Layers
Because my site has remained more or less the same for so many years, I thought that looking for traces of the past would be hard: since I thought nothing big had been covered up or removed, how was I supposed to find leftover vestiges, unless I just pointed to everything?  Yet looking at my site, I was able to pinpoint some interesting clues not only to how the neighborhood once looked, but to what it may become. 
 

Fort Washington
The first map that I looked at was from 1830.  At this point in time, my site consisted of little more than marshland.  With some development on Magazine Street to the north, and the Charles River to the south, the only part remaining testament to this time period is the three-gun Revolutionary War battery, now converted into the historic Fort Washington Park.  Although the three cannons in the park now face the MIT campus, when the battery was built during the Revolutionary War it was situated on the closest piece of solid land to the river, so that in case of an emergency shots could be fired over the small stretch of marshland and across the Charles River.  I don’t know whether the cannons at Fort Washington Park are the originals; I can’t think of why they wouldn’t be, but they have definitely been repainted since then, for they are a glossy black.  The matching iron fence that now encircles the park appeared in a photograph from 1896 (CHC, p 28), but probably it was put in when the battery became a park in 1858.

A worse place for a historic monument can hardly be imagined:  although within the fence, the grassy knoll and the now-leafy trees are quite pretty, the park is bordered to the east and west by parking lots, by Vertex Pharmaceuticals to the north, and by the run down train-tracks to the south.  The American flag rising from the center can be seen from MIT’s Briggs’ Field and from many of the dorms, but before this project I had never been over there, and would not have appreciated the historical significance of this random, incongruous site.  The Pharmaceuticals building across the street looks relatively new, and if more new office buildings were built in the area, and particularly if the new influx of workers inspired the building of some commercial buildings (a coffee shop or restaurant, for example), perhaps this park could be rediscovered and enjoyed by more people.
Building Residential Houses
Traces from the times of my next two maps—one from 1883 and one from 1903—are virtually everywhere, as the streets and many of the houses have changed only minimally since this time period.  This drawing shows two buildings on the corner of Brookline and Putnam, which were built around this period.  On the left is a four-story tenement building, and adjacent is a three-story wood shingled one.  Although I cannot pinpoint the exact dates when either of these were built, it is easy to guess which one came before the other.  The north-most corner of the shingled house is actually not a corner, but a turret-type 270 degrees bay window. One narrow foot away is the tall, blank brick wall of the tenement building.  There is no good angle from which to see whether there are any other windows besides the bay window facing this wall, but if there had been any, there was nothing to see through them after the new building came and blocked all light and visibility.

In this view looking at the backs of the building, it seems that the designer of the tenement house anticipated more of the same to go up in the area, for it has the standard dumbbell shape which would allow light to reach the windows which are set back even if another building were built next to it.  The designer need not have worried about the chance of this, for this is the only tenement building on my site.  The rest, like the shingled house, are single or two-family houses, mostly built between 1895 and 1910, and are of the same, shingled style.  There are few tenements in Cambridgeport and few buildings made out of brick, but any such buildings were built around the turn of the century (CHC, pp 41-42).

 
 
Rebuilding Residential Houses
When I first visited my site, I noticed mostly just the wood-shingled or wood-paneled buildings in the area, and thought that they seemed to come from one of two time periods.  Some were very old, with unusual shapes in the layouts and above the doors, intricate detailing on windows, doors, and eves, and often chipping paint or buckled wood.  Other buildings looked to be much newer, judging by the crisp paint and front steps made of concrete, but these seemed to be poor imitations of the older ones—of the same general style but with boxier layouts and a total lack of detailing.

