100 Cambridge Street and the Saltonstalls

The 22-story office tower at 100 Cambridge Street was completed in 1966 and originally called the “state office building”. It was outside the Government Center urban renewal area, but it reflects the architecture at that time. It closed for extensive remodelling in 2000, then reopened for mixed private office and residential use in 2004. An official Act gave it the name “Leverett Saltonstall Building” in July, 1968 in “recognition of the long and meritorious service” of the former Governor and Senator, who was in retirement at the time. However, after the remodel, it is now known simply as “100 Cambridge Street”.

The name of Saltonstall was at the very beginning of Boston. Sir Richard Saltonstall (1586-16xx) and his family sailed with Gov. John Winthrop on the Arbella during the Great Migration of 1630. His father was the Lord Mayor of London and his wife, Muriel Gurdon, was a daughter of Sir William Brampton Gurdon with ancestry back to the 13^th century. Saltonstall left Winthrop in Charlestown and continued on up the Charles River with Rev. George Phillips and forty families to a point now known as Gerry’s Landing in present-day Cambridge. It was initially the Saltonstall Plantation, then Watertown, and included parts of Belmont, Cambridge, Lincoln, Waltham and Weston. 

Sir Richard returned to England the next year and left 560 acres of land to his sons, Henry and Samuel. Samuel remained a permanent resident of the town and Henry was among the first graduating class of Harvard College in 1642. The Saltonstalls have been the only family at Harvard or in any other college’s history who produced eleven consecutive generations of graduates. Henry returned to England the next year and studied medicine in Padua, becoming Harvard’s first doctor.

Saltonstall remained a friend of Massachusetts in England and paved the way for the Connecticut colony. In the moderate and level-headed manner that typified his descendants, Sir Richard would not condone religious intolerance and admonished the Puritan Reverends John Wilson and John Cotton in a long letter, condemning their tyranny and persecution in Boston.

His son, Richard, Jr., returned from England and was among the first settlers of Ipswich. As a magistrate, he was one of the first to advocate against slavery as well as the condition of church membership for civil rights. His son, Nathaniel of the Harvard Class of 1659, was equally outspoken. He was appointed as a judge to sit on the Salem Witch trials but refused to participate and later helped found Haverhill, which had several generations of Saltonstalls.

Nathaniel’s son, Gurdon Saltonstall (1666-1724), Harvard Class of 1684, became the reverend minister of Gov. Fitz-John Winthrop of Connecticut and was later elected its Governor in 1708-24.  He established a line of Connecticut Saltonstalls and was a founder of Yale College, bringing it to New Haven instead of Hartford.

Nathaniel’s other son, Richard, was the father of Judge Richard Saltonstall (1703-56), magistrate of Haverhill. Judge Saltonstall, Harvard Class of 1722, was described as “…a man of talent and learning. He was distinguished for elegant and generous hospitality and for bountiful liberality to the poor”; although, he was also financially troubled until his second marriage to Mary Cooke. Mary’s father, Elisha, was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts and her mother, Jane Middlecott, was a Mayflower descendant of Richard Middlecott. Richard and Mary’s son, the first Leverett (1754-82), was named after Mary’s matrilineal ancestor Gov. John Leverett, an early colonial Governor of Massachusetts  and the grandfather of John Leverett, 7^th President of Harvard College.

A second son, Nathaniel, married Anna White and was the father of the second Leverett Saltonstall (1783-1845), Harvard Class of 1802. By birth, wealth, and training, young Leverett was a charter member of the Essex County conservative elite and, like many of the elite, grew to hold public service as the prerogative and duty of men of high status.

He was elected the first Mayor of the City of Salem in 1836-38 and built its first city hall, which still stands. Leverett’s impressive resume of public service included several stints as a Massachusetts Representative, Congressman, Senator, Senate President, and an overseer of Harvard College.

Leverett was married to Mary Elizabeth Sanders and his older brother, Nathaniel, was married to her older sister Caroline. Among Leverett and Mary’s four children was the third Leverett (1825-95) born in Salem and of the Harvard Class of 1848.

The third Leverett was trained as a lawyer and entered politics as a Democrat but never held office despite frequent nominations for Congress. He managed the family trust, a law practice, and held appointments as Commissioner for Massachusetts at the first World’s Fair and Collector for the Port of Boston for Grover Cleveland. Those who knew and worked with him described him as “the very soul of honor”.

