Living on the line

Rona Gregory can cook dinner in her Cambridge kitchen, sleep in her Somerville bedroom, and, in the dining room, pace back and forth between the two cities.

When Wendell Lansford relaxes on his back porch, he's in Cambridge. To get there, though, he generally uses his front door in Somerville.

Gregory and Lansford live on the line -- that is, their homes are split by the border between Somerville and Cambridge.

For Gregory, the city line practically cuts her house in half; for Lansford, the line is more of a diagonal. City officials call these anomalies ''border properties," and there are 128 that straddle the Cambridge/Somerville line. Funny thing is, in this high-tech world of precision measurement and complex tax codes, it's still not always easy in such cases to figure out where you live or which schools your children should go to.

Some line dwellers would rather have one city to call their own while others say their situation makes for unique cocktail party chatter. And with today's space crunch on the streets, who could complain about being entitled to a parking sticker in more than one city? Of course, it's no secret that most line dwellers tend to discreetly favor one side -- let's say the historically more prestigious side -- of their property than the other.

''You mean, the famous ZIP code," says Robert Healy, Cambridge's city manager, when asked about the preference many line-dwellers have for his city.

Although the city has seven ZIP codes, its 02138 is known around the country for its prestige, even earning a spot on popular T-shirts. All line-dwellers ultimately have one address, one ZIP code (a few actually in 02138), one phone exchange, and one vote in only one city. They do, however, pay taxes to both municipalities.

Still, determining all of these factors is not always simple. Healy says for many, the big question comes down to which school system their children will attend.

''It really comes down to where you reside and where you reside really does come down to where you sleep," said Healy. But later he explains residency this way: ''The general rule of thumb is that you reside in the community in which the majority of your house is in."

Healy, like others, seems to have various explanations for the many tricky situations encountered by those who live on the line. Some, indeed, consider home the place they sleep (or say they sleep); others, where they eat or open the front door.

''I guess there are a lot of factors," says Healy, whose uncertainty only illustrates that even after nearly 400 years, line-dwelling remains complicated.

Rona Gregory bought her house, just outside Davis Square, in 1981, and yet seven years later she says the Cambridge Election Commission came knocking, wanting to know where she slept.

''It was a personal question," she now says. But Gregory was also concerned that it could lead to a school system change. Her children slept in Cambridge and ultimately attended Cambridge public schools. But Gregory has always slept in Somerville. She has a Cambridge address and has voted there since purchasing her Locke Street home. ''I live in Cambridge," she insists.

Teresa Neighbor, executive director of the Cambridge Election Commission, says commissioners used to do routine checks on these border properties, including ones in Gregory's neighborhood. The place where people vote should depend on where they sleep, says Neighbor, though over the years, she says, there have been fewer such home inspections.

''If my residency depended on it, I would move my bed," says Gregory. Although she likes her sleeping arrangements fine, she was prepared to change them in the 1980s and would still do so if she had to.

''It seems that by 1988, there should have been another way to deal with this," she says.

In 1982 the Appeals Court of Massachusetts ruled on a case involving a family whose home straddled the line between Essex and Hamilton, noting that ''where house and lot in which school children resided was bisected by town line and substantial portions of house were located in one town, children were residents of that town for purposes of school attendance."

But this doesn't clarify what happens when substantial portions of a home are in both cities. Albert Argenziano, Somerville's schools superintendent, has his own answer for that one. ''Where the child puts his or her head is where they go to school," he says. ''In the 12 years I've been here, I've never had a problem." Argenziano recalls only a few border families who asked to send their child to Somerville schools. ''We're in the kid business. I try to make it as simple as possible." What would he do if siblings slept in different cities, but wanted to attend the same schools? ''We'd work it out," he says.

