Porter Square, Cambridge, MA 02140: Rent, Sale Prices, and Commute Data

Where Porter Square Sits

Porter Square centers on the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Somerville Avenue, between Harvard and Davis Squares, and the neighborhood physically straddles the Cambridge and Somerville line. ZIP 02140 covers the Cambridge side, including Avon Hill and the shopping center around the T station.

Getting Around

The Porter Square stop serves the Red Line and the Fitchburg commuter rail line, and the Red Line’s 1984 extension to Alewife turned Porter into a through‑station instead of an endpoint. Walk Score rates the area 98, Bike Score 99, and Transit Score 74, according to Flyhomes’ neighborhood data.

How long is the T ride from Porter Square to downtown Boston?
Roughly 20 minutes on the Red Line, with Harvard Square one stop away, per ApartmentAdvisor’s transit notes.

What Rent Costs

Three citywide aggregators cluster around $3,000 to $3,400 for a one‑bedroom, while PadMapper’s live Porter Square listings median lands lower at $2,700. That gap is a modeling difference: citywide averages fold in newer, amenity‑heavy buildings, and Porter Square’s stock skews toward older triple‑deckers and mid‑rise walk‑ups, so a live‑listing median in this specific neighborhood reads below the citywide number.

Why do rent estimates for Porter Square vary so much between sites?
They pull from different pools. RentCafe and Zumper model citywide averages that include new luxury construction, while PadMapper’s Porter Square figure is a median of currently active listings in the neighborhood’s existing building stock.

What Sold in 2025

Condos carried the sales volume in 02140 last year; single‑family and multi‑family sales were far rarer and priced well above the condo tier, according to a Cambridge brokerage’s 2025 market review. Cambridge’s citywide average home value was $1,050,668, down 1.6% year over year, per Zillow.

Climate and Insurance Risk

The wind and heat exposure sit at the top of Redfin’s First Street risk scale for every property in the neighborhood.

Schools

Graham & Parks School at 44 Linnaean Street and Maria L. Baldwin School at 85 Oxford Street serve the immediate area, with GreatSchools ratings for district elementary schools ranging from 4 to 10. Because the neighborhood straddles the city line, some addresses feed into Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, others into Somerville High School.

Which schools serve Porter Square addresses?
Graham & Parks and Baldwin at the elementary level, with high schoolers split between Cambridge Rindge and Latin and Somerville High depending on the exact address.

History Behind the Layout

The Walden Street Cattle Pass, a tunnel built in 1857 to move livestock without crossing street traffic, still survives under the Walden Street Bridge after a 2007–08 restoration. Susumu Shingu’s 46‑foot kinetic steel sculpture, “Gift of the Wind,” went up with the 1984 Red Line extension and remains the square’s visible landmark.

The Avon Hill Historic District, laid out around 1870 southwest of the square, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Is Porter Square in Cambridge or Somerville?
Both. The square sits on the border, and green street signs mark the Cambridge side while blue signs mark Somerville.

Who the Data Favors

Renters comfortable with $2,700 to $3,400 for a one‑bedroom, buyers targeting the $1M condo tier or the $1.8M single‑family tier, and families willing to navigate a cross‑border school split will find the numbers above line up in their favor. Buyers hoping for a bargain relative to Cambridge overall will not find one here.