There's more to Cambridge than Harvard Square

The denizens of Central Square are always quick to set forth Theories for their neighborhood's demise. One of the most popular--The Confluence of Neighborhoods Theory--has it that because of the quirky apportionment of "neighborhoods" by the Cambridge city fathers, Central Square finds itself situated at the confluence of no fewer than four such subdivisions (Four through Seven) and consequently, anything that gets done there must be undertaken with the approval of all the leaders of all four neighborhoods, not to mention city officials. Consequently, nothing gets done there.

Another popular theory, the Harvard-MIT Polarity Formulation, states that because Central Square serves as the buffer zone, the proverbial no-man's land, separating Harvard and its real estate from the Kendall Square university, neither school has a real interest in Central. Consequently, nothing ever gets done there. In fact, each resident has his own Theory, and there are some mighty strange hybrids, too. The Red Line Theory has always been a favorite (the Red Line's next-to-last stop is in Central Square, you see, and the subway disgorges all sorts of unsavory non-residents there at all sorts of ungodly hours); the Undesirable Indigent Theory ties the Square's woes to undesirable indigents ("they're all methadone addicts and worse," says one citizen) who don't even have to go near the Red Line to cause trouble for the Square.

Jerry Lane, a 47-year old Central Square resident, has his own theory about the decline of the Square. Lane is the president of the Rothman's Tenant Unit, a tenants' rights organization organized solely for occupants of rent-controlled buildings owned by George Rothman, who Lane jokingly calls both "Mr. Central Square" and "a snake." According to Lane, Rothman "is a powerful man who can do almost anything" and has, Lane says, impeded the drive for tenants' rights in his buildings through his influence peddling.

"I think the Square is going downhill as a result," Lane continues. "At one point we were trying to improve the neighborhood, but since we've been unsuccessful, we've given up."

Lane says that among his group's efforts now is an initiative to attract more fast food restaurants to the already-glutted Square ("What the hell!!") and to cover Central's Shawmut Bank branch--which he says Rothman's money controls--with human excrement.

Among the most gratifying occasions Lane can recall is the time when he "squeezed Rothman's jaw just after he had had a tooth pulled," shortly after, he says, Rothman attempted to "chop down the walls of an elderly tenant who was unable to pay her rent."

"But George and I are friends," says Lane. "Used properly, George can be turned around."

George Rothman understands that a lot of Lane's criticisms are all in good fun. "Jerry is a rational guy; he takes everything in its own context," he says. Rothman, who has owned property in Central Square for 30 years, currently receives rent from "about 200 units in several buildings."

The Square's main problems, he says not surprisingly, are the "undesirables coming in here from outside areas," and the absence of adequate public parking facilities (The Inadequate Parking Theory--another favorite).

Rothman says he screens tenants "very closely" for desirability before they move into his apartments, and unlike other landlords, he has made an attempt to renovate a large number of his rent-controlled units.

But, he adds, "rent control has ruined the Square and the City. Just walk up and down side streets around here, and all you'll see will be For Sale signs."

Rothman says, however, that he is doing his part to reverse the deterioration of his once-proud neighborhood over the past several decades. He recently purchased the old Harvard Bazaar building on Mass Ave, and is currently converting it into housing for the elderly; he says he is "constantly renovating" his apartment units at his own expense.

The construction of the subway connecting Park Street to Harvard Square in 1912, which facilitated commutation between Cambridge and Boston, also reduced the importance of Central Square as a business center; successive decades have seen the evolution of the Square into a local, service-and food-oriented business area. Many Cambridge residents, those who would rather do their shopping elsewhere, bypass the "blighted" Square in favor of the more accessible downtown Boston shopping area.

Central Square's lack of adequate municipal parking facilities and the recent police crackdown on parking offenders in the city as a whole have rendered the neighborhood largely inconvenient for motorist-shoppers.

"We need more parking," says Rothman. "Already, we've lost big stores like Almy's and Kresge's, and without good parking facilities any improvements around here will be pipe dreams."

For at least one group of Central Square businessmen, however, dreams of a permanent reversal in the Square's decline are considerably less ephemeral. The 80-member Central Square Association of Business and Professionals, Inc. (CSA) is headed by Chuck Smith, a former Iowan who came to Harvard's Graduate School of Design a few years back, stuck around, and is now the president of Com-Plan Inc., a Central-Square based architectural firm with offices in Cambridge and Caracas, Venezuela.

