Harvard Square Historic District | |
Location of Harvard Square in Massachusetts | |
Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
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Coordinates | 42°22′25″N71°7′8″W / 42.37361°N 71.11889°W |
Architectural style | Colonial Revival and Greek Revival |
MPS | Cambridge MRA |
NRHP reference No. | 82001944 [1] (original) 86003654 (increase) |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | April 13, 1982 |
Boundary increase | July 28, 1988 |
Harvard Square is a triangular plaza at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street and John F. Kennedy Street near the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The term "Harvard Square" is also used to delineate the business district and Harvard University surrounding that intersection, which is the historic center of Cambridge. [2] Adjacent to Harvard Yard, the historic heart of Harvard University, [3] the Square (as it is sometimes called, locally) functions as a commercial center for Harvard students, as well as residents of western Cambridge, the western and northern neighborhoods and the inner suburbs of Boston. The Square is served by Harvard station, a major MBTA Red Line subway and a bus transportation hub.
The name "Harvard Square" can also refer to the entire neighborhood surrounding this intersection for several blocks in each direction, including Brattle Square, a block away, and the nearby Cambridge Common. The Common is a park area with a playground, baseball field, and a number of monuments, several relating to the Revolutionary War.
The heart of Harvard Square is the junction of Massachusetts Avenue and Brattle Street. Massachusetts Avenue enters from the southeast (a few miles after crossing the Charles River from Boston at MIT), and turns sharply to the north at the intersection, which is dominated by a large pedestrian space incorporating the current MBTA subway headhouse (entrance), an older subway headhouse building which formerly housed a newsstand, a visitor information kiosk, and a small open-air performance space ("The Pit"). Brattle Street and John F. Kennedy Street merge from the southwest, joining Massachusetts Avenue at 1 Brattle Street, where another newsstand used to be located. The Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society main building forms the western streetwall at the intersection, along with a bank and some retail shops.
The walled enclosure of Harvard Yard is adjacent, with Harvard University, Harvard Extension School, Harvard Art Museums, Semitic Museum, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Museum of Natural History just short walks away.
Other institutions in the general neighborhood include the Cambridge Public Library, Lesley University, the Longy School of Music, the Episcopal Divinity School, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, American Repertory Theater, the Cooper-Frost-Austin House, the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, and the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site.
The high pedestrian traffic makes Harvard Square and Brattle Square, a block away, a gathering place for street musicians and buskers (who must obtain a permit from the Cambridge Arts Council). Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, who attended nearby Tufts University, is known to have played here during her college years. Amanda Palmer, of the Dresden Dolls, regularly performed here as a "living statue". [4] : 145 Another frequent performer over the years has been indie rock guitarist Mary Lou Lord. The Flying Karamazov Brothers also performed regularly in Brattle Square. [5]
A small bronze statue of "Doo Doo," a puppet created by Igor Fokin, sits at the corner of Brattle and Eliot streets, in honor of Fokin and all the street performers. [6] Fokin performed regularly in Brattle Square after immigrating from Russa and before his untimely death.
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Until 1984, the Harvard Square stop was the northern terminus of the Red Line, and it still functions as a major transfer station between subway, bus, and trackless trolley. Most of the bus lines serving the area from the north and west run through a tunnel adjacent to the subway tunnel. Originally built for streetcars (which last ran in 1958) and still used by trackless trolleys as well as ordinary buses, the tunnel lessens bus traffic in central Harvard Square, and lets buses cross the Square without encountering automobile traffic. The tunnel also allows covered access between the subway and the buses.
At the center of the Square is the old Harvard Square Subway Kiosk, which held a newsstand Out of Town News until its close in 2020. A public motion art installation, Lumen Eclipse , shows monthly exhibitions of local, national, and international artists.
In the southwest of the neighborhood, on Mount Auburn St, stands the Igor Fokin Memorial. [7] This memorial, created by sculptor Konstantin Simun, pays tribute not only to the late puppeteer, but to all street performers that are an integral part of the square.
A number of public squares dot the surrounding streets, notably Brattle Square and Winthrop Square, [note 1] hosting a wide variety of street performers throughout the year. Brattle Street itself is home to the Brattle Theater (a non-profit arthouse theater) and the American Repertory Theater. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Park, one block further down JFK Street, is on the bank of the Charles River. Cambridge Common is two blocks north.
