Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1970s

Work

Factories fading, universities rising

Kendall Square still shows the old industrial city: vacant land, Draper Laboratories, and the Volpe Center² stand where later biotechnology buildings will cluster. Cambridge is already shifting from manufacturing toward services⁸, with Harvard and MIT pulling labor, students, clerical work, maintenance, research, and shop trade toward them.

Home & table

Housing is politics

A renter may live under one of the decade's defining local laws, because older non-owner-occupied rentals are under rent control⁷. The fights are practical and bitter: rents, evictions, condominium conversion, and the Rent Control Board⁷ affect who can stay.

Law & power

Ranked ballots, strong manager

City government is not run like neighboring Boston: nine councilors and six school committee members are elected at large by proportional representation⁴, and the city manager handles administration. This structure gives organized minorities a route into City Hall.

In the air

Science on trial

In 1976, Cambridge becomes a national stage when the council stops recombinant DNA work at Harvard and MIT for review³. The argument is not abstract: residents ask whether research inside a dense city can endanger public health.

What people feared

Roads, labs, displacement

The threat many residents fought was a road: an eight-lane Inner Belt would have cut through Cambridge near Central Square⁶. Another feared danger was invisible, as the city debated possible public-health risks from recombinant DNA work³.

Roads & news

A weekly watches everything

The Cambridge Chronicle⁵ is the local paper to pick up for elections, strikes, police, fire, churches, schools, parks, Harvard, MIT, and street scenes. Bigger arguments arrive from Boston too, including the school desegregation busing crisis centered across the river.

Who lived here

Dense and mixed

The census counts 100,361 residents in 1970¹, fewer than ten years earlier. The everyday city mixes students, municipal workers, hospital workers, shopkeepers, tenants, landlords, and people tied to older industry.

Faith

Churches still visible

Churches are part of the visible civic landscape, since the local paper's 1973 files include churches and church buildings. The opened sources, however, do not give a reliable full map of congregations for the decade.

Year by year

1. 1970Cambridge adopted rent control for much of its older rental housing. here⁷
2. 1970The federal census counted 100,361 residents in Cambridge. here¹
3. 1971Governor Francis Sargent rejected the Inner Belt expressway. nearby⁶
4. 1973Plans were approved to extend the Red Line from Harvard Square to Alewife through Porter and Davis Squares. here⁶
5. 1973The oil crisis and gasoline shortages became national news that commuters and households in Cambridge would have felt. the country
6. 1974Boston's school desegregation busing crisis began after a federal court ruling. nearby
7. 1975The Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon, a world event still close to campus politics and veterans' lives. the world
8. 1976Cambridge imposed a moratorium on recombinant DNA research at Harvard and MIT. here³

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Cambridge had 100,361 residents in the 1970 federal census, down from 107,716 in 1960. from the sources¹
• The city was fully urban and physically small, so daily life mixed university districts, working-class neighborhoods, industrial blocks, and dense apartment streets. inferred
• In the 1970s, Kendall Square near Main and Vassar streets had vacant land after manufacturing declined and firms moved to the suburbs, with outposts such as Draper Laboratories and the federal Volpe Center remaining. from the sources²
• Cambridge adopted rent control in 1970, applying its initial policy to non-owner-occupied rental housing built before 1969. from the sources⁷
• Tenant organizing was one of the decade's central local political activities, as tenants and landlords fought over rents, evictions, condominium conversion, and the powers of the Rent Control Board. from the sources⁷
• The proposed Inner Belt was an eight-lane expressway that would have run through Cambridge near Central Square before crossing the Charles River near the BU Bridge. inferred⁶
• After the highway fights, Governor Francis Sargent rejected the Inner Belt in 1971 and in 1973 approved extending the Red Line from Harvard Square to Alewife by way of Porter and Davis Squares. inferred⁶
• Cambridge used a city-manager government with nine city councilors and six school committee members elected at large by proportional representation for two-year terms. from the sources⁴
• In 1976 the Cambridge City Council imposed a moratorium on recombinant DNA research at Harvard and MIT and created a citizens' review process over possible public-health risks. from the sources³
• The recombinant DNA controversy made Cambridge an unusually visible place for lay citizens to debate the regulation of advanced science. from the sources³
• The Cambridge Chronicle was the city's newspaper of record, and its 1973 photographs covered city elections, student sports, Rindge Technical School, Cambridge High and Latin, Mount Auburn Hospital, police, fire, strikes, churches, parks, Harvard, MIT, and street scenes. from the sources⁵
• Harvard University and MIT shaped employment, street life, housing demand, and politics, but the 1970s city was not only a college town; it also had municipal workers, hospital workers, small shopkeepers, tenants, landlords, and remnants of industry. inferred
• Mount Auburn Hospital appears in the local newspaper's 1973 subject files, showing it was a visible Cambridge institution during the decade. from the sources⁵
• The Cambridge Chronicle's 1973 subjects include churches and church buildings, but online sources opened here do not give a full denomination-by-denomination map for the decade. not known
• Online sources opened here do not give ordinary Cambridge grocery prices, rents by neighborhood, or hourly wages for the 1970s. not known
• As across metropolitan Boston, Cambridge residents would have heard constant news about the 1974 Boston school desegregation busing crisis, even though the crisis centered in Boston rather than Cambridge. inferred
• The local arts and street scene included the Craft Fair on the Common, Poly Arts Concert, and Arts Proposition Theater, all present in the 1973 Cambridge Chronicle photograph subjects. from the sources⁵
• The city was changing from an older manufacturing economy toward services in the 1970s and 1980s, before the later high-technology boom of the 1990s. from the sources⁸

Sources

1. 1970 Census of Population, Massachusetts, Number of Inhabitants. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970
2. How to build a biotech renaissance: MIT in Kendall Square. MIT News, 2014
3. Asilomar Goes Underground: The Long Legacy of Recombinant DNA Hazard Debates for the Greater Boston Area Biotechnology Industry. Journal article via PubMed Central, 2025
4. Cambridge Municipal Elections. City of Cambridge, Massachusetts
5. Cambridge Chronicle Photographs, 1973. Cambridge Room Collections, 2015
6. Inner Belt Hub. History Cambridge
7. Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Journal of Political Economy, 2014
8. Cambridge Consolidated Plan Executive Summary. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Nearby, about the same time