The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

[112] To-day, the wall of the Charlesbank of East Cambridge is built, and a beautiful section of river park will at no distant time be there open to the people. To-day, with the exception of a few hundred feet, the entire littoral is in the hands of the people. The progressive improvement of the river's banks under public control will force the wholesome recovery of all the abutting lowlands at private initiative. In the commercial district to the north of Main Street the Binney marshes have given way to a health-giving common, and the obnoxious flats are fast disappearing. Since 1892, the bridge at First Street has been built, and fifteen acres of the adjacent lands have already been reclaimed for settlement; it will be but a short time before the tide is finally driven from this entire quarter. To the south of Main Street, a great section of the ancient shallows, one hundred and twenty acres in extent, has given place to clean uplands, inviting the builders of houses. Beyond, to the west of the railroad, a million feet of the marshes have been raised, and a site for a great athletic campus is made. If all but a tithe of this great work has been done during the past five or six years, what may not be accomplished in its active prosecution within the next decade? There can be now no retrograde action in the treatment of the shores of the beautiful river. The transformation of the desolation that threatened the well-being of the people, that mortally offended the sense of the beautiful, that foreboded a staggering burden of public debt, has so far progressed that the quick consummation of the hopes of the past may be confidently anticipated. Nor will Cambridge be long alone in the labor. Her example must stimulate the great sister city to happy imitation on the south shore of the bay, and hasten the park scheme, covering the upper reaches of the Charles, to completion. When the work is finally completed of devoting this river and its banks far up the stream to the pleasures of the people, and all the menacing lowlands are things of an unhappy past, a great pride will fill the hearts of the people in the possession of so beautiful a spot, and the stranger will come from afar to admire. And Blaxton, could he climb again the high peak of his hermitage, and gaze on the splendid panorama about him, would indeed marvel at the mighty works of those who have come after him.