“Saving Dana Park” Melds Gaming, AI, and Native History

By Beth Folsom, 2026

Tucked right into a Cambridgeport block off of Magazine Street sits Dana Park, a part of the town’s panorama because the mid-1800s. How did the park come to be, and what may occur if it have been to be taken from the Cambridge public and positioned into non-public arms? These are a number of the questions posed within the new sport “Save Dana Park.” A collaboration between History Cambridge and Get Up Get Out, which builds AI-powered immersible experiences, the sport is designed to convey gamers into the story of Dana Park previous and current, melding video games, AI, and native historical past. In this dwell AI-guided puzzle sport, gamers uncover clues hidden all through the park to cease a phony deed rip-off earlier than the villain takes the park away from the general public. On Saturday, May 30, History Cambridge and Get Up Get Out can be launching the sport at Dana Park. All are welcome to take part on this free occasion; designed to be greatest for ages 10 and up (or youthful, with an older good friend), the sport will be performed individually or in groups.

So how did Dana Park come to be a fixture within the Cambridge panorama? When Edmund Trowbridge Dana died in 1859, he left plenty of provisions in his will to help the locations and organizations he had valued in life. The Cambridge Chronicle, reporting on Dana’s will, famous that he bequeathed $5,000 to the Boston Athenaeum and $15,000 to the town of Cambridge for a brand new public library. The Chronicle acknowledged that “[t]his is not the first instance of Mr. Dana’s liberality. He gave to the city the square or public common on Magazine Street, and to the Cambridge Aldermen the land on which our City Hall stands.”

Dana had spent his life in Cambridge; because the son of Francis Dana, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, the youthful Dana grew up surrounded by a number of the metropolis’s foremost gamers within the realms of training, faith, artwork, and politics. Francis Dana was one of many largest traders within the growth of the Cambridgeport neighborhood, and when his land holdings have been divided amongst his youngsters after his demise, Edmund Dana inherited a big tract of land on this space. Upon his personal demise, Edmund included Cambridge in his will by the land grants and money presents he left to the town.

But Dana’s generosity got here with sure stipulations about the usage of and entry to his presents. The parcel of land that might turn out to be Dana Park was given with the understanding that it might at all times stay a public, tree-lined park. In the almost 170 years because the creation of the park, the understanding of this mandate – and the way it has been carried out – has shifted in ways in which mirror altering concepts about open house, well being and recreation, and group involvement in public selections.

By 1887, three a long time after Dana’s demise, the town nonetheless had not improved the park in the best way that many felt Dana would have needed, as reported within the Cambridge Press: “The generous and enterprising citizen who donated the land had every reason to believe, at the time, that the ‘city fathers’ would properly enclose it, lay out spacious walks, sod it and keep it in a respectable condition at least. But to-day it is used as a mere play-ground, subjected to the roughest of usage and is without a single redeeming feature as a public park.” The editor added that “[t]here is plenty of room for the scholars of the Willard school to assemble or play in the yard attached to the schoolhouse without making Dana Park a regular romping ground, besides being used for baseball or other outdoor games.”

It isn’t clear what motion, if any, the town took to enhance the park, however related issues about its situation reappeared in 1932, when neighborhood residents went earlier than the park board to argue that, “although the park was not deeded for playground purposes, the children have been using it for baseball and football games in recent years with the result that the grass is all worn off and the noise disturbs the neighbors.”

In 1969, the town finalized plans for bettering the park, which it had created in session with Cambridgeport residents, and which have been financed by a grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Cambridge Chronicle reported that “[t]he priorities set by residents during the meetings include maintenance, lighting, planting, benches, tables, water fountains, and litterbaskets, all of which have been incorporated into the plan. It became evident that the design for the park needed to accommodate three different user groups: Teenagers, the elderly, and young mothers with small children. The water sprinkler will provide a focal area which can be shared by all three groups. Teens, who seem to be the heaviest users, requested night lighting for the basketball courts, and a shaded sitting area. For the small children, a sunken sand area will provide space for play equipment. The elderly can sit in shady areas around the edge of the park, and use the bocci courts.”

When one other renovation was being deliberate in 1985, the Cambridge Arts Council introduced a contest for public artwork items to be put in on the park. Somerville artist David Phillips created the profitable design, which the Chronicle described as “a fountain sculpture which will combine three natural elements – water, stone and trees. The artwork will sit in the center of a spray pool, measuring 16 feet in diameter, located in the playground area proposed for the park. The fountain will be constructed with bronze tree limbs which will support a large ‘living’ stone on which moss and lichen make their home. A low-volume water spray will flow out of the stone into the spray pool. Phillips describes the fountain as a ‘celebration of life,’ and like other pieces created by him, it reflects the cycles of nature.” Phillips’s piece was joined in 2007 by John Powell’s “Dana Park Quotes,” a sequence of aluminum discs, mounted on the sunshine poles across the park’s central garden, that function quotations from plenty of writers related to the Cambridgeport neighborhood.

More details about “Save Dana Park” will be discovered on the History Cambridge web site. You can even go to our Cambridgeport History Hub to be taught extra in regards to the historical past of this vibrant neighborhood.