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Harvard Square is a large triangular area in the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Street. Adjacent to the historic heart of Harvard University, Harvard Yard, the Square (as it is called locally) functions as a commercial center for Harvard students, as well as residents of western Cambridge and the inner western suburbs of Boston. In an extended sense, the name "Harvard Square" can refer to the entire neighborhood surrounding this intersection for several blocks in each direction. The nearby Cambridge Common has a large park area with a playground, baseball field, and some local memorials.
History
Transformation Discussions of how the Square has changed in recent years usually center on the perceived gentrification of the Harvard Square neighborhood and Cambridge in general. Harvard Square used to have many new and used bookstores, but few are left today, although the 2005 opening of the independent Raven Used Books on JFK Street seems to have bucked this overall trend. The Square also used to be a neighborhood shopping center, with a grocery store and a Woolworth's five and ten. There does remain a small hardware store, but the Square is now more of a regional shopping center, especially for youths. 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 beloved old-world German restaurant—closed to make way for national chains. Following national trends, the local Harvard Trust Company bank has been absorbed into the national Bank of America through a series of mergers. The student co-op, the Harvard Coop, is now managed by Barnes and Noble. Schoenhof's Foreign Books is owned by the French Éditions Gallimard. In 2004, it was announced that the famous Grolier Poetry Bookshop would be sold, and today even the emblematic Out of Town News is owned by the UK-based Hudson Group. Still, a few establishments, such as Algiers Coffee House and Cardullo's Gourmet Shoppe (est. 1950), remain as longstanding, locally-run businesses. Other features At the center of the Square is the old subway kiosk, now a newsstand, Out of Town News, stocking newspapers and magazines from around the world. A video of it appears in transitional clips used on CNN. A public motion art installation, Lumen Eclipse, has been introduced at the Tourist Information Booth showing monthly exhibitions of local, national and international artists. The office of NPR's Car Talk radio show faces the square, with a stencil in the window that reads "Dewey, Cheatham and Howe," the fictional law firm often referenced on the show. The sunken region next to the newsstand and the subway entrance is sometimes referred to as "The Pit." Its arena-like appearance attracts skateboarders and, more generally, young, high-school aged people from surrounding neighbourhoods who are associated with countercultural movements such as the punk, straight edge, and goth subcultures. They are sometimes referred to as "pit kids" or "pit rats," and the contrast between these congregants and the often older and more conservatively dressed people associated with nearby Harvard University and the businesses in the Square occasionally leads to tension. Harvard sports teams and clubs, including the track teams and all-male social clubs, are known to make use of this contrast through encouraging or sometimes forcing their newest members to engage in humorous or humiliating performances in "The Pit" as part of these members' initiations into the group. One block east of the pit, an outdoor cafe features always-busy tables for chess players, including Murray Turnbull, with his everpresent "Play the Chessmaster" sign. A number of other public squares dot the surrounding streets with a wide variety of street performers throughout the year, and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Park stands a few steps away along the banks of the Charles river. "The Garage" is a small, multi-story shopping center, named thus because it was formerly a parking garage. Notable establishments Related links | ||||||||||
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