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The oldest road in Cambridge.
When a visitor to the classic shades stands in front of the
Hemenway Gymnasium and looks down Kirkland street, bordered with its elms, quiet, retired, homelike, he little realizes that he is looking upon the oldest street in
Cambridge and upon one of warlike associations.
The spacious houses with their well shaded lawns, and the extreme beauty of Divinity avenue, do not suggest this, but it is even so. The quietest street in
Cambridge has longest felt the movement of busy and even of hurrying feet.
The “Path from
Charlestown to
Watertown” was the first name of this road, and that was in its very earliest days before
Cambridge was founded.
Charlestown was settled in 1628 and
Watertown soon after; thus the connecting path antedates the planting of
Cambridge in 1630, as the date is given on the city seal, but the first houses seem to have been built in 1631 in what was then Newetowne.
This Charlestown path came over Washington street in
Somerville and through Union Square, followed the line of Kirkland street to where the Common now is, crossed to the line of Brattle street, and then went on to
Watertown in the course of the present Mount Auburn street. Of course this whole way was of equal age, but, as only a part of what is now Brattle street belonged to it, there is reason for calling Kirkland street the oldest way in
Cambridge, because its whole length lies on the
Charlestown path.
