Raw States

Cambridge River Festival

Cambridge, MA · Arts & Culture

When

June 19, 2027

Where

Memorial Drive · Cambridge · MA

Cost

Not confirmed

Status

Approximate: based on past editions, not announced yet

Cambridge Arts' River Festival lines the Charles River at Memorial Drive with six stages of music, theater, and dance alongside an arts and crafts market and international food vendors. Running since 1979, it is one of Greater Boston's longest standing cultural festivals and draws well over a hundred thousand people in a single day. The festival is free and organized by the city's arts council.

The history within reach

• The Head of the Charles, the biggest regatta in the world0.2 mi

  Three Cambridge Boat Club members started a head race on the Charles in 1965, borrowing the format from the English rivers where crews start at intervals and race the clock.

• Head of the Charles Regatta0.4 mi

  The largest two-day rowing regatta in the world, contested on the Charles River since 1965..

• 784 Memorial Drive, from shoe glue to Polaroid0.4 mi

  Boston Blacking Company, the adhesive maker behind Bostik, put up this Streamline Moderne block on the Charles in 1937 to a Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott design.

• Old Cambridge Baptist Church, built from Somerville granite0.4 mi

  The congregation broke off from Cambridge's First Baptist Church in 1844 and sold its first meeting house to the Congregationalists.

• The Anderson Bridge stands where the Charles was first bridged0.4 mi

  The Great Bridge was thrown across the Charles here in 1662, the first structure ever to span the river, and it put Cambridge on the road out of Boston to the west.