The candy industry of Cambridge, Mass., has dissolved, but its giant factories remain.

Story by Elizabeth Benjamin / Oct. 31, 2001

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The Squirrel Brand Co., a former candy factory in Cambridge, Mass., is now 20 apartments. (Stull & Lee, Inc.)

The small city of Cambridge, Mass., Boston's neighbor and home to Harvard and MIT, is perhaps best known for turning out great minds and scientific discoveries. A century ago, however, the economy of Cambridge was based not on biotech or intellect, but on something far simpler and sweeter: candy.

In 1928, at the height of an era when Cambridge produced most of the treats that satisfied the nation's sugar craving, 32 confectionary manufacturers flourished within the city limits. They took ships' holds full of sugar or molasses from the West Indies and turned it into gooey, sticky, and chocolatey treats.

By the 1950s, however, the candy trade began to consolidate, driven in part by advances in refrigeration that allowed perishable sweets to be delivered long distances. Cambridge's small candy companies shut down. Their factories were either torn down or renovated into office space or university buildings.

"At least the memory and significance of the buildings survive, even if they're put to a different use," says Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission.

Necco headquarters moved from Cambridge to Revere, Mass., this year (Necco)

Today, only one Cambridge candy business remains as the only vestige of this once-thriving industry: Tootsie Roll Industries Inc., on Main Street. The New England Confectionary Co. (Necco), on Massachusetts Avenue, relocated in May 2003 to Revere, a suburb five miles from downtown Boston. Necco's 1927 art deco 500,000-square-foot factory will likely be redeveloped into offices for biotechnology firms.

Four years ago, another candy company left town. That move led to the latest effort to rehabilitate and reuse a Cambridge candy factory in the fall of 2001 at the old Squirrel Brand Co. building in a residential neighborhood on Boardman Street. From 1915 until 1999, workers in this four-story brick factory produced roasted nuts and candies with names like the Nut Yippee and Butta Babies. Now a nonprofit housing development organization called Just-A-Start Corp. is working to turn the empty 86-year-old building into affordable housing—much-needed in high-rent Cambridge.

The project, designed by the architectural firm Stull & Lee, Inc., and completed last year, proved both difficult and expensive. The Squirrel Brand building had to be gutted. Its 132 6-by-8-foot windows, 12.5-foot ceilings, and wood floors had been saturated by more than eight decades of molasses steam. Just-A-Start officials estimate a cost of $6 million to renovate the factory and two smaller buildings the organization purchased nearby. But they say they remain committed to saving the building rather than leveling it.

"People appreciate the history and character this kind of building brings to a neighborhood," says Barbara Shaw, housing development director for Just-A-Start. "We wouldn't want it to be taken down."

Squirrel Brand building (Stull & Lee, Inc.)

Incorporated in 1899, Squirrel Brand Co. never became a household name like other Cambridge candy makers, but it provided steady jobs for dozens of nearby residents and built a loyal customer base. It supplied candies and roasted nuts to U.S. Navy and Army forces in the early 20th century. Admiral Byrd took Squirrel Brand peanuts on his expeditions to the South Pole.

Several years before it closed, the company experienced a slight surge in popularity when a retro swing band named itself after a Squirrel candy—Nut Zipper, a chewy, vanilla-flavored caramel studded with peanuts. The Squirrel Nut Zippers featured the factory on the cover of its 1996 CD "Hot" and threw handfuls of their namesake candy into the crowd during live shows.

The Squirrel Brand name, equipment, and products were purchased by Texas-based Southern Style Nuts, which relocated the factory operation to Denison, Tex. Concerned that the old building would be demolished or converted to offices, local residents urged the city to buy it for affordable housing. They also pushed for the city to purchase and preserve an 11,650-square-foot undeveloped lot in front of the old factory. For 25 years, its former owners had allowed Cambridge residents to garden on the lot, which became an urban oasis of flowers and vegetables.

"It's very much a respite for the whole neighborhood, a respite from the traffic and the noise," says Broadway Terrace resident Patty Curran, who has been tending a plot at the Squirrel Brand garden for six years. "I literally have seen fist fights stop as they pass by there."

(Stull & Lee, Inc.)

The neighborhood coalition felt so strongly about keeping the Squirrel Brand property intact that members put $300,000 of a $500,000 federal grant they had received several years ago toward Just-A-Start's project. The city contributed $2 million, promising to make the garden more accessible to the neighborhood. City officials have hired a Boston landscape architecture firm to oversee the redesign of the garden and several nearby parcels of open space.

"There's very little opportunity left to preserve open space and affordable housing [in Cambridge]," says resident Gerald Bergman. "That's why we were more than eager to take the small amount of money we have available and put it toward this."

Although mint-julep-flavored taffy no longer emerges from the old factory, Squirrel Brand Co's. painted-brick sign still looms over Cambridge, and will for years to come.

Elizabeth Benjamin is a freelance writer in Albany, New York.

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