The Square attracts activists for unconventional political factions and has its share of panhandlers. Although Tom Magliozzi derided it as "the bum capital of the world", it is a popular site to people-watch, having many benches, terraces, and sidewalk restaurants and cafes dedicated for that purpose.
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Although today a commercial center, the Square had famous residents in earlier periods, including the colonial poet Anne Bradstreet.
Discussions of how the Square has changed in recent years usually center on the gentrification of the Harvard Square neighborhood and Cambridge in general. The Square also used to be a neighborhood shopping center, including a grocery store (Sages) and a Woolworth's five and ten. Although a hardware store (Dickson Hardware at 26 Brattle Street) survived until 2021 amid chain drug stores and bank branches, the Square is mainly a regional rather than neighborhood shopping destination, serving students and commuters.
In 1981 and 1987 the Harvard Square Theater was converted into a multiplex cinema; it later became part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain and then closed on July 8, 2012. [8] During the late 1990s, some locally run businesses with long-time shopfronts on the Square—including the unusual Tasty Diner, a tiny sandwich shop open long hours, and the Wursthaus, a German restaurant with an extensive beer menu—closed to make way for national chains. Elsie's Lunch, a long-popular deli, has also closed; what remained of its small corner storefront space facing Lowell House on Mount Auburn Street is now occupied by an ATM. Another long-time restaurant, the 64-year-old Leo's Place, closed in December 2013 when the landlord of the property terminated their lease. [9]
The student co-op, the Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society ("The Coop", founded in 1882) is now managed by Barnes & Noble, though it is still overseen by a board elected by its membership of Harvard and MIT students and staff. Schoenhof's Foreign Books is owned by the French Éditions Gallimard. Major bookstores Paperback Booksmith, Reading International, and Barilari Books had closed by the end of the 1990s. [10] WordsWorth Books at 30 Brattle Street closed in 2004, after 29 years as a fixture in the Square. [11] In the same year, the famous Grolier Poetry Bookshop announced that it would be sold (although it survived under new management). Globe Corner Bookstore converted to an exclusively online business, serving its last walk-in customer on July 4, 2011.
Following national trends, the former Harvard Trust Company has been absorbed into the national Bank of America through a series of mergers. Several establishments remain as longstanding, locally-run businesses with unique styles. Examples include Leavitt & Peirce tobacconists (est. 1883), Laflamme Barber Shop (est. 1898), Harvard Book Store (est. 1932), Cardullo's Gourmet Shoppe (est. 1950), Charlie's Kitchen (est. 1951), the Brattle Theater (est. 1953), the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant (est. 1954), Club Passim (est. 1958), Café Pamplona (est. 1959), Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage (est. 1960), Million Year Picnic comics (est. 1970), Algiers Coffee House (est. 1970), and Grendel's Den (est. 1971).
The 1969 film Goodbye, Columbus takes place in Harvard Square near the film's conclusion, after the Richard Benjamin character learns that his girlfriend, Brenda Potimkin (played by Ali MacGraw), an undergraduate at Radcliffe College, had left her diaphragm in the top drawer of her bureau at home for her mother to discover.
The 1970 film Love Story , by the late Harvard University alumnus and Yale University professor of classics Erich Segal, takes place almost entirely in and around Harvard Square during its first two-thirds, while Harvard undergraduates Oliver Barrett and Jenny Cavalieri meet; finish college; get married; and Oliver goes to Harvard Law School while Jenny teaches school, living in a second-story walk-up in Agassiz. The film continues to be screened annually to incoming freshmen at Harvard College during orientation week.
The 1973 film The Paper Chase , set at Harvard Law School, features Harvard Square landmarks of its era, including the old Out of Town Newsstand, the old MBTA Harvard station kiosk with its "8 Minutes to Park Street" sign, and the now-defunct Kupersmith's Florists.
The 1977 film Between the Lines features similar Harvard Square footage as well as aerial footage of the Back Bay.
The 1994 film With Honors has a scene filmed in Harvard Square in which the Out of Town Newsstand is featured. In the scene, Monty approaches Simon as he (Simon) is attempting to sell newspapers he took out of a vending machine.
