets are also popular.

Street performers are usually entertaining in the square. Kids might be trying their hand at chalk street art. If you find yourself here after dark, there's good nightlife, great bars, and constant live music.

Check your calendar; you might get lucky and be in Harvard Square for a festival event; Winter Carnival, Chinese New Year, Mayfair, and Sparklefest gatherings are memorable ways to celebrate the seasons.

Known initially as the King's Highway and then Tory Row – ahead of the American Revolutionary War, Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA has been one of the finest residential streets in the U.S. for over 200 years. Today, the street is a home to many historic buildings, including the modernist glass-and-concrete edifice that once housed the Design Research store, and a Georgian mansion where George Washington and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet, both resided (although at different times). Also on this street, in Elmwood House, centuries later lived another American poet, Robert Lowell.

In 1775, George Washington settled on Brattle Street and established his army headquarters in the abandoned mansions of seven wealthy loyalists – all of which have survived. In 1913, Samuel Atkins Eliot wrote about the seven Colonial mansions of Brattle Street's "Tory Row," calling 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.”

Laden with stories of Puritanical trials, British Loyalists, and poetic talent mixed with beautiful architecture and well-manicured green space, over the centuries, Brattle Street has the given the world – courtesy of its residents – baking powder, Fig Newtons, Polaroid cameras, and Sadie Hawkins Day. Quite a remarkable achievement for just one street!

Just a few blocks away from Harvard Square, stands a historic house that weaves two prominent figures in American history into the same home. Originally, the property was built in 1759 for John Vassall, who fled the Cambridge area at the outset of the American Revolutionary War because of his loyalty to the king of England.

Later, for almost 50 years, this was the home of noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, while previously, for a time, it had served as the headquarters of George Washington. The last family to live here were the Longfellows, and it was here that Longfellow wrote Hiawatha and Evangeline. In 1972, the home was made part of the National Park Service.

Notably, all furnishings within the house are not reproductions or period pieces, but the real deal from Longfellow's days. Filled with the family's possessions, the house makes it feel as if the Longfellows have just stepped out for a walk in their cute little garden outside – the lovely, peaceful spot out back filled with greens and flowers with a pergola to sit for a rest. The first floor is totally intact from Longfellow's time including his personal belongings – the poet's writing desk and papers are there to see, like he was working on a poem just now.

Rather than rope off the rooms, the house has carpet runners that the guides ask you to honor. Wise!

The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House is a historic Colonial American house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the second-oldest house in the city. Now headquarters for the Cambridge Historical Society, the house was originally built in 1685 by Dr. Richard Hooper as a typical "first-period" farmhouse, although its ceilings were plastered, which was unusual for a modest dwelling. When Hooper died in 1691, his wife took in boarders and the property eventually started to fall into disrepair.

She in turn died in 1701, and the house continued its decline until 1717, when it was inherited by Hooper's son, Dr. Henry Hooper, who added a lean-to and rebuilt the chimney with cooking ovens. In 1733, he sold the house to Cornelius Waldo, who added a third story and wooden quoins at the corners. Waldo also installed larger windows. The result was a house that looked thoroughly Georgian. The property is open for tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2 and 3 pm.

Elmwood, also known as the Oliver-Gerry-Lowell House, is a registered historic house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for its several prominent former residents, including: Andrew Oliver (1706–74), royal Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814), signer of the US Declaration of Independence whose political tactics earned the term gerrymandering, and Vice President of the United States; and James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), noted American writer, poet, and foreign diplomat. It is now the residence of the President of Harvard University.

The house was built in 1767 by Thomas Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts for a short period until he was forced to resign in September 1774. Although parts of Elmwood's interior have been altered, its exterior has not changed greatly over the years. It is a large, square, clapboarded structure in Georgian style with brick-lined walls and two interior chimneys.

Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain. An oasis from the storm of Crazy Intense Cambridge, Massachusetts, this 174-acre cemetery reminds of Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, with notable celebrities buried here, and is important both for its historical aspects and its role as an arboretum.

The area is a favorite location for Cambridge bird-watchers and houses a collection of over 5,500 trees, including nearly 700 species and varieties. Thousands of very well-kept shrubs and herbaceous plants weave through the cemetery's hills, ponds, woodlands, and clearings. The cemetery contains more than 10 miles of roads and many paths. As a sign of respect for the buried, no running/jogging is allowed on the grounds, only walking.

Upon arrival, make sure to stop by the chapel (there are two historic chapels in the area worth visiting) and pick up a map, if you want to find some important graves – as this can be difficult sometimes, because the markings are not distinct. Also, there are audio tapes available for self tours. At the end, you might want to climb to the top of the Tower and have a 360° look of the surroundings.