Author Archives: Cathie Zusy

About Cathie Zusy

President, Magazine Beach Partners, Inc. and President, Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association, Inc. Catherine Zusy has led the development of museum exhibitions, educational programs, audiotours, historic walking tours, archeological excavations and community projects for over thirty years. As Chief Curator the New Hampshire Historical Society she oversaw the development of the NEH-funded “New Hampshire Through Many Eyes” and the award-winning “At What Cost? Shaping the Land We Call New Hampshire.” She has written and lectured extensively about the Arts & Crafts Movement in America and America’s 19th century industrial potteries. More recently she has written about “If This House Could Talk…,” a project she co-developed and organized for Cambridgeport History Day. Zusy has a “College Major” in history, art and language) from Bucknell University, a MA in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown (NY) Graduate Program and a M.A.T. from Simmons College, Boston. Zusy has led the effort to revitalize Magazine Beach since November of 2010. She lives with her husband and son in Cambridge, MA, and walks Magazine Beach several times each week.

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If this house could talk… is a community-based history and public art project, first created in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Residents and businesses post handwritten signs telling stories and offering history the of their homes and neighborhood from the recent or not-so-recent past. Temporary signs are mounted on posts, fences, and directly on buildings.

The project is described in an article in History News, the National Trust’s Preservation Forum, and in the Exhibitionist. (See: Zusy HNSummer10  and 10 Zusy EXH Spring 2015-10. ) To jumpstart your own project, see our guidelines and graphics (above), resources for local research, and our list of sign text and sign location map.  Here is a feature on WBUR’s Radio Boston, and a newsletter about Cambridgeport and Cambridgeport History Day published by the Cambridge Historical Society. Finally, here is an audio recording about ITHCT, from a 2012 presentation at the American Association for State and Local History Conference.

The Cambridge work has inspired new projects in Sacramento, CA, Mesquite, NV, Meridian, ID, Fairfield, CT, Newburyport, MA and in Calgary, Alberta. Want to launch your own? We’d like to hear about it and post links to it here!