Smith radiates enthusiasm as he speaks of a risorgimento for Central Square. "I believe Central Square will once again be the heart of the city," he says. "I have a real interest in Central Square--I live here."

Unlike many building and store owners, Smith, whose offices were once located in Harvard Square, has decided to live in the neighborhood where he works, and thus he says he has a vested interest in the Square's preservation. (Not surprisingly, however--oh, perhaps coincidentally--Smith's house and offices are located right next to the police station. Jerry Lane: "It figures.")

Smith is a man with a vision, and he spends a good deal of his time and money attempting, with varying degrees of success, to impart it to others.

You may recall strolling through the Square last year and seeing some rather unwieldy-looking strings of lights suspended across Mass Ave. That was Chuck Smith's idea. Only it didn't work out too well. Smith says: "We had an idea for Christmas decorations which would be dramatic, economical and exciting." Instead of buying the typical plastic wreaths and polyurethane Santas, Smith hatched a plan that called for the participation of Cambridge residents in fabricating and installing decorations; it would save money, it would draw people into the Square, and it would look nice.

With $5000 of his own money, and with cooperation from city officials, Smith assembled miles of reflective mylar, 46,000 lightbulbs, a bunch of wood and a bunch of volunteers from various community groups to assemble the whole thing. "It all looked real flashy," Chuck says.

What a shame then, that no sooner had the decorations gone up than there arose one of those chill Cambridge winter winds, and all the mylar became shredded and began to fall into the street.

"We had to cut all the mylar, and hang regular wreaths from the strings of bare lightbulbs that were left. Some people said the mylar also interfered with radios in fire trucks and ambulances.

"Maybe this year, we'll just put strings of lightbulbs in the trees," Smith says.

Despite the failure of the Christmas project, the endeavor did help to focus public attention on the Square, and it did bring residents together both in the pre-holiday fabrications and perhaps also in the post-mortem vilification of Smith. (Jerry Lane: "Another schmuck.")

Not everyone may approve of Smith's schemes to snap the Square out of its doldrums, but his hit-or-miss approach more often than not reaps results.

By arousing interest in the Square, Smith has often been able to cut across neighborhood boundaries to raise the funds that get things accomplished there.

The trees from which this year's Christmas decorations may be hanging were planted only after extensive lobbying by Smith's group. Smith has also been instrumental in getting the city to install about 100 planters in the Square, and to repave the sidewalks; now, he says he is sponsoring a project whereby small hose outlets will be installed outside most Central Square businesses, so that their owners will be able, European-style, to clean the streets in front of their stores each morning. "I have a dream that Central Square can be the cleanest Square in the world," says Smith.

Working closely with the late Cambridge Chief of Police, Francis Pisani, Smith ironed out a proposal for new community bulletin boards, made of sheet metal, to be placed strategically around the Square.

("Once the board gets filled up, it can just all be removed, and then you can scrape it clean, repaint it, and use it all over again," he explains.)

The CSA has also given consideration to sponsoring its own little league team, and has consistently lobbied against the proliferation of fast-food operations in the Square.

Smith sees the Square's manifold problems as arising from neglect on the part of a neighborhood-oriented city administration. Because Central Square is partially in four neighborhoods, it is actually in none.

"The city divided the neighborhoods, caused friction between neighborhoods, caused them to compete with each other," Smith says.

"I've been trying to bring the neighborhoods together, and the Square should be their logical focal point," he explains. In July, Smith sponsored a three-day sidewalk sale in the Square, and he plans to organize similar events in the future. "We're trying to dress it up as much as possible."

Smith, too, falls back upon the Harvard-MIT Polarity Theory as part of his explanation for the problems facing Central Square. Although Harvard does own some property in the Central Square area, it keeps a low profile. "They turn their back on the Square," Chuck Smith complains of the University.

One of the proposals which Smith hopes to put before the CSA this year is a plan which would help fund University investigations into the problems confronted by the Square. He says he is encouraged by recent studies, such as one undertaken by a group of GSD students in the Joint City Planning/Urban Design Workshop in June, which made policy proposals for greater pedestrian access to the Square and for more public green spaces; Smith would like to see more.

The Square is a veritable repository of various architectural styles ranging from the Richardson-Romanesque City Hall to the Italian Renaissance structure at 719 Mass Ave; it still serves as the ceremonial focal point of the town. The Central Square Office Building, in the heart of the Square, was Cambridge's first skyscraper.

