The Longfellow Bridge was built in 1907. It was named for famous American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow lived in Cambridge and taught languages at Harvard. The Longfellow Bridge was built on the site of the old West Boston Bridge. The West Boston Bridge, built in 1793, was the first bridge built across the Charles River from Boston to Cambridge (in 1786, a bridge had been built from the North End to Charlestown). The bridge was rebuilt in 1854 and torn down when the Longfellow Bridge was built.

It’s also affectionately known to locals as the salt pepper bridge because the towers look like salt and pepper shakers. It went through a $305,000,000 renovation that was completed in 2018.