Baldwin, formerly known as Agassiz and also called Harvard North, Area 8 or Agassiz/Baldwin, is one of the thirteen neighborhoods of
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...
, United States.
Bounded by Massachusetts Avenue on the west, Cambridge Street, Quincy Street, and Kirkland Street on the south,
Porter Square on the north, and the
Somerville border on the northeast. It contains the
Maria L. Baldwin Elementary School, known as the Agassiz School until 2002. It also contains all of
Lesley University and much of
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, including the
Harvard Science Center and the
Harvard University Law School.
History
The neighborhood was formerly named for
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...
(1807-1873), a Harvard biologist and geologist. After being informally known as Agassiz/Baldwin for several years, in 2021 the neighborhood was renamed for
Maria Louise Baldwin (1856-1922), an
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
educator who, as principal of the former Agassiz School, was the first Black woman principal in
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
. Like many places and buildings formerly named for Agassiz, this change came following controversy over his
scientific racist beliefs, including
polygenism and
eugenics
Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...
. The change was first proposed in City Council by Cambridge high school student
Maya Counter in 2020.
[Raquel Coronell Uribe,]
City Council Approves Baldwin Neighborhood Name, Replacing Agassiz
in ''Harvard Crimson'', August 11, 2021, accessed April 1, 2022.
Geography
In 2005 it had a population of 5,241 residents living in 1,891 households, and the average household income was $55,380. The Baldwin neighborhood has two zip codes 02138 and 02140, which also serve the villages of West and North Cambridge, respectively.
References
External links
Cambridge Police Department
Neighborhoods in Cambridge, Massachusetts
{{MiddlesexCountyMA-geo-stub