Tax assessors are less flexible, taxing properties strictly according to percentages of land and house that fall within city limits. Things can change if an owner puts on an addition or makes other changes to a building's footprint, says Richard Brescia, Somerville's chief assessor. Brescia's looked at the line from both sides now: before his 20-year stint in Somerville, he worked in Cambridge's assessing department for eight years. Tax rates vary from year to year and from city to city, but Brescia said assessors from both cities work together to agree upon tax bills, and border-dwellers do pay both cities. But for those who want to complain about taxation without representation, Brescia says has little sympathy. ''They knew upfront what the situation was going to be."

With 60 percent of her land in Somerville and her home split evenly between the two cities, Gregory says each municipality taxes her accordingly. She's learned the nitty-gritty of line-dwelling, having spent years renovating her home. Her front hall is in Cambridge, her kitchen in Somerville, and the city line cuts through her dining room table, leaving some guests to eat in Somerville while others chow down in neighboring Cambridge. ''If I was more creative," she says, ''I suppose I could have the line memorialized in my dining room."

Gregory says she always applied for two building permits and went through the appropriate channels, twice, when it came to having work done on her home. She recently installed dormers on the Somerville side of her house, something she was told would have been more difficult had they been in Cambridge, since Gregory has heard city officials there can be more strict about such changes.

''We were destined to live on the line," says Lansford, who hasn't yet renovated or dealt with building permits. But he had made an offer on another border property in Davis Square (which was rejected) months before buying his home on Roseland Street in June. ''It was the first offer we ever made on a house," he says. ''We had already done our homework about living on the line." So, when he looked at the second border property outside Porter Square, he knew what to ask. Most importantly to him, though he and his wife have no children, they live within the Cambridge school district.

It may come in handy one day to say he lives in Somerville rather than Cambridge, but for now Lansford sticks to what creates the most conversation. ''Generally, we tell people we live on the line." That line includes a front yard and front door in Somerville, a master bedroom in Cambridge, and a kitchen that is split. The back porch is Cambridge. He's not sure which city to contact about a possible squirrel in the attic, because the rascal is likely running laps through both. ''It's not clear who plows," he adds, having not yet experienced a winter in his new place. Somerville collects Lansford's trash, even though his closest neighbor's is picked up by Cambridge.

''All of this stuff was predetermined long before our time," says Stan Koty, Somerville's public works commissioner. Koty says that confusion sometimes comes up when a new city driver, unfamiliar with the borders, fails to pick up trash or plow a street. He says that street crews have to keep track of several bordering communities, including Arlington, Cambridge, Medford, and Charlestown.

Border properties are not unique to Somerville and Cambridge, but the street layout -- and the meshing of neighborhoods around Porter, Inman, and Davis Squares -- accounts for the high number between the two cities. Boston and Brookline share at least 25 residential properties, says Randy Kincaid, deputy chief assessor in Brookline. ''Unless a town line is a road or river, the property line is going to cross town lines," he says. For example, I-93 and the Mystic River act as natural boundaries for Somerville.

Ron Rakow, Boston's commissioner of assessing, says the city borders six other municipalities, but has several natural boundaries, including the Neponset and Charles Rivers, and cemeteries along West Roxbury's border with Newton.

Megan Gelstein isn't quite a line-dweller, since her house is entirely in Somerville, but she lives outside Inman Square on Line Street, one of the many thoroughfares that serve as borders between the two cities. Her house faces Cambridge, many of her neighbors are Cantabrigians, and as a young renter in the building she now owns, she used to tell people she lived in Inman Square. That's Cambridge. ''I'm less concerned with those issues now," says Gelstein, laughing.

For her, the difference between ordinary Somerville and prestigious Cambridge has worked in her favor. She says when hiring contractors a friend advised that she make it clear she lived on the Somerville side of Line Street. ''It was without a doubt that I would be charged more if I was at a Cambridge address," she explains.

But on a snowy morning Gelstein still longs to be a Cambridge resident, and says the Cambridge plows come early to push the snow to the Somerville side. ''When it starts to snow I wish, I wish, I wish I lived in Cambridge," she says.

''That's absolutely what they should be doing," asserts Somerville's Koty, explaining that both Cambridge and Somerville have odd-side plowing, which means that snow is supposed to get pushed to the even-numbered side of each street on which Gelstein happens to live.

