St. James Church | Porter Square | Cambridge

[found5dollar]

I was stuck on the red-line shuttle bus this weekend at the corner of Mass ave and Beech st. and noticed some construction and a mock up of a wall out side St. James Episcopal Church. I did a little digging and found the following PDF's.

This one has some basic info:
http://www.stjames-cambridge.org/storage/capitalcampaign/CampaignBrochure_LR.pdf

This one has alot of renderings:
http://www.stjames-cambridge.org/storage/StJamesRedevelopment.pdf

Bloggy-type thing:
http://www.stjames-cambridge.org/property-redevelopment/

It looks like the plan is to tear down the carwash next door, and build a "70,000+ square foot building plus fully landscaped garden." The building will be condos with an underground garage and a few retail spaces, and a new parish house on the bottom floor from what i can tell. It is a relay interesting collaboration between a church and a development firm (in this case one called "Oaktree"). Oaktree gets to build a much bigger building than it could just using the carwash land, and according to one of the brochures the church gets "In addition to the new parish house, paid for by Oaktree, St. James’s will receive 30% of the profit after the sale of the condominiums. This money will help to jumpstart a new endowment whose sole purpose is the maintenance of the historic church building."

I'm really interested in seeing how this building turns out and if it works financially for all involved.

 

[a630]

Would be a great addition to the area - now if only Beech Street could get re-paved.

 

[whighlander]

Would be a great addition to the area - now if only Beech Street could get re-paved.

I think to mitigate the shadows at 9 AM on the winter solstice that there should be a requirement to recreate the historic Dvenport Tavern that predated the church and may have been one of the places where William Dawes stopped on his way to Lexington on April 19 AM 1775

Several sources locaated by Googlin Davenport Tavern Cambridge:
"...17th century, the intersection of Beech Streeet and Massachusetts Avenue was already prominent as the cross-roads of major thoroughfares to surrounding towns. The village that grew up here included residents, businessses, and the well-known Davenport Tavern.....

"....The troops marched on through Milk Street, by the old Davenport tavern, at the corner of North Avenue and Beech Street, and so out of Cambridge....A convoy of provisions found greater difficulty in crossing the bridge, and became detached from the main army. An express was sent from Old Cambridge[aka Haaahvd] to Menotomy [aka Arlington Center], announcing the coming of these supplies, and a few men, too old for active service in the field, posted themselves behind a wall to await their arrival. The convoy came, and was called upon to surrender. The drivers whipped up their horses. The provincials fired, killing several horses and two men, when the drivers jumped from their places and fled. The wagons were secured and plundered. The drivers are said to have surrendered themselves to an old woman whom they met, and whose protection they begged. Whereupon there went the rounds of the English papers belonging to the opposition that interesting sum in the Rule of Three:-

"If one old Yankee woman can take six grenadiers, how many soldiers will it require to reconquer America?"*

....On the return of the expedition, almost the last skirmish took place near Porter's Station, where six citizens of Cambridge were killed. Their bodies were brought down, and hastily buried in the old graveyard."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1875/4/9/historic-cambridge-living-as-we-do/

 

[Ron Newman]

Beech Street was repaved a few weeks ago.

 

[Toucano]

Beech Street was repaved a few weeks ago.

Amen. I haven't biked through there in a while but I've had many close calls on those 2 blocks.