Magazine Beach

Magazine Beach is a 17-acre riverside park in Cambridge, the city’s second-largest, set along the Charles River between the BU Bridge and Pleasant Street. It offers playing fields, shade trees, natural habitat, picnic areas and a free, outdoor, Olympic-size swimming pool with a spraydeck. The park also holds two notable historic buildings: an 1818 powder magazine, the oldest building on the Charles River Basin, and the 1912 Riverside Boat Club boathouse.

The park is jointly run by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the City of Cambridge, with support from Magazine Beach Partners, a volunteer-run nonprofit. The Partners help maintain and improve the grounds, organize cultural, educational, recreational and health programs, and arrange volunteer opportunities. Recent improvements have added a dock, a river outlook, a grassy beach area and new plantings, and Mass Audubon runs a nature center at the park.

What to Know

• The DCR offers free swim lessons at the pool during the summer.
• Picnickers are asked to carry out their trash and not dump hot coals near the trees.
• Magazine Beach Partners has worked with more than 40 organizations on park projects.
• The Riverside Boat Club is the last remaining working man’s club on the river.