Russell Street resident Marie Hazlett has a Cambridge address and sees something else out her window. ''I watch the plow from Somerville do one side only," she says. ''When he gets to the end, he lifts the plow and turns around."

Cambridge's Healy scoffs at the notion that neighboring workers would be so petty. As for his own crews, he says, ''We don't stop the plow at the city line. We stop where it makes the most sense."

As for parking stickers, Captain Robert Bradley, acting director of Somerville's traffic and parking department, says line-straddlers -- and many residents who live on border streets -- are entitled to a parking pass from each municipality, one of which carries more weight. Bradley says the secondary pass often indicates the specific streets on which a car can be parked. For example, a resident of Line street in Cambridge can park on either side of the street, but would not be entitled to park anywhere else in Somerville. ''It's about where you pay excise tax, not property tax," Bradley says of how such passes are issued.

Russell Street resident Elliot Levine has lived on the line for 11 years and still hasn't bothered to get his Somerville sticker. ''It has no effect on me one way or the other," says Levine, whose house and yard are mostly in Cambridge. When he and his wife purchased the home, Levine says he was mostly interested in knowing which school system they would be connected to. Although they sent their son to private school, access to Cambridge was their concern at the time.

Levine was once double-ticketed during the same snowstorm for failing to shovel his Cambridge sidewalk at the side of his house and his Somerville sidewalk in the front. But more interesting to him is that his home was previously owned by former Speaker of the House Thomas ''Tip" O'Neill. Levine says he often wonders why O'Neill didn't remedy his situation as a border-straddler and reroute the city line so it no longer cut through his property. (Then again, since all politics is local, O'Neill could always tell crowds in two cities he was one of them!)

Hazlett says the line was partly responsible for creating a disconnect between her children, who went to Cambridge schools, and many of the other children on the street, who went to class in Somerville. Because of that, she said the children never got to know each other well.

Hazlett has lived on Russell Street since 1941, when she moved there as a teenager with her parents. They lived in a house on the line, and when she and her husband bought their home down the street, it turned out to be a border property as well. At this point Hazlett says she's lost track of where the cities split her property. ''It's a crazy line," she says. ''Someone must have done it without a ruler."

Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, says the original city line between Cambridge and Somerville, which was then part of Charlestown, was established in 1630, but has been tweaked here and there through the years. In 1856, a Harvard professor living just outside Porter Square, arguing that the college required him to be a Cambridge resident, lobbied the state Legislature to have his parcel of land included within Cambridge city limits. He got his wish, leading to one zig in today's zigzag border.

Sullivan says Beacon Street, built initially as a major highway in 1810, accounts for additional confusion. He says the road cut an awkward path between Cambridge and Somerville, leaving a few areas with small pieces in each. Sullivan says it's likely that owners would have then purchased additional adjoining property so as to form a decent plot. ''In general it wasn't seen as an inconvenience," he says of owning land in two cities.

As a Cambridge resident, Hazlett says she gets frustrated with having to pay taxes to Somerville. ''We don't have any say in how we're governed on the other half of our property," she says. ''I'd love to be all in my own city." But she does have parking stickers for each.

As a line-dweller Gregory says she often feels disconnected from her Somerville neighbors. It's something she might not have thought about if she didn't own property in the city and border on other Somerville homes. That her neighbors would be voting for different local officials and concerned with different issues while living only feet away is unnerving, she says.

While Gregory is proud to be a Cantabrigian -- and remember, she would move her bed to continue to be one -- she's not ashamed to own land in Somerville. ''In a lot of ways I defend Somerville," says Gregory, when asked if she prefers to associate herself with one city more than the other. ''I love Cambridge, too." She says she sees little difference between the Cambridge and West Somerville streets in her neighborhood. ''I'm not embarrassed to say I live in Somerville," adds Gregory, who sent children to Cambridge schools and installed dormers on the Somerville side of her house. ''I probably play both ends against the middle."

Bridget Samburg can be reached at bsamburg@comcast.net.