Various parts of the 1997 film Good Will Hunting were filmed in and around Harvard Square, most notably at the former Tasty Sandwich Shop and the outdoor seating area of the square's largest Au Bon Pain café.
The 2005 documentary film Touching History; Harvard Square, the Bank, and The Tasty Diner chronicles the changing face of the Square, as a small diner (The Tasty) closes its doors to make way for a large retail space. [13]
Ben Affleck shot portions of his film The Town (2010) in Grendel's Den on Winthrop Street, locally famous in the 1970s for its chocolate fondue. [14]
The 2015 game Fallout 4 features Harvard Square as an in-game location. Though the layout of the surrounding area is not accurate, the Cambridge visitor's Center kiosk is present.
The radio show Car Talk's offices occupied the third floor of the Abbott Building from 1992 until the show's end in 2014. [15] At the beginning of every episode, hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi would state they were broadcasting from "Car Talk Plaza" in Harvard (though the show itself was recorded at the WBUR Studio in Boston). [16] [17] Local tourism and business leaders likewise refer to the area colloquially as "Car Talk Plaza". The office's window, which faces the square, reads "Dewey Cheetham & Howe", a reference to The Three Stooges . Though the former office is now a yoga studio, the window signage has remained. In the early 2020s, while redeveloping the Abbott Building, the executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission ensured the sign's preservation, calling it "a character-defining feature of [the Abbott] building". [15] In 2019, a commemorative plaque for Tom Magliozzi - who died in 2014 - was installed outside the Abbott Building beside the Harvard Red Line terminal. [18] Harvard Square, called "Car Talk Plaza", is also the setting of Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns , an animated television spin-off of Car Talk.
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the most populous city in the county, the fourth-largest in Massachusetts behind Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, and ninth-most populous in New England. The city was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, which was an important center of the Puritan theology that was embraced by the town's founders.
Davis Square is a major intersection in the northwestern section of Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, where several streets meet: Holland Street, Dover Street, Day Street, Elm Street, Highland Avenue, and College Avenue. The name is often used to refer to the West Somerville neighborhood surrounding the square as well.
Inman Square is a neighborhood and historic district in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It lies north of Central Square, at the junction of Cambridge, Hampshire, and Inman Streets near the Cambridge–Somerville border.
Harvard station is a rapid transit and bus transfer station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Located at Harvard Square, it serves the MBTA's Red Line subway system as well as MBTA buses. Harvard averaged 18,528 entries each weekday in FY2019, making it the third-busiest MBTA station after Downtown Crossing and South Station. Five of the fifteen key MBTA bus routes stop at the station.
Government Center station is an MBTA subway station in Boston, Massachusetts. It is located at the intersection of Tremont, Court and Cambridge Streets in the Government Center area. It is a transfer point between the light rail Green Line and the rapid transit Blue Line. With the Green Line platform having opened in 1898, the station is the third-oldest operating subway station in the MBTA system; only Park Street and Boylston are older. The station previously served Scollay Square before its demolition for the creation of Boston City Hall Plaza.
Central Square is an area in Cambridge, Massachusetts centered on the junction of Massachusetts Avenue, Prospect Street and Western Avenue. Lafayette Square, formed by the junction of Massachusetts Avenue, Columbia Street, Sidney Street and Main Street, is also considered a part of the Central Square area. Harvard Square is to the northwest along Massachusetts Avenue, Inman Square is to the north along Prospect Street and Kendall Square is to the east along Main Street. The section of Central Square along Massachusetts Avenue between Clinton Street and Main Street is designated the Central Square Historic District, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
The Cambridge Railroad was the first street railway in the Boston, Massachusetts area, linking Harvard Square in Cambridge to Cambridge Street and Grove Street in Boston's West End, via Massachusetts Avenue, Main Street and the West Boston Bridge.
The Boston-area trolleybus system formed part of the public transportation network serving Greater Boston in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It opened on April 11, 1936, with a large network operating for the next quarter-century. Measured by fleet size, the Boston-area system was the second-largest trolleybus system in the United States at its peak, with only the Chicago system having more trolleybuses than Boston's 463. After 1963, the only remaining portion was a four-route cluster operating from the Harvard bus tunnel at Harvard station, running through Cambridge, Belmont, and Watertown. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority took over the routes in 1964.
