Nectow v. City of Cambridge, 277 U.S. 183 (1928), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the practise of zoning and its effects on property rights.

The Supreme Court reversed a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling and found the invasion of the plaintiff's property rights were "serious and highly injurious," by new city zoning ordinance, and that the placement of the locus of the zoning ordinance would not promote the health, safety, convenience or general welfare of inhabitants.

[2] In 1860, Alvan Clark & Sons purchased a tract of land in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on which they built a telescope lens manufacturing plant and two family homes.

Cambridge, like other American cities at the time, did not have a zoning code restricting economic activity to specific districts, allowing the Clarks to put residential and industrial facilities in the same tract.

[3] The City of Cambridge established its first zoning ordinance in 1924, which restricted the portion of the Nectow property occupied by the Clark family homesteads to residential uses.