Leverett married Rose Lee of that ancient Ipswich family and banking firm of Lee and Higginson. The Saltonstalls and Lees had adjoining country estates on Chestnut Hill, developed by Joseph Lee after being in the Hammond family for nearly 200 years.  So many Lees, Saltonstalls, Cabots, Lawrences and Lowells migrated from the North Shore to Chestnut Hill that it was once called the “Essex Colony”.

Leverett and Rose had six children on Chestnut Hill, their first-born being the fourth Leverett Saltonstall who died at the age of 8. Their next eldest was Richard “Dick” Middlecott Saltonstall (1859-1922). Dick, Harvard Class of 1880, was a lawyer and general counsel for the New York and New England Railroad Company. He also maintained a law firm at 15 Congress Street as Gaston, Snow and Saltonstall and was a close friend of Harvard classmate Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Both parted their hair in the middle in the style of fashionable aristocrats throughout their lives.

Teddy was a frequent visitor at Chestnut Hill where he fell in love at first sight with Dick’s cousin and his future wife, Alice Hathaway Lee. Sadly, Alice died after giving birth and within an hour his mother died at the same house in New York. On  Valentine’s Day of 1884 Teddy entered a black X into his diary with the  words, “The light has gone out of my life”. 

Richard married Eleanor Brooks, daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks III and an ancestor of Thomas Brooks who was in Watertown with Sir Richard in 1631. The Brooks had been in Medford since the 17th century. Peter Chardon III was married to Sarah Lawrence, daughter of Amos A. Lawrence from whose family the city was named.

Eleanor’s maternal blood ties to the Adams and Quincys of Boston would run in the veins of their first son, the fifth Leverett Saltonstall (1892-1979). By the time of Leverett’s birth, the Saltonstalls were among, if not the wealthiest,  family in Massachusetts. The fifth Leverett was born on Chestnut Hill and educated at the Noble and Greenough School near where he met his future wife, Alice Wesselhoeft. At the tender age of 11, he developed a “crush” on Alice that lasted for the next 78 years.

At Harvard, Class of 1914, he competed in hockey, football, and rowing. Saltonstall led the Harvard crew in the Henley Royal Regatta in England and took the Grand Challenge Cup in 1914, the only winning American team since its inception in 1839.Leverett went on to Harvard Law School, a 2-year stint in the US Army, and then on from Alderman in Newton to the House of Representatives where he rose to Speaker of the House by 1937.  He ran against the infamous Michael Curley for Governor in 1939.

Curley had a checkered, but solid career in Boston politics with a powerful Irish political machine behind him; but, he was on a losing streak and this run was his “last hurrah”. Both attended the 1938 Dorgan’s St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast and Curley made a remark about Saltonstall’s “Harvard accent with a South Boston face”. Saltonstall retorted with, “Ah, but it is the same face before and after an election” and Curley dared him to campaign in South Boston, joking that with that face he’d be assaulted. Salty campaigned in South Boston the very next day and won the Irish vote, gaining the nickname “Salty”. He was elected Governor in a resounding victory and served three consecutive terms from 1939 to 1945 until he was asked to fill the vacant Senate seat of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in 1944.

Saltonstall served three terms as a U.S. Senator from 1945 to 1967. A 1970 Globe article noted that, “In the Senate, he was known as ‘a senator's senator’ possessing the Yankee traits of tidiness, unfailing courtesy and caution, coupled with integrity, modesty, thoroughness, tenacity and a shrewd grasp of political realities.” His face “… was a kindly, honest-looking, craggy face with its heavy-lidded blue eyes, long nose, wide-spaced teeth, lean cheeks and jutting jaw all capped by a full head of hair.” 

Among his five children, William (1927-2009) served as a state Senator in 1966-1978. Jean married Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, the Washington Post editor. Emily married Richard Byrd, son of the Arctic explorer.  The sixth Leverett Saltonstall, Jr. (1917-66), Harvard Class of 19xx, died of cancer in New York at the age of 48 and was buried at the family plot in Salem. He was the last Leverett Saltonstall. 

Salty once said: "I love people and you see plenty of them in politics and government. No job is more satisfactory than one of working out problems with people that affect us all." He retired from the Senate to his farm in Dover and remained active until his death at 89.