Magazine Beach

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Watch video of the event on our YouTube page.

Where & When: Main Branch, Cambridge Public Library (449 Broadway) on Thursday, June 11,  6:30-8:30pm

While the Esplanade has long been the jewel on the Charles, the Cambridge river parklands, at long last, are beginning to receive their due. Hear the latest about North Point Park’s skate park, Greenough Boulevard, and Magazine Beach improvements. A discussion about best models for the public/private partnerships that have made these advances possible will follow. Be part of this conversation!

Speakers: Rep. Jay Livingstone, Charles Sullivan (Ex. Director, Cambridge Historical Commission), Gina Foote (Board Member, Charles River Conservancy), Herb Nolan (Deputy Director, Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Foundation), Cathie Zusy (Chair, Magazine Beach Comm., Cambridgeport Neighborhood Assoc.). Richard Rossi (City Manager, Cambridge), Karl Haglund (Senior Planner, DCR). Celebrated mediator and facilitator Jack Wofford will moderate.

Transportation Information:

The Main Library is accessible by both bus and subway.

A 70-car underground parking garage with access from Broadway is available when the library is open. It costs 25 cents for every 15 minutes of parking. You may pay by using quarters or credit card (Mastercard or Visa).

Hot off the press, 2015 Event Poster! Click here: MB event poster_15_8.5×11.1

Many thanks to Novartis for their cleanup of Magazine Beach today. About 100 volunteered painting benches, removing invasive plants, trimming back Russian Olive, raking leaves, and picking up trash. They gathered about 200-300 bags of organic debris. Julia Giordano of the Charles River Conservancy noted that it was a “beautiful day for a cleanup and the Novartis volunteers did great work as we readied the park for the summer.”

Thank you Novartis and the Charles River Conservancy!

Exhibit: Magazine Beach—A Place Apart On View at City Hall

Where & When: at City Hall, May 11-Still up… (See it while you can!)

See how Cambridge’s second largest park came to be, from an island surrounded by marshes to a gunpowder depot and, later, a favorite Charles River swimming beach. As a public space, the site has inspired many plans and schemes. Consider the courses taken and passed by as we plan for the park’s future—this year.

Program: Magazine Beach—Its History and Your Stories!

When & Where: Cambridge Sr. Center, 806 Massachusetts Avenue on Thursday, May 28 at 1pm

Magazine Beach Park, at the bottom of Magazine Street, is Cambridge’s second largest park, and it has long been a favorite swimming and picnicking site. Hear about its long history, about Captain’s Island and its powder magazine, and its becoming a popular beach for Charles River bathers. We’re eager to hear your stories, too!

Library Program: A Renaissance on the Cambridge Side of the Charles

Where & When: Main Branch, Cambridge Public Library on Thursday, June 11 at 6:30pm

While the Esplanade has long been the jewel on the Charles, the Cambridge river parklands, at long last, are beginning to receive their due. Hear the latest about North Point Park’s skate park and Magazine Beach and Greenough Boulevard improvements. Presenters from the Charles River Conservancy, Solomon Foundation, CNA’s Magazine Beach Committee, DCR and the City of Cambridge will share current projects. A general discussion about best models for the public/private partnerships that have made these advances possible will follow.

And coming soon at the park: stories and nature walks for children, music, dance, theater, puppetry and swimming! The pool opens Saturday, June 27! Stay tuned for further information.

Magazine Beach–A Place Apart opens at City Hall this Monday, May 11. If you missed out on the exhibit at Cambridge Arts, you’ve got another chance to catch the show. It will be up for four weeks, until June 4, so see it while you can!

See how the Olmsteds transformed an island surrounded by marshes into a favorite river swimming beach at the turn of the 19th century. And learn about how the powder magazine–built to store gun powder, safely, far from settlement–became a bathhouse and MDC utility shed as needs and desires changed.

A hospital, stadium, Army lab and highway have all been proposed for this 15-acre site. Why is it that some plans are adopted and others are not? This question is particularly pertinent as we update and complete landscape plans for the park–this year. The exhibit organizers, the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Assn. and Cambridge Arts, invite you to share your ideas and memories of the park as part of the show.

Last week Cambridge Central Youth Baseball League kicked off their season at Magazine Beach and Lindstrom Field.

by Will Kaufmann, Cambridge Central Baseball Player

After a long offseason, and tons of snow, you wonder how we will start this baseball season. Well, there are a couple of answers to that. One, coaches for the Majors have has practices in batting tunnels. Central Cambridge Youth Baseball has been using Extra Innings, Watertown as the center of none-field practice. In addition, Minors teams have practiced in the Morse School gym. 

“With the warmer weather, players have returned to Lindstrom Field for practices”, says Doug Feinburg, coach of the Orioles in the Majors. Also, Doug told me that there will be no delay to the start of the season due to the weather.

Lindstrom is in good condition and Magazine Beach field will be groomed shortly.

