Cambridge opened its Sesquicentennial Celebration with a bang Saturday, honoring the 150th anniversary of the city's incorporation with a noisy, music-filled parade that blocked traffic on Mass. Ave., Mt. Auburn Street and Memorial Drive for hours.

The parade kicked off a month of activities organized by the Cambridge Arts Council under the theme, "Honor the Past and Reach for the Future."

The Grand 150th Parade began at the Kennedy School--the elementary school in East Cambridge, not Harvard's government school--and wound its way to join up with the 19th Annual Cambridge River Festival along the banks of the Charles.

Led by Mayor Sheila Doyle Russell, who initiated the planning of the celebration, the parade featured more than 20 bands, including the Hot Tamale Brass Band and the MIT Marching Band.

The celebration continues Friday with a Citywide Golf Tournament at the Fresh Pond Golf Course to earn money for the United Special Olympics. The following Friday, September 20, Cantabrigians will join clarinetist and longtime resident Stan Strickland and his band Ascension for a block party on Mass. Ave. outside City Hall. The celebration will conclude September 28 with Family Day, a day of sports events, children's games, dancing lessons and arts-and-crafts shows at Mayor Thomas W. Danehy Park.

The Arts Council began planning the celebration in March, according to Pallas C. Lombardi, the council's executive director. The council worked to implement the plans of the Committee for the 150th Anniversary, chaired by Vice-Mayor Kathleen L. Born.

"At every meeting of the committee people would say, 'Oh, we've got to have antique cars, antique faire engines, a drum-and-bugle corps,'" Lombardi recalls.

The Arts Council also worked with the Cambridge Historical Commission in developing an exhibition, "The City at Work, 1846-1996," on display this month at the City Hall Annex's Gallery 57 on Inman Street.

150 Years

The site now known as Cambridge was first settled in 1630 and named Newtowne. Six years later, the Massachusetts Bay Company set aside funding for what eventually became Harvard. In 1638, the town was renamed Cambridge in honor of the English alma mater of many of the Puritan settlers in Massachusetts.

But the town wasn't incorporated as a city until 1846, when residents, after defeating a plan to separate off East Cambridge and Cambridgeport from the city property, vowed to unify the city forever by applying for a city charter. That charter was granted by the state legislature on March 17, 1846.

Charles M. Sullivan, executive director of the Historical Commission, says this year's celebration differs markedly from the 1869 and 1946 galas, reflecting the diversity of the city's immigrant groups, who arrived after the Second World War.

In 1896, the city was in the throes of the nation's tremendous expansion as an industrial power. Similarly, in 1946, the city celebrated its role as an "industrial powerhouse" that played its part in America's triumph in the war. At that time, major industrial firms like Boston Woven Hose, Simplex Wire & Cable, Irving & Casson Furniture and the National Casket Co. employed thousands of industrial workers and sponsored most of the 1946 parade's floats.

"In 1896 and 1946 it was definitely an establishment production," says Sullivan. "The major manufacturers in 1946 were the focus of the parade. This year there are very few major manufacturers left, if any, in Cambridge and so this will have much more of a community aspect." This year, the biggest companies sponsoring the anniversary celebration are banks, realties and Star Market.

The celebration reflects not only the move to a service-based local economy but also the city's pluralism. Groups ranging from the Cambridge Haitian Services Collaborative to the Cambridge Chinese Cultural Center participated in the parade. "A lot of the different ethnic performers probably weren't here 20 years ago," Lombardi says.

The parade also offers evidence of the city's shift to the political left since its last celebration. Grass-roots activist groups like the Cambridge Eviction Free Zone and the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee took part, a reminder of the stunning abolition of rent control--for decades a liberal rallying cry--which state voters handed to Cambridge residents in 1994.

And unlike the 1946 parade, where local politicians delivered a round of stump speeches at the parade's end, this year's parade had no overt politicking--even in a presidential election year. Participating in the parade were State Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham '72 (D-Chelsea), State Senator Robert E. Travaglini (D-Cambridge) and U.S. Rep Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Cambridge), among others.

The City Council spent $50,000 on the 150th anniversary celebration, which was approved in the April city budget. That sum was "less than what they spent in 1946," after adjusting for inflation, according to Lombardi