By Elizabeth Bernardi

Driving through Somerville, you might have noticed the engraved plaques marking historical sites and scattered throughout the city. But if you are behind the wheel, you probably haven’t stopped to read them. Turns out, the best way to sample historic Somerville is on the two wheels of a bicycle, and at Saturday’s Historic Bicycle Tour of Somerville and Medford, nearly 100 people discovered just that.

The tour, in its sixth year, took riders through Somerville with stops at some of the historic houses, parks and businesses along the way. Historic properties and landmarks are given that designation based a combination of factors. The Preservation Commission works with architectural historians to identify homes and parcels that are
significant to the community and its history. This might mean that a property was involved in an important historical event, or simply that its architecture is historically notable. Historic properties are also determined based on how well-maintained they are with respect to the property’s original state. Raising awareness and appreciation of  these properties is one of the goals of the bicycle tour.

With a leisurely pace and frequent stops to appreciate architecture and history, the 10-12-mile ride attracted cyclists of all ages, and even one scooter.

Brandon Wilson, executive director of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission, said she originated the tours because she was frustrated with the limitations of walking tours.
“I wanted to attract a new group of people,” she said, and biking allows the tour to traverse much more ground than a walking tour, while still appealing to all ages and fitness levels. The first tour was in 2002.

The ride is traditionally held in May to call attention to the official Preservation Month, but this year the original date was a rainout.

The Bike Committee, which hosts its own ride through Somerville in October, joined on as co-host of the May event a year or two after the first ride, Wilson said. It now takes the opportunity during the tour to promote cycling as an alternative to driving, and to call attention to efforts in Somerville to increase cycling paths and promote cyclist safety on the streets.

Flanked by cycling police officers and a Somerville police van, the cyclists took over the roads Saturday morning. As Dick Bauer, vice chairman of the Preservation Commission announced before the ride, “We are critical mass. We are traffic.”

Collaborating with Medford was a new addition to the tour, which changes its route each year, though in 2005 the tour made its way through Cambridge as well as Somerville. Wilson hopes that a future tour can include the sites of Arlington.

The three-hour tour began at Somerville City Hall, and was hosted by committee: Wilson, Bauer and Ron Newman, of the Somerville Bicycle Committee, guided the Somerville portion of the tour. In Medford, former Somervillians (now Medfordites) Will Tenney and Susan Gerould commanded the bullhorn.

Riders first stopped at the Russell house at 58 Sycamore Street. Built in the Greek revival style in the 1830s, the house is an example of the embrace of Greek and Roman styles as symbolic of  democratic ideals. Thirty-year owner Jerry Pierce has maintained the structure as authentically as possible, even down to the original red clapboards.

Just down the street sits the Oliver Tufts House which, built in 1714, is the oldest house in Somerville, though the current location isn’t its original, and around the corner on Broadway sits the 1783-built Adams-Magoun house, the last 18th-century house remaining on Broadway.

At Tufts Park in Medford, Tenney described the colorful history of two racetracks in Medford – the Mystic Trotting Park, and Combination Park, so named because it consisted of a bicycle racing track within the horse track. Though the parks were shut down over time through the efforts of local preachers, Mystic Trotting Park did in 1874 host a race with $10,000 purse.

“In 1874 that was a heck of a lot of money,” Tenney said, and the race drew 40,000 people.
Cyclists also toured Medford’s Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters. The Loyalist Royalls first came to Massachusetts from Antigua in 1732, some 51 years before slavery was outlawed in the state. Their farm was run by 40-60 people, mostly slaves and indentured servants. The property has been maintained for 100 years, and the Royall House Association is currently organizing an archeological exhibit to showcase pieces retrieved during a recent on-site dig.

Back in Somerville, the tour continued onto Tufts University’s Professors Row, a series of university-owned Victorian houses that the Preservation Commission has worked hard to keep intact. The university recently hired an architect to redesign a dormitory plan that would have required the destruction of historic homes on the street. Wilson called attention to the issue, calling the compromise that kept the houses standing “a huge success.”

Just up the street at Nathan Tufts Park is the old powder house, where in the fall of 1774, the British General Thomas Gage captured the supply of arms and gunpowder in the first act of the Revolutionary War. Gage was so pleased with his success that fall, he tried again the following spring. But Gage was in for a surprise.

“The colonists learned more from that [fall attack] than General Gage,” said Bauer, “and when he came back, they were ready.”

Through Davis Square and up Highland Avenue, the tour wound down at the old Somerville Armory. A 2004 auction of the armory, it was feared, could have ended with its demolition, but the space is instead being converted into live-work artist studios.

Wilson said she was pleased with this plan to repurpose the structure. “Even though the priorities [originally set for this building] may not have any significance now, the buildings are wonderfully built.”

The tour ended at the Somerville Museum, where Museum Director Evelyn Battinelli awaited the cyclists with refreshments amid the new Imagining Somerville exhibit. Battinelli was impressed with the historical ride, and impressed by the number of participants it attracted.

“The bike tour is wonderful,” Battinelli said. “It gets people out into the city, and look at what it brought – people from Leominster,” she said, referring to the many former Somervillians who came to the tour from miles away. “It’s absolutely marvelous.”

Cyclist Megan Krey of Cambridge was impressed as well.
“It was very friendly and informative,” Krey said of the ride. Perhaps most satisfying was the realization that the history is tucked into the corners and side streets in an otherwise familiar city. As Krey put it, “I learned things about places that I pass every day.”