SCALES #35: bears in the streets
Hello!
Previously on SCALES: The author wonders, why is there a short residential street in West Somerville called Electric Avenue? Was it the site of some notable event in the history of electrification? Might it just be related to notable Tufts alum Fred Pearson, who helped lead a number of electrification infrastructure projects, from Somerville and Boston to New York, São Paulo, and Barcelona? (Probably not.)
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So, if Fred Pearson doesn’t hold the answer to Electric Avenue, maybe I needed a different approach.
I started looking at, and absolutely losing myself in, historic maps. An 1874 map shows none of the side streets in the area existed; at the time, West Somerville was just starting to grow in population. Later maps and records show Electric Avenue slowly growing in: one short private block in a 1904 state atlas and an 1895 city report; three blocks from Curtis to Packard on a 1900 Sanborn fire map and an 1899 city report, with fewer than 10 houses yet built; the same stretch on a 1910 map; the full extent from Curtis to Mason definitely present by 1943.
The first stretch of Electric Avenue was built on land belonging, in the 1874 map, to the Teele family, longtime owners of agricultural land in the area and namesakes of Teele Square. One block over from Electric, Ossippee Road shares its name with the town in New Hampshire that was the birthplace of Phoebe Libby, who married Samuel Teele (1818-1899). The homes themselves on Ossippee Road (and perhaps also those on Electric?) were developed by the wonderfully named Zebedee E. Cliff (1864-1934), a carpenter from New Brunswick who became a developer and later a four-term mayor of Somerville.
I ended up scouring a number of the digitized Somerville Annual Reports, which included tables of streets that were helpful in narrowing down the timing of Electric Avenue’s construction. In the reports I didn’t find too much more about the history of electric service to homes in Somerville, but a picture of Somerville in the 1890s slowly emerged from the pretty dry reports, with their endless tables and dispatches from different city offices:
- The city employees in the 1892 report include “Fence Viewers”, “Measurer of Wood and Bark”, and “Weighers of Hay and Straw”.
- Ordinance in the 1893 report: “No. 40. An ordinance relating to itinerant musicians, bears in the streets, and the ringing of door-bells for distribution of circulars.”
- The 1892 report of the Board of Health includes a table of complaints by month, including “Dogs kept in kitchen” (1 in April), “Cows allowed on streets and sidewalks” (3 in August), “Pigs kept without license” (8 throughout year).
- The 1890 report of the Inspector of Milk: “Of the 238 licenses granted, 101 were to persons who keep cows in Somerville and vicinity, […] from one to twenty cows each. These people deliver their milk directly to our citizens. It is of a very excellent quality. This proves to be a check on the dealers in railroad milk, requiring them to keep the standard, or else they lose their trade.” Somerville Avenue was once called Milk Row!
- Also an 1893 ordinance: “No. 46. An ordinance to amend an ordinance, approved June 29, 1893, entitled “An ordinance in relation to itinerant musicians, bears in the streets, and ringing of door-bells for the distribution of circulars.”” (No regulatory relief for the bears, alas. Only clarification that church groups can still go door-to-door.)
Other things came into view when noticing changes in the report from year to year: The “Night Soil” section of the Board of Health report had the same boilerplate until suddenly in 1894: “There has been quite a falling off in the number of loads collected during the year, as the old-fashioned vaults are fast giving way to water closets.” The slow-moving development of Powder House Boulevard, crossing what had been the site of Two Penny Brook, and the construction of the park at the Powder House. The steady increase in electric street lights and the hold-out of just a three city gas lights (the latter lighted “on moon schedule”). The ongoing calls to build a proper sewer for the houses in what was alternately called Clarendon Hill or the Tannery Brook District.
The overall picture is of a previously sparsely populated area, with agricultural land, quarries, and brickyards, quickly growing and modernizing. From the perspective of the city it felt like a busy, important time: new parks and roads were being built (and the latter being macadamized or otherwise paved), the population was quickly growing, new utilities were coming online. The annual reports emobdy an optimism that all of these developments could be overseen in an enlightened, scientific way. With enough tables and figures, anything can be managed!
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But to briefly return to Electric Avenue: Based on all this, it seems plausible the Teele family was responsible for building at least the first short piece of Electric Avenue. The reason for the name, however, I still don’t know.
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There’s definitely a throughline from the obsessive quantification of the 1890s Somerville Annual Reports to the current “smart city” tech company push (like the troubling Google/Alphabet deal in Toronto). Sympathetic to the critical perspective.
My favorite plays for those sweet Olympics-adjacent pageviews: A grab bag of historic Korean maps. The ultrawealthy who more-or-less bought their way onto Olympic teams.
Meta-climate science: Surveying the experiences of women IPCC authors. Sampling bias in climate–conflict research.
The state of the internet: A reminder it contains both New York Public Libraries and (modern-day) Penn Stations (h/t Carmody/Kottke). And Kottke, interviewed: "The blog is half publication and half performance art“. Julia Evans on what a successful independent blog looks like: “focus on conversations, not pageviews”. (Maybe it goes without saying “blog” could easily be replaced with “newsletter” throughout that post.)
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Confused by how these fragments of Somerville and Cambridge are assembled, but these Sanborn fire maps sure are good-looking.
Thanks for reading! You can always forward to a friend/reply and say hi/subscribe.
—Adam
P.S. Turns out unknown-to-me pop group Papas Fritas recorded an album in an Electric Avenue basement in the 90s, “fourth-generation meta-pop” indebted to Brian Wilson, Lindsay Buckingham, Big Star. Not bad!