The Tasty Sandwich Shop, often called "The Tasty", was a restaurant that operated from 1916 to 1997 near the intersection of JFK Street and Brattle Street, at the center of Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was housed in the Read Block building, on the site of the home of colonial poet Anne Bradstreet. The Tasty closed in 1997, after 81 years in business. Its location was later used by the chain stores Abercrombie & Fitch, then Citizens Bank and, as of 2021, a CVS Pharmacy.
Route 2A is a 98.5-mile-long (158.5 km) east–west state highway in Massachusetts. It exists in several sections, mainly as parts of former Route 2 that have been moved or upgraded. Route 2A runs from Greenfield in the west to Boston in the east. It formerly extended to Shelburne Falls in Buckland in the west, but as of 2007, the route terminates at Interstate 91 (I-91) in Greenfield.
Grendel's Den is a bar and restaurant in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, located at 89 Winthrop Street. The establishment is frequented by both students and professors of Harvard University as well as many others from the Cambridge and Boston area. The name was a reference to Grendel, the antagonist in the Old English epic Beowulf.
The Brattle Theatre is a repertory movie theater located in Brattle Hall at 40 Brattle Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theatre is a small movie house with one screen. It is one of the few remaining movie theaters, if not the only one, to use a rear-projection system; the projector is located behind the screen rather than behind the audience.
Igor Fokin was a Russian puppeteer and street performer. He learned his craft in his hometown of St. Petersburg. In 1993, he moved from the former Soviet Union to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. He was able to bring his wife and son over in 1994 and was granted a visa which allowed him to continue to live and perform in the United States.
The Ash Street Historic District Cambridge, Massachusetts is a residential historic district on Ash Street and Ash Street Place between Brattle and Mount Auburn Streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts, off Brattle Street just west of Harvard Square. The district consists of ten well-preserved houses, most of which were built between 1850 and 1890. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The Harvard Square Subway Kiosk is a historic kiosk and landmark located in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was built in 1928 as the new main headhouse for the previously opened Harvard Square subway station. After the station closed in 1981 for major renovations, the kiosk was moved slightly and renovated. The Out of Town News newsstand, which opened in 1955, occupied the kiosk from 1984 to 2019. As of 2019, the City of Cambridge plans to convert it for public use.
The Lowell is an historic triple decker apartment house on 33 Lexington Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1900 to a design by local architect John Hasty, it is a rare multiunit building in the Brattle Street area outside Harvard Square. The Colonial Revival building has a swan's neck pediment above the center entry, which is echoed above the central second story windows. Doric pilasters separate the bays of the front facade, and the building distinctively has side porches, giving it added horizontal massing. It was built before the decision was made to locate the electrified trolleys on Mount Auburn Street instead of Brattle, a decision that reduced interest in building more multiunit housing in that area.
Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called the "King's Highway" or "Tory Row" before the American Revolutionary War, is the site of many buildings of historical interest, including the modernist glass-and-concrete building that housed the Design Research store, and a Georgian mansion where George Washington and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow both lived, as well as John Vassall and his seven slaves including Darby Vassall. Samuel Atkins Eliot, writing in 1913 about the seven Colonial mansions of Brattle Street's "Tory Row," called the area "not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most historic streets in America." "As a fashionable address it is doubtful if any other residential street in this country has enjoyed such long and uninterrupted prestige."
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education (CCAE), a non-profit corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been teaching adult education courses at 42 Brattle Street since taking over the building from the Cambridge Social Union in 1938.
The Conductor's Building is a former Boston Elevated Railway (BERy) administrative building, located on Bennett Alley between Mount Auburn Street and Bennett Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1912 as the headquarters of BERy's 7th Division, it is the only original building surviving from the construction of the Cambridge subway. After being renovated from 2014 to 2017 as part of an adjacent hotel project, the building was used as a restaurant from April 2017 to August 2018. Under the name Boston Elevated R.Y. Offices, it is a contributing property to the Harvard Square Historic District.
Notes
Citations
Old Cambridge; Harvard Square; Mid-Cambridge; Dana Hill
Old Cambridge; Harvard Square
Further reading