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Useful Links

The following is a list of links that can help you find out more about historic preservation, local history, architectural history, sustainability, and genealogy. This is not a comprehensive list of available web resources, but it's a useful place to start.

Choose one of the following categories or browse the entire page of links:

• Preservation & History
• Research and Library Links
• Architecture and Building Links
• Sustainability and Weatherization Tips
• Tourism & Community

New:

• GIS StoryMap: The Cambridge African American Heritage Trail
• Cambridge Black Trailblazers, celebrating Black Trailblazers who have made countless contributions to Cambridge history, but whose stories have previously been untold.
• Atlascope, a tool for exploring historic urban maps in metropolitan Boston. From the BPL.

Preservation and History Links

• Cambridge Black History Project (includes Cambridge Black Trailblazers)
• Final Report of the Cambridge Advisory Committee on Public Art, Monuments and Markers (February 2022)
• History Cambridge (formerly Cambridge Historical Society)
  • Digitized Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society (1906-1979)
• Community Preservation Coalition
• Measuring Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation (2011)
• Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities)
• Inner Belt History by Stephen Kaiser
• Magazine Beach Powder Magazine revitalization project blog
• Massachusetts Historical Commission Homepage
  • New: Massachusetts Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit
  • Massachusetts Preservation Projects Fund
  • MACRIS database
• Massachusetts Historical Society
• Mass Moments, a daily almanac of Massachusetts history. A new project by the Mass Foundation for the Humanities.
• National Park Service
  • National Register of Historic Places
  • Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties
  • Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives
  • Historic Preservation Easements
  • Technical Preservation Services
  • Longfellow House / Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site -- Friends of the Longfellow House
  • Teaching with Historic Places
• National Trust for Historic Preservation Homepage
  • Greening Older & Historic Buildings
• Partners for Sacred Places
• Preservation Action
• Preservation Directory
• Preservation Massachusetts 
  • Preservation Directory
• PreserveNet
• Somerville Old House Organization
• Trustees of Reservations

Research and Library Links

• Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society
• American Canadian Genealogical Society
• Atlascope
• Boston Athenaeum
  • online collection of Boston City Directories
• Boston Globe online archival search (free to subscribers)
• Boston Public Library
• BPL's Leventhal Map Center:
  • 1877 birdseye view
  • 1879 birdseye view (East Cambridge)
• Bostonian Society/Boston Historical Society & Museum
• Bridgewater State University: Massachusetts Hall of Black Achievement (African American biographical sketches)
• Brief Biographies of American Architects, Who Died between 1897-1947
• Cambridge Archives Project
• Cambridge Black Trailblazers
• Cambridge Cemetery 617-349-4890
• CHC Library Catalog  
• Cambridge Public Library
  • The Cambridge Room
  • The Cambridge Room, Online Collections Home Page
  • Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection (searchable)
  • Cambridge Directories 1848-1910 searchable
  • City of Cambridge Annual Reports searchable
  • Poll Lists searchable
• Cambridge Women's Heritage Project
• Catholic Genealogy and Cemetery Locations, Archdiocese of Boston website, for info about Catholic Cemetery in North Cambridge; Catholic Cemetery in Watertown (at back of Mt. Auburn Cemetery), 781-322-6300.  Sandbank cemetery (Mt. Auburn Catholic) searchable database.
• Christopher Hail's Cambridge Buildings and Architects database
• Engineering Services, Cambridge Department of Public Works
• Growing Up In North Cambridge journal
• Harvard Crimson online (searchable archives)
• Harvard Map Collection
  • 1833 Wadsworth plan
  • 1854 Walling map
  • 1873 Hopkins atlas
  • 1885/88 Sanborn atlas
  • 1886 Hopkins atlas
  • 1894 Bromley atlas
  • 1900 Sanborn atlas
  • 1903 Bromley atlas
  • 1916 Bromley atlas
• Harvard Archives

• History Cambridge (formerly Cambridge Historical Society)

  • Digitized Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society (1906-1979)
• Library of Congress
  • Sanborn Map Collection
• American Memory Collections
  • America's Story (kids' page)
• Mapjunction
• Mapping Inequality, Redlining in New Deal America
• Massachusetts Archives
  • online Massachusetts vital records database
• Massachusetts General Laws
• Middlesex South Registry of Deeds
• M.I.T. Archives & Special Collections: MIT History
  • MIT Tech newspaper 
  • MIT Technique yearbooks
• Mount Auburn Cemetery, 617-547-7105
• New England Historical and Genealogical Society
• Newspapers and TV News
  • Boston TV News Digital Library
  • Cambridge Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection 
  • Harvard Crimson
  • MIT Tech
• National Archives and Records Administration -- Boston Regional Office
• Paige's History of Cambridge
• Sandbank cemetery (Mt. Auburn Catholic) searchable database.
• Smithsonian SIRIS Database (Art and Sculpture)
• Wardmaps.com
  • 1930 Bromley atlas

Architecture and Building Links

• Boston Society of Architects
• California Office of Historic Preservation/ Window Repair and Retrofit: Studies and Research
• Christopher Hail's Cambridge Buildings and Architects database

• Society of Architectural Historians Homepage

• Brief Biographies of American Architects Who Died Between 1897 and 1947

Sustainability and Weatherization Tips

• CHC Window Guidelines
• "Should Your Old Wood Windows Be Saved?" by Rob Yagid, Fine Homebuilding, May 2010.

• Historic New England on Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

• Preservation Green Lab
  • 10 Ways to Green Your Historic Home
  • Energy Advice for Owners of Older Homes (EPA)
  • Green Home Tips
  • Preserving Historic Wood Windows resources
• National Park Service: Technical Preservation Services on Sustainability
  • Preservation Brief #3: Improving Energy Efficiency in Historic Buildings
  • Illustrated Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings
• Boston Building Resource Center (donate used building materials for re-use rather than sending to landfill)

Tourism & Community

• African American Women of the 19th Century, Cambridge, walking tour
• Cambridge Black History Project (includes Cambridge Black Trailblazers)
• Cambridge Office for Tourism
• Cambridge Women's Heritage Project
• GIS StoryMap: The Cambridge African American Heritage Trail by Lukas Ruschak
• Growing Up In North Cambridge journal
• Historias de Cambridge, Latino immigrant oral history project
• Historic New England
• History Cambridge (formerly Cambridge Historical Society)
• Jane Jacobs Walk
• Longfellow House / Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
• Margaret Fuller Bicentennial, 2010
• Massachusetts Cultural Council
• Mount Auburn Cemetery
• Museum of African American History