Kendall Square

Kendall Square is a neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, located around the intersection of Main Street, Broadway, Wadsworth Street, and Third Street. It 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.

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. 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 was opened in 1907, it included provisions for a future rapid-transit subway link to Harvard Square and Boston (now the Red Line); Kendall Station 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 frequently confused with One Kendall Square, an office complex in redeveloped factory buildings about 1 km west at the intersection of Broadway and Hampshire Street.

Major Local Businesses

• Biogen Idec
• Camp, Dresser, and McKee
• Computer Sciences Corp
• Hewlett-Packard Cambridge Research Lab
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
• United States Department of Transportation Systems Center