Leavitt & Peirce's Maiden Is Rearmed

Germany and Japan may have started the trend but the most newsworthy example of rearming, at least in the Harvard area, has been at Leavitt and Peirce, the Square tobacco shop.

A wooden "maiden" sits atop the door to Leavitt & Peirce. This past Tuesday, the maiden's right arm was mysteriously returned about two years after it abruptly disappeared, according to Extension School students George L. Wren, who supervises the store's renovations.

Wren said the arm arrived in the mail about two years to the day after it disappeared one night in July 1992. The package, he said, looked like a run-of-the-mill parcel--except for its contents.

"It came in a box from New York with a phony address just the other day," he said. "It was in good condition."

The mystery behind the arm's disappearance was never solved. Attempts to have the limb replaced were unsuccessful.

Now that the arm is returned, though, it seems as though the store's management will allow bygones to be bygones.

"We're very happy that the arm has been returned," Wren said. "And the maiden is happy to have her arm back."

Wren said his guess is that some Harvard student organization "which smokes cigars" took the arm from the approximately century-old maiden.

Leavitt & Peirce, which is owned by the David P. Ehrlich Company, is periodically featured in GQ magazine for its selection of cigars and tobacco.

For several decades, Harvard rowers have visited Leavitt & Peirce every day to check daily line-ups. Coaches through the years have noted the irony of posting line-ups for a sport as aerobically vigorous as rowing in a shop that sells tobacco.

Wren, who has been in charge of renovating the 111-year-old store for about two years, re-attached the arm, which holds out wooden cigars, on Tuesday and also repainted the figure, brightening up the white-faced, bluedressed maiden.

Passers-by, according to Wren, are also pleased to see the figurine restored. He said that customers have asked him constantly for the past two years what exactly happened to the arm.

"People in the Square seem to be happier to have it back," Wren said. "They walk past it and smile."