Centers And Squares
Welcome to Centers and Squares
As a Cambridge real estate agent, the city squares of Cambridge, Somerville and Medford and the town centers of Arlington, Watertown and Belmont, Massachusetts are my home turf. And as a lifelong New Englander who’s lived within twenty miles of Boston most of my life, I can introduce you to other nearby towns as we search for your new home. If you’re planning to sell your home in Cambridge, MA or nearby you’ll find plenty of info about the home selling process here too. Questions? Send me an email or call me at 617-504-1737.
Hurricane of ’38 in Cambridge
A tree fell on 44 Union Street in Keene NH during the Hurricane of '38
74 years ago people all over New England were greeted by scenes likes the one at right. The Hurricane of ’38 slammed into New England on September 21, 1938. The devastating storm killed over 700 people in New York and New England and town after town, including Cambridge, suffered enormous damage from the violent storm.
My dad grew up on Brookline Street in Cambridgeport near the B.U. Bridge. He and other neighborhood boys, aged about 7 – 12, were outside in the early part of the storm, gathered by the Stop and Shop on Brookline Street.
When a large tree fell in the field that’s now the site of the Morse School, the policeman outside the Stop and Shop advised the kids to head home.
Not five minutes later the enormous Stop and Shop sign blew off, hitting the policeman, who barely survived his injuries.
Shortly after he arrived home my grandmother asked my dad to look outside and see if there was any damage in the front yard. Leaves filled the window when my dad looked out – a large maple tree in the front yard had fallen on the house. Not long after a poplar tree in the back yard fell on Billy Harris’s house at 1-3 Rockingham Place. Both houses survived unscathed.
Not so for the Keene, New Hampshire house I lived in during the 1990s. That’s it in the photo above. The woman I bought it from described cowering in the pantry with her parents during the 1938 hurricane which caused extensive damage in Keene and nearby towns. The tree at the corner of the yard fell on the house, knocking off the chimney and part of the second floor. The house across the street was split in half by another large tree and similar scenes could be found all over town.
If you were in New England 74 years ago chances are your memories of the Hurricane of 1938 are still vivid. If you missed the big hurricane you can still get an idea of power of the storm from images on old postcards, newspapers, booklets and scrapbooks that you’ll come upon in local antique stores. I discovered the photo of my 44 Union Street house in a booklet about the hurricane I found at an antiques shop.
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