Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, School and Convent
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1982. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Richard Henry (1787-1879) was the author, poet and essayist. He was one of the founders of the North American Review.”
A History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 (1913). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1982 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.82001974- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In October, 1660, the County Court ordered, that the House of Correction, or Bridewell, should be used as a prison for the County, until further provision be made. Such provision was made by the erection of a jail l before Aug. 26, 1692, when it was ordered by the Court, " that the County Treasurer take care that their majesties Goal at Cambridge be repaired, for the comfortable being of what persons may be committed forthwith." 2 It was also ordered, Dec. 14, 1703, " that an addition be made to the prison at the west end thereof, of eighteen foot square, with studs conformable to the old house." A dozen years later, the old part of the prison became so unsatisfactory, that the Court appointed " a committee to agree with carpenters and other workmen to erect and build a good well-timbered house in Cambridge for a Prison, for the accommodation of a keeper, to be thirty-six foot long, and for width agreeable to the foundation of the old Goal or Prison, two storeys high, fifteen foot stud, with a stack of chyrnneys in the middle, to be done and finished workmanlike, as soon as may be conveniently effected Further
Until 1720, the " Common " extended to Linnaean Street, and included also a few acres, lying in a nearly square form, at the northwesterly corner of Linnaean Street and North Avenue.1 This extreme point of the Common was set apart as a " Place of Execution," or " Gallows Lot," as it was more familiarly called. And after the Common was reduced to its present size, and the lots in this square fronting on the streets, had been granted to individuals, about one acre in its extreme northwesterly corner was reserved for its former use, until trials, and imprisonments, and executions were transferred to East Cambridge.2 It was entered from North Avenue through a bridleway or passage, between Lancaster Place and Arlington Street, now called Stone Court.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 59 fires within 5 miles of Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, School and Convent between
2015 and 2020, burning about 102 acres in total. None started naturally. 23 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
23
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
14
Debris and open burning
8
Recreation and ceremony
6
Smoking
6
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,974 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, School and Convent between 1898 and
1975: 860 Animalia, 612 Plantae, 439 Fungi, 27 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 11 Chromista, 8 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
11 workings within 5 miles of Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, School and Convent: 9 plants, 2 past producers.
9 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Lead, Gypsum-Anhydrite, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cambridge, the town this property stands in, in 16 storm reports between 2006 and 2023: 7 thunderstorm wind, 3 flood, 3 flash flood, 2 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,331 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Sacred Heart Parish includes three structures which occupy the entire block bounded by Otis, Thorndike, Seventh and Sixth Street in East Cambridge. It is a prominent land- mark in this working class neighborhood of small brick and frame houses. The only land- scaping is provided by a few small sidewalk trees, although an interior courtyard is planted with grass and trees. The focus of the complex is the Sacred Heart Church, built in 1874-1883 to the designs of Patrick W. Ford. Executed in the Victorian Gothic style, the random coursed Somerville bluestone ashlar structure is trimmed with light colored Milford granite. The front (eastern) facade is raised approximately five feet above grade with a wide flight of stairs providing access to the two main recessed pointed arched entrances.
Each entrance is topped by geometric tracery and enframed bÿ rock faced granite with smooth stone banding. Attached colonettes set within the recess are topped by a fillet and broad fascia at the spring line which are carried across the facade as a string course. Two shallow stone gables each entrance are topped by small crosses. Triple pointed arched windows above with geometric tracery and granite trim are set within a slightly projecting pointed arch of granite ashlar with an inset roundel similarly adorned. A rectangular opening tops this arch.
To the south, an angle buttressed turret, previously finished by a pinnacle and finial, separates the nave portion of the facade from the low side aisle area with its pointed arched entrance topped by a short recessed pointed arched window. To the north rises a massive belfry with angle buttresses and a pointed arched entrance.
(in one paragraph) The Sacred Heart Church complex possesses integrity of location, design,setting, materials and workmanship and is significant both for the quality of its architectural design and for its associations with immigrant populations. The Sacred Heart Parish was originally organized as Saint Jokn the Evangelist Parish in 1842. As the first Catholic Church in Cambridge, it served the growing immigrant pop- ulation working for East Cambridge industries. The original church, located on Fourth Street, was dedicáted in 1842 with President John Tyler and Mässachusetts Governor John Davis in attendance. Serving as the mother church for Cambridge and Somerville it grew rapidly despite the setting off of'two other local parishes in 1867 and 1870.
When Monsignor John O'Brien assumed the pastorage of St. John's in 1873, he began a drive to build a new, larger church and obtained the land on the corner of Sixth and Otis Streets. Al though work began in 1874, it was nine years before the church was consecrated. It was at this time that the parish was renamed Sacred Heart. The architect for the church was P.W. Ford (1848-1900), an Irishman who emigrated to the United States in 1866. Ford had worked with P.C. Keeley, a prolific church architect based in brky, supervising the execution of Keeley''s Holy Cross College in Worcester. Ultimately, Ford is known to have designed almost thirty churches, with Sacred Heart one of his earliest works.
This design shows a strong reliance on Keeley's works, especially in the heavy buttresses and prominent tower. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the church is the elaborate altar executed by Peter Paul .Pugin, son of A.W. N. Pugin.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 82001974, 21 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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