Although 90 percent of the children are "of color," Swan says this group includes not only Black Americans but also children from Carribean and south American countries.

"The diversity is part of what makes Cambridge a special city," Swan says.

Swan says some of the center's more famous guests have included Ewing and current New Jersey Net and former University of Michigan point guard Rumeal Robinson.

Swan says the center's history is representative of the character of Riverside residents.

In 1929, she says, the center was founded in an old school that had been abandoned. Single women who lived in the neighborhood volunteered to watch the children of working mothers during the day.

"This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Cambridge," Swan says. "But nearly all the residents are working-class families, not welfare recipients. This is very much a working-class neighborhood."

Just across the street from the Cambridge Community Center is the Howard Street Apostolic Pentecostal Church, another Riverside institution. Rev. Aiden Ward, the church's pastor emeritus, says neighborhood residents have always been eager to welcome new immigrants to their neighborhood.

"We'll accept new immigrants just as people accepted us," Ward says.

Neighborhood History

Until 1950, Riverside was home to primarily Blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish -Americans. According to the Cambridge Historical Commission, residents were attracted by a location close to the factories along the Charles River but outside the congestion of Boston city life.

Riverside is noted for the three-floor, three-family houses that line Green Street and permeate the neighborhood.

"It's always been working-class and industrial rather than an upper-crust residential neighborhood," says Erika S. Bruner, assistant director of the commission.

The neighborhood has retained a great deal of continuity, Bruner says, as some families have lived in Riverside for generations.

"There's a lot of families that inherited their homes from parents and grandparents," says Heidi Goulopoulos, owner of Riverside Pizza and Seafood, a longtime neighborhood eatery.

Blacks, in particular, have called Riverside home for nearly two centuries, says Lt. Steve Williams of the Cambridge Police Department.