Agassiz Neighborhood-Cambridge-Real Estate, Resources and History

The Agassiz neighborhood is very popular with Cambridge real estate buyers and one of my favorite areas of Cambridge. The Agassiz neighborhood stretches from Porter Square to Harvard Square between Mass Avenue and the Somerville line.  Oxford Street is the main thoroughfare, paralleling Mass Ave from Beacon Street to the back of Harvard Yard.

A marvelously walkable neighborhood, the tree-lined side streets of the Agassiz neighborhood spill out onto a stretch of Mass Ave that is lined with restaurants, boutiques, stores, and a variety of shops selling books, housewares, clothes, records, furniture and more. The many public transportation options make this an easy neighborhood to live car-free.  Red Line subway stops can be found in Harvard Square and Porter Square, the commuter rail stops in Porter Square and buses run up and down Mass Ave.

History of the Agassiz Neighborhood

In the late 1700s the area now known as the Agassiz neighborhood consisted of three large parcels of land owned by Nathaniel Jarvis, Jonathan Hastings, and the Frost family.  Development did not take off until transportation options increased in the mid-1800s when the railroad stop at Porter Square was opened in the 1840s and horsecars began to run along Massachusetts Avenue in the 1850s.  Much of the neighborhood development took place from the 1850s to 1900 resulting in a rich collection of Victorian architecture on the streets of the Agassiz neighborhood.  As available land was built up in the early 1900s  a number of apartment buildings were constructed in the neighborhood ranging from three-families to larger brick buildings.

Agassiz Neighborhood Resources

• Agassiz Neighborhood Council, 20 Sacramento Street, offers an art gallery and a variety of programs and services focused on children and the arts
• Lesley University‘s campus is in the Agassiz neighborhood
• The Mary Prentiss Inn, a lovely bed and breakfast, is located at 6 Prentiss Street
• Sacramento Field is a marvelous hidden park of just over an acre. There is a field for soccer and softball and a basketball court
• The Sacramento Street Community Garden is adjacent to the field
• The Harvard Museum of Natural History at 26 Oxford Street is not to be missed. There’s loads to see – the vintage mounted animals of every sort are my personal favorite and the glass flower collection is known around the world.
• Alden Park -a well used playground across from the Baldwin School
• The Baldwin School, formerly the Agassiz School, is a Cambridge public K-8 school.  The school was renamed in 2004 to honor its former principal, Maria Baldwin, the first African American school principal in Massachusetts, a position she held for some 40 years. Poet ee cummings was a student at the school during Baldwin’s tenure.

Real Estate in the Agassiz Neighborhood

Single family houses in the Agassiz neighborhood have sold in the last few years for prices ranging from $500,000 (for a total fixer-upper) to $1,323,000. Most Agassiz single families sell for over $1,000,000. 

There are a variety of condominium styles in the Aggassiz neighborhood – condos in classic brick buildings, condos in multi-unit wood buildings, condominiums in converted two and three-family houses, and recently built townhouses.  The average sales price for a Cambridge condo in the Agassiz neighborhood sold in the last three years was $424,183 with an average per square foot price of $435.

The five multi-families that sold recently in the Agassiz neighborhood sold for prices ranging from $845,000 to $1,104,300.

 

SEARCH FOR CAMBRIDGE REAL ESTATE

Here are some more photographs of the Agassiz neighborhood in Cambridge:

  

Categories: Area Info
Tags: Cambridge Neighborhoods

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Area Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Website