New Self-Paced Audio Guide Lets Visitors Explore Arts, Culture and History Highlights at One’s Own Pace
An expansive new self-guided digital audio tour for mobile devices provides visitors and locals with a personalized deep-dive into a wealth of historic, artistic and architectural assets throughout the Arlington Cultural District at ArtsArlington.org/ACDTour.
Narrated by noted local historian Ed Gordon, who also guides tours in several neighboring towns and manages Arlington’s historic Old Schwamb Mill, the tour comprises audio accounts of key historical events, influential residents, town lore, and architectural and cultural features concentrated in an area along Arlington’s so-called Massachusetts Avenue “cultural corridor,” Spy Pond Park and the Minuteman Bikeway.
Accessible via podcast services (Google Podcasts and Soundcloud) or by Interactive Google Map, the tour’s modular audio descriptions allow users to tour at their own pace, streaming site-specific details about Revolutionary War battle sites, Gilded Age architectural samples, tidbits on classic town figures such as sculptor Cyrus Dallin, composer Alan Hovhaness, native son Samuel “Uncle Sam” Wilson, vibrant contemporary public art, and trail-side narratives along Spy Pond and the Minuteman Bikeway.
Along the way, visitors will also discover stores and galleries, dining and nightlife establishments, theaters and parks, community centers and recreational areas they’ll want to return to and explore.
The audio tour is a project of the Arlington Cultural District Managing Partnership, a part of the town’s Commission for Arts & Culture, developed with the Loop Lab with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) and local sponsors Mirak Properties, The Legacy at Arlington Center, and WorkBar Arlington. The ACD Core Managing Partnership is a collaboration of Robbins Library, the Department of Planning and Community Development, Arlington Chamber of Commerce, Arlington Center for the Arts, the East Arlington Business Cooperative, and Arlington Commission for Arts & Culture.
ABOUT THE ARLINGTON CULTURAL DISTRICT
The mission of the Arlington Cultural District (“ACD”) is to support the artistic, creative and cultural assets located within the designated district and the town, and to promote the same to surrounding communities and the region. Designated by the MCC in 2017, the Cultural District extends from Jason Russell House, a “witness house” from April 19, 1775, to Za Restaurant on East Arlington’s Milton Street, whose colorful, building-sized wildlife mural by James Weinberg welcomes visitors entering town from Somerville and Cambridge.