A bonus to the family aspect of coming to a game is the reviving of the Snack Shack, the push to make it more healthy and convenient has been led by an enthusiastic league official. “The goal is to build regular community activity at the field and to support Cambridge baseball,” says one league official I spoke to.

There has been an increase in enrollment this year as we have more than 80 kids registered in both farm and t-ball.

Games started just last week.

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Thanks to yesterday’s spring cleanup, Magazine Beach is looking great. About 25 turned out in the cold yesterday to gather broken glass, bottle caps, candy wrappers, bottles, cans, towels, and even the seat of a boat.

We are so grateful to our regulars: McGill University alumnus, residents of Hale House in Hyde Park, and neighbors including Olivia and Preston Fiske, Melissa Smith and Susan Schlossberg. Thanks are also due to all the newcomers who joined us, including Till, Inc., from Lowell, MA. Thanks to the CRWA and the CRC for organizing this annual Earth Day event.

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There’s lots of activity at the park now that spring has sprung. Magazine Beach FC has pick-up soccer games going on Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Check the Meetup site for times.  And Central Cambridge Youth Baseball League starts playing at the park this week. Also sited: a rabbit hopping across a field, and baseball players, runners, dog walkers, rowers, spectators and folks just hanging out along the river!

The Crusher Casey Regatta, Riverside’s opening day race to celebrate the start of the rowing season, will be held this Sunday, April 19th beginning at 9:45 am. The race, named after named after world champion wrestler and Riverside oarsman Steve “Crusher” Casey,  will be a “stake turn race” where crews race from Riverside up to Newell Boathouse (upstream of the Anderson Bridge), row around a buoy and race back to Riverside. The first crews racing will be mixed 8’s comprised of men and women, and following the 8’s will be a singles race where single sculls race the same course.

The race can be watched from the River Street, Western Ave, Weeks or Anderson Bridges (especially fun to watch from Anderson, as you will see the stake turn!). Here’s to a great rowing season!

Amanda Milad, Riverside Boat Club

Photos from last year’s event (above) and this year’s event (below) courtesy of Igor Belakovskiy.

Sean Wolf and Sara Olenich, winners of the men’s and women’s singles races

A RBC boat was named after rower and club member Ed Ballo

Volunteers and their trash from a prior year’s cleanup.

Spring is springing at Magazine Beach. Join us on Earth Day, Saturday, April 25, rain or shine, for our annual cleanup. Meet at the parking crescent for trash bags, gloves, t-shirts!, assignments and brownies and water. There is plenty of trash to pick up as we prepare for our 2015 season of baseball, soccer, quidditch, swimming, running, dog walking and just plain enjoying this green, open space along the river. See you there!

To sign up, contact the Charles River Conservancy’s Volunteer Coordinator Sasha Vallieres at svallieres@thecharles.org. Or just come!

Take a walk along the river. Magazine Beach is bursting with signs of spring. The long winter is over. Come join us for our Earth Day cleanup: Saturday, April 25, 9-12noon. The park needs it!

Cambridge and the Charles River Basin. The river parklands are our Central Park; our connection with nature.

Deputy Director of the Solomon Foundation (and former Cambridge resident) Herb Nolan’s case for investing Cambridge’s Community Benefit dollars into our riverfront parks:

The city is full of tiny neighborhood parks as you can see in attached diagram and many of them are lovely.  However, I would argue that Kendall Square needs better urbanism in the form of well framed streets and squares – not more mini parks. Why build small spaces at the base of office towers that will benefit few people when major well-used parks a few blocks away languish for lack of funds?

What Cambridge, as a whole, desperately needs is a sustained investment in its one citywide park – the Charles River Basin.  If properly funded and reclaimed, places like Magazine Beach on the Charles River would regain the crowds of people that once thronged to its shores in the early 20th century.  It would become a center of community life once again. This will not happen without serious investment in its infrastructure and an ongoing commitment to park managment.  The role of parks has changed since Charles Eliot’s day. Magazine Beach is no longer a place for factory workers to recuperate after a long day of assembling model T Fords across the street.  It is a place for creative people to relax, have fun together, and connect with each other. These are the folks in Cambridgeport and nearby neighborhoods who help power the Kendall Square economy. Sophisticated developers and CEOs will understand this important role of parks and will want to support them.

Fifteen years ago I helped produce the Charles River Master with input from hundreds of Cambridge residents.  We are seeing key parts of that plan move ahead today which signals something of a river renaissance in my view.  The work of the DCR with the Magazine Beach Committee (CNA), the Charles River Conservancy, and the Esplanade Association has made a tremendous difference.  Now is the time to gather this momentum together and keep this river renaissance going.    

Note: For information about other Cambridge river parkland projects in the works, see: Greenough Boulevard improvements: /www.solomonfoundation.org/pages/projects/her.html; skate park: www.thecharles.org/projects-and-programs/skate-park/ and DCR’s parkway project: http://blog.livablestreets.info/?p=1060