I knew that this area was fully built up long ago and did not have vacant lots lasting through the 20th Century, and figured that for so many new houses to be there, many old ones from 1895 to 1910 must have been torn down.  The remaining such buildings, having been around for more than a century, are not all in the best shape; but none of them are in such a state of disrepair that it would be necessary to tear so many down.  As it turns out, I was wrong: these buildings were not torn down, but just remodeled or given new facades to replace the chipping paint and rotting wood (CHC, p 154-5).  While I completely understand the desire to renovate one’s house, It is sad that so many Cambridgeport residents found it acceptable to rebuild their houses without all the characteristics that make these types of buildings so special.  If you look at these two examples of remodeling projects, with one picture from before and one after their late-sixties renovations, you can see that while the basic shape was kept the same, the new façade is completely lacking in the beautiful details and shapes that define this style of house.  It is of course hard nowadays to find specialists who are willing to do the sort of detailing required, and I am worried that over the years, as more and more residents get tired of their weathered and shabby facades, these remodeled versions will take over Cambridgeport.  Without these special touches, which I find to be very important to the feel of the neighborhood, the area will not be nearly as wonderful a place to be.
In some places, though, the buildings are definitely newer:  this stucco house located on Sydney between Putnam and Chestnut, and there is no way this was built around the turn of the century, even if it did have a better paint job back then!  Actually, the building is not a residence but is labeled “John A. Penny Co. Inc. Electrical Contractors.”  Around the corner on Chestnut Street, a few of the industrial buildings have the same label, and I think that this is the office.  This whole street contains a mixture of anomalous buildings:  from Putnam moving west there is a renovated wood-paneled building, 3 stories and containing at least 6 housing units; then there is a vacant lot with a few parked cars; a stately brick building in the style of Back Bay with two bay windows flanking the door; a small wood-shingle building set back about 12 feet farther than its neighbors; the ugly stucco building discussed before, and you can also see in the photograph at the corner of Sydney and Chestnut, a well kept multi-family wooden-shingled building.  Across Chestnut is a modern brick housing development, which seems to complete this totally incongruous strip.  The rest of my site, though divided into two very distinct sections, is pretty homogenous.  It is only this strip, right along the border between the two sections, where there seems to have been some confusion about what building type was appropriate.

 
New Street Landscaping
Around the corner on Putnam there is a different sort of confusion, about what is an appropriate layout for a street.  In the first assignment, I observed that when you cross Sydney going northwest, Putnam Street narrows.  In looking at my site now, I realize that the truth of this statement depends on what you define as “street.”  Actually, many of the industrial buildings facing one another on Putnam are actually closer together than are residential buildings further up the street.  The difference is that below Sydney, there are no sidewalks, but the asphalt stretches from the base of one concrete building to that of another across the street, with only the yellow traffic divider in-between. 
Once, this block had the same size sidewalks as further up, but at some point, perhaps for the ease of driving trucks up close to (or into the driveways of) these industrial buildings, the sidewalk was ripped out and sloping asphalt replaced it everywhere.  That is, everywhere except for where a street lamp or a fire hydrant was connected to the ground!  In this photograph and in my diagram (click it for more detail!), we see that the traffic light is on a small bump protruding from the sloped asphalt, edged with a piece of what I think is granite.  This piece of granite is all that is left of the curb that used to extend the length of the street, with the sidewalk once filled in up to its edge.  Such a change would not be visible on most street maps nor land-use maps, and I could not discover when the sidewalks were removed from this part of Putnam Street; nevertheless, it looks fairly recent and I would bet that this change took place in the last third of the 20th century.

 
 
Where is Cambridgeport Headed?
After much investigation into the history of my site, I will conclude with predictions and hopes for its future.  For about as long as the area has been developed, it has had an unusual mix of industrial and residential buildings.  Unusual, in that the industrial has not acted as a detriment to the residential; in fact, in recent years property values have been going up.  There have been no major changes in the types of buildings here for more than 70 years, and I have no reason to believe that this will change in the next few decades.  The changes that have occurred have been small scale: renovations of buildings, paving over the sidewalks on Putnam, and laying new bricks for other sidewalks on my site, as well as a few entirely new buildings in just the last couple of decades.  I think that the Vertex Pharmaceuticals building across from Fort Washington is an indicator of what is to come for the industrial part of my site; if the economy recovers from its current slump, I think we can expect that most of the ugly, concrete buildings between this building and the new housing development on Chestnut will be replaced by nicer brick buildings of the same style, and like them surrounded by new sidewalks and tree plantings.  Such a change would mean that the stretch of Putnam without sidewalks would be redone to be much more pedestrian friendly.  I fear that in the residential area, if renovations continue along the same lines as they have been, the neighborhood will lose its charm, and with these blank facades, particularly if there are new industrial buildings, the whole area might then develop a sort of sterile feel.  My hopes for the neighborhood are that the old houses get repainted, and perhaps even re-shingled where there is no interesting detailing, and for the many chain link fences around the yards to be replaced by wooden ones.  This way the neighborhood could lose some if its gritty feeling without losing the charm.  And if the industrial section were a bit gentrified, Fort Washington would not be so isolated and could be better appreciated as the historical monument that it is.