Magazine Beach Park. At 17 acres, Magazine Beach is Cambridge’s second-largest park. It is centrally located along the Charles River, between the B.U. Bridge and Pleasant Street. On its grounds, it houses two structures of historic and cultural significance: an 1818 Powder Magazine, the oldest building on the Charles River Basin; and the 1912 boathouse of the Riverside Boat Club, the last remaining working mans’ club on the river. Magazine Beach also houses a free, outdoor, Olympic-sized swimming pool. As a green space, the park is home to playing fields, shade trees, and natural habitats.
Magazine Beach Partners. A nonprofit organization, Magazine Beach Partners works to help our community shape this invaluable shared asset, a riverside urban commons. We collaborate with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and the City of Cambridge, who jointly administer the park.
What We Do.
Steward and Create. Provide and Connect. Model and Team Up. Ask and Advocate.
Steward and Create. Like any public space, Magazine Beach requires ongoing care. We work to keep our park accessible and welcoming, starting with its physical foundations. In collaboration with the DCR and the City of Cambridge, we repair what is damaged, maintain what works, and create new spaces and amenities that meet evolving community needs.
Provide and Connect. An exceptional natural and historic resource, Magazine Beach is also a civic commons. Our aim is to provide park neighbors and visitors with opportunities to connect. We organize cultural, educational, recreational, and health-promoting programs; we host special events; and we arrange for opportunities to volunteer. More broadly, by ensuring the park becomes and remains an inviting space, we help strengthen our community’s well-being. Magazine Beach is a place where people can come together, recreate, and pause to replenish their senses.
Model and Team Up. All of the work we do for Magazine Beach is collaborative in nature. As a volunteer-run organization, we are modeling fresh ways to team up with a tapestry of agencies and organizations. To date, we have partnered with over 40 entities in order to achieve shared objectives for the park. Operationally, we are actively exploring how best to conduct the cross-sector stewardship of a public asset.
Ask and Advocate. Like the neighborhoods it borders, Magazine Beach Park’s community stakeholders are diverse. Through surveys, observations, meetings, and everyday conversations, we gather ideas from the people who know and care about the park. We study the park—its past, present, and future—and share our findings in publications, exhibitions, films, and on the web. We write letters on behalf of the park and meet and work with local and State officials. Finally, we inspire community reinvestment, catalyzing funds essential to the life of the park, and energizing others to take on stewardship roles. We welcome your involvement.
Here are our annual reports:
Click to access 2021-mbp-annual-report-2.pdf
Summary:
- Organizing Institution: Magazine Beach Partners, Inc. (a tax exempt, 501c3 non-profit)
- Administrators of the Park: the Mass. Department of Conservation & Recreation
- Estimated Cost to make Phase II Improvements: $10 million (estimate for Phase II-1 (turning the sunken parking lot between the pool and the river into a grassy beach and adding a dock and outlook–$2.2 million)
- Proposed Improvements: outlook and dock, play areas for children, new picnic tables, bike racks, info kiosks, new paths and landscaping.
- Contact Information: Cathie Zusy, President, MBPs, 617-868-0489, or czusy@magazinebeach.org.
For Achievements, click here.
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Magazine Beach 
I an planning to visit Magazine… soon. Will be arriving via orange line. Directions? I didn’t know it was there. Lived in this area a long time. Happy to learn about it. Donna
The address is: 668 Memorial Dr, Cambridge, MA 02139. You can take the MBTA green line to the Central BU stop, cross the BU Bridge, and walk to the park–just along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. OR you can take the red line to Central Square and walk down Magazine St. to Magazine Beach Park. There’s a pedestrian footbridge that crosses Memorial Drive. Summer programs begin June 21 and the pool opens June 22!
Is your pool going to be open to the public this summer 2024? If so what are the dates and will it be free?
Yes, the pool will open in later June, as always. I’ll post info re this as soon as DCR posts it here: https://www.mass.gov/locations/veterans-memorial-swimming-pool. Work on the next phase of improvements for the park are scheduled to start in the fall. Stay tuned for more info!