Cambridge as Village and City 303 



part of Boston. The completion of these Impor- 

 tant works led to projects for filling up the marshes 

 and establishing docks in rivalry of Boston, 

 plans but very slightly realized before circum- 

 stances essentially changed them. 



In this way, Cambridge, which had hitherto faced 

 the Brighton mainland, turned its face toward the 

 Boston peninsula, and two new villages began to 

 grow up at " the Port " and " the Point," otherwise 

 Cambridgeport and East Cambridge. It was not 

 long before the new villages began in some ways to 

 assert rivalry with the old one. The corporation 

 which owned the bridge and large tracts of land at 

 Lechmere Point naturally wished to increase the 

 value of its real estate. Middlesex County needed 

 a new courthouse and jail. In 1757 a new court- 

 house had ,been built on the site of Lyceum Hall, 

 but in 1813 there was a need for something better ; 

 whereupon the Lechmere Point Corporation forth- 

 with built a courthouse and jail in East Cam- 

 bridge, and presented them, with the ground on 

 which they stood, to the county. In 1818, a lot 

 of land in the Port, bounded by Harvard, Pro- 

 spect, Austin, and Norfolk streets, was appropriated 

 for a poorhouse. Soon afterward it was proposed 

 to inclose our common, which with the lapse of 

 time had shrunk to about its present size, and 



