For over 150 years, Bridges Homeward has been helping children and families in Greater Boston find safety, stability, and home. What started as one small house for ten children in 1874 has grown into an agency serving hundreds of families every year.
Explore our history below.
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Explore more from our archives
Annual Impact Reports from 1975, 1976, and 1996. Sharing our story and our impact with the community is a tradition that continues today.
1875 recordkeeping of a meeting being held. Transcription: "Cambridge, February 9th, 1875. A meeting of the Avon Place Trustees is held this day, at four o'clock P.M. All members present excepting {name removed for privacy}. {name removed for privacy} in the chair. Secretary's report read and accepted. {name removed for privacy} as visiting member at the home for January, gives her report. No serious illness during the month. One new child received. The present matron is filling her place satisfactorily. {name removed for privacy} is visiting physician for the month. No other aid has been necessary. Donations of clothing have been received. Various matters in reference to the Home are discussed, but no votes are passed. Adjourned till March 9th. A true record, {name removed for privacy}."
An 1880s application for admission to the Avon Place Home. The intake questions, from a child's health to a family's circumstances, show how differently child welfare was approached over a century ago.
Emma O. Stannard served as the Avon Home's first general secretary starting in 1901, one of the earliest professional staff roles in our organization's history.
A possible glimpse into the long relationship between staff and a former Avon Home child, even decades later. This 1948 letter suggests a former resident stayed in touch with the agency well into adulthood, sharing updates about her own family. Transcription: "March 12, 1948. Dear {name removed for privacy}: Your information regarding my family was surely received with great pleasure. I've never had much information, excepting from my Grandmother {name removed for privacy}, as to dates and places, and I do thank you. The Lord has surely been wonderful to me, all these years. It doesn't seem possible that my children are grown. Our younger son is head of the Botany Dept. at W.S.C. and the older son is Plant Quarantine Inspector for the Govt. at Wash. D.C. and has just been sent on a trip to Holland. One of our daughters is in a doctor's office in Glendale, Calif., another in the library of Chas. Fuller Theo. Seminary, Pasadena. Another is organist in our church..."
Cantabrigians Gather at Magazine Beach," 1906. This snapshot of everyday life in Cambridge captures the community and era our organization's earliest history took root in. (Photo: Walter L. Colburn Collection, Cambridge Historical Commission)
A warm response to a former Avon Home child, now grown, who wrote to ask if he had brothers he never knew. The agency's reply traced back through old records to share what they could about his birth family and confirmed the story of his own path: placed in foster care as a child, and later adopted by the same family who had taken him in.
A brochure from the early 1980s promoting "One Church, One Child," a national program we partnered with the City of Cambridge to bring to our community, engaging Black community members in finding permanent, loving homes for Black children.
A brochure for the "Parent to Parent Collaborative Project," an early mentoring initiative that matched volunteer mentors with families leaving homeless shelters in Cambridge, helping them build the skills and confidence for a stable new start. This kind of community partnership laid the groundwork for the family support work we continue today.
Photo of two young children seated together on the grass outside a home, captioned "Two Little Playmates," from the 1923 Annual Report of the Avon Home.
Photo of a young girl standing in a yard in front of a farmhouse, captioned "One of our Babies, who has gained all her Strength in this Country Home," from the 1923 Annual Report of the Avon Home.
Photo of six girls and young women posed on porch steps, captioned "A Family of our Girls," from the 1923 Annual Report of the Avon Home.
Photo of five children gathered outdoors in a garden area, captioned "A Group of our Happy Children in their Country Home," from the 1923 Annual Report of the Avon Home.
Playful CHRISTMAS GREETINGS acrostic poem sent as a staff holiday greeting, December 1958.
A playful scrapbook page from our archives of holiday letters, featuring a comedic Christmas poem about {name removed for privacy} and a "world of bargains" for holiday guests, alongside a photo of gifts under the tree and a handwritten poem reflecting on the end of 1957 and the year ahead.
A handwritten tribute poem from our archives of staff holiday letters, playfully honoring {name removed for privacy}'s warmth and listening ear with equal parts affection and humor.
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Do you have a family connection to the Avon Home, or a photo, letter, or story from our past? We'd love to hear it. Whether you're curious to learn more or interested in working together, reach out!
