Kendall Square

Kendall Square is a neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the "square" itself at the intersection of Main Street, Broadway, Wadsworth Street, and Third Street. It may also refer to the broad business district that is east of Portland Street, west of the Charles River, north of MIT and south of Binney Street.

History

Kendall Square has been an important transportation hub since the construction of the West Boston Bridge in 1793, which provided the first direct wagon route from Boston to Cambridge. By 1810, the Broad Canal had been dug, which would connect with a system of smaller canals in this East Cambridge seaport area.

The area became a major industrial center in the nineteenth century, and by the beginning of the twentieth century was home to distilleries, electric power plants, soap and hosiery factories, and the Kendall Boiler and Tank Company (from which the square takes its name). When the Longfellow Bridge replaced the West Boston Bridge in 1907, it included provisions for a future rapid-transit subway link to Harvard Square and Boston (now the Red Line); the original Kendall subway station was opened in 1911. MIT moved to its new Cambridge campus, located south of Kendall Square between Main Street and Massachusetts Avenue, in 1915.

Kendall Square is more recently famous for the number of biotechnology and information technology firms which have chosen to locate there, lured by the proximity of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus on the south side of Main Street. Many of these firms are in two high-level office complex parks: One Kendall Square (not to be confused with Kendall Square), and Technology Square, both about half a mile west of the subway station at Kendall Square. The defunct supercomputer maker Kendall Square Research was named after the neighborhood.

Restaurants in the area include Cambridge Brewing Company and Legal Sea Foods, both popular for business gatherings. A food plaza on the first floor of the Marriott hotel, and food trucks parked in lots near the corner of Main and Vassar streets (lunch only), sell fast food at low prices, with a variety of cuisines (Asian, Italian, Mexican, etc.) to choose from.

Major local businesses

* Akamai Technologies
* Art Technology Group
* Amgen
* AT&T
* Biogen Idec
* Bitstream Inc.
* Broad Institute
* Computer Sciences Corp.
* Charles Stark Draper Laboratory ("Draper Labs")
* EMC Corporation
* Endeca Technologies
* Forrester Research
* Genzyme
* Google [http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/06/21/room_to_grow_for_microsoft/]
* ITA Software
* John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Microsoft [http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/06/21/room_to_grow_for_microsoft/]
* The MIT Press
* [http://web.mit.edu/bookstore/www/ The MIT Press Bookstore]
* Moshe Safdie and Associates, Inc. [http://www.msafdie.com/]
* Nokia
* Novell
* Novartis
* Schlumberger
* Sermo
* Vertex Pharmaceuticals
* VMware
* Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
* World Wide Web Consortium

ee also

*Kendall/MIT Station