"The library is decrepit and has been for years," she says. "That is probably the thing that bothers me the most."

Like education, art is another cultural factor that has pulled together members of the neighborhood.

Judith Motzkin is a potter who successfully lobbied for a change in city zoning policy to allow artists to build studios in their backyards. She founded the Cambridgeport Artists Open Studios, an annual event where artists who work in the neighborhood open their homes and show their works. Last fall, about 50 artists opened their studios to hundreds of Cantabrigians.

"I like that artists can live within the neighborhood, rather than artists jammed together in one place," she says.

View from Magazine and Upton

At 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., Jerre G. Quayle shepherds parents and their children across the intersection at Magazine and Upton Streets.

She has been a crossing guard for 11 years and has lived in Cambridgeport all her life. Part of her time in the neighborhood she spent in an area that used to be called "greasy village" after the soap factories that operated there.

Quayle stands in the drizzle one afternoon wearing her fluorescent crossing guard vest and talks about visiting Central Square, which many Cambridgeport residents appreciate being close by.