The Square also houses approximately 26 recognized churches, and a panoply of ethnic groups to fill them--Russians, Greeks, Haitians, West Indians, Portuguese, Orientals--as well as a growing number of poor people. There are markets which cater to a world of culinary and other needs. There is the Kamala Devi Indian imports store at 1741 Mass Ave, there is a West Indian music store, a YMCA, an Acupuncture Center at 380 Green Street, and Shelter, Inc., a recently-formed overnight hostel for homeless men and women.

There are also the restaurants: the sit-down places like Ken's Pub and Hunan ("You just can't find places like that in Harvard Square," says Smith), the quickie places like McDonalds' and the 24-hour Jack in the Box ("We've got our choice of 43 dreck places to eat at down here," says Lane), and the widest assortment of bars and discos, like The Speakeasy, the Cantab, etc., etc., this side of downtown Boston.

The quickie shops, whose advent has been successfully forestalled in Harvard Square--including Dunkin' Donuts, which was denied permission to open a branch in Harvard Square two years ago--flourish in Central Square. By and large, the owners of the more marginal junk-food shops have remained out of Smith's organization. And Lane, whose tenant group is avowedly committed to bringing in still more junk food operations, pleads, "Get us a Jewish bakery, please."

* * *

The little traffic island in the middle of Central Square serves as a haven for much of the area's elderly population. On a hot day recently, a number of senior citizens, canes and newspapers in hand, could be seen sitting on the marble blocks that serve as park benches in the triangular island, staring at the passing rush hour traffic and chatting with each other, with policemen, and even with passing strangers.

An effusive man sat puffing on a pipe and talking with a friend, interrupting his conversation every 30 seconds or so to shout greetings to passing motorists. One of the motorists was a Cambridge policeman in a patrol car.

"Hey Frank!" the man hollered.

The patrolman rolled down his window, shook the man's hand, and began to converse heatedly with him, long after the light ahead of him had changed. Middle-Eastern music blared from "A Nubian Notion," an import variety store across the street. Other drivers behind him began honking their horns, and so the officer moved on.

"See ya, Frankieeee!"

"I really think the area is on the downswing in terms of crime these days," says Lenny Saviano, a detective in the Cambridge police department, whose familiar neon sign ("POLICE") is itself a famous Square landmark.

"I suppose it all has to do with the times, they're changing constantly," he reflects. Saviano further theorizes that the recent surprising reduction in Central Square crime may be the result of outreach work initially undertaken by the late Chief Pisani. "The department has become community-oriented," says Saviano. "We're really increasing community involvement."

So rumors of the imminent demise of Central Square may prove to be grossly exaggerated.

Smith says appearances aren't everything. "I think Central Square looks more dangerous, maybe because the people are poor; but they're just real people, and mostly, they're nice people."

"I felt a lot more crime problems when I was in Harvard Square," he adds. "My wife couldn't even walk around there without running into a flasher."

The CSA, which has been able to hold the line against new fast-food concerns and which has been instrumental in obtaining at least a few needed aesthetic amenities for the "ailing" Square, may now be able to attempt more ambitious, long-term projects.

One idea which intrigues Smith is the construction of one or more pedestrian malls in underutilized space in the Square. Pedestrian malls would, after all, alleviate to some extent the myriad parking problems faced by-the Square.

Central Square has traditionally been a "family" shopping area, and only the construction of new parking facilities will, Smith claims, stem the loss of Central Square business to one-stop shopping malls elsewhere.

In addition, both Smith and Lane agree that Cambridge Mayor Alfred E. Velluci and the City Council should focus more attention (read: "money") on the Square, by financing further improvements there and by staging more public events there, rather than in Cambridge's hinterlands.

Some of the Square's problems may prove to be self-correcting. The neighborhood's downhill glide in recent years has resulted the lowering of property values and some rental rates. "They're really coming in here--students, faculty members, and just people who want to live in Cambridge but can't afford more expensive homes elsewhere," says Smith, who claims his own home might have cost him three times as much in another section of Cambridge.

Rothman looks at the situation in a somewhat different way. "Rent control has ruined this city," he says. "Something's got to be done about that first, before anything else."

But even Rothman exudes a spot of optimism. "Central Square will never go down; I've spent 30 years here, and the place has come up, gone down, and then come up again," he explains.

And Lane is even more expansive: "This is a crazy neighborhood--it's noisy, it's dirty. We like it. It's got a lot of potential."Photographs of Cambridge by Sandy Steingard.