HARVARD SQUARE LIT UP WITH WAR'S END

For post-war classes like the Class of '49, studying was serious business, and restrictive parietal regulations made a dormitory nightlife nearly impossible.

"There were serious rules about when women could be in men's rooms...My recollection is that 8 p.m. was the limit except on Saturdays, when it may have been as late as 11," remembers John Snook '49.

So when they closed their books, the Class of '49 headed to the Square and beyond for food, drink, and, well, a little more.

"If you were of a mind for some degree of ardent physical contact,...a car was much to be desired," Snook says.

Although a few of the old haunts of the Class of 1949 are still in the Square-including the Harvard Provision Company, Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage and the Harvard Cooperative Society-most live only in their memory.

Be There or Be Square

Most members of the class say that with some exceptions, the broad outline of the Square is relatively the same today as it was in 1949.

"At any rate, the physical appearance of the Square is remarkably like what I remember," Snook says.

The traffic and seemingly constant construction projects have not changed, either.

"[The Square] was always under construction in one way or another, new buildings or renovations of old ones; street upheaval and resurfacing; new traffic flow designs engineered by people gifted in...gridlock," says John A.S. Rogers '49.

The major difference in the Square was the fact that Harvard Square was at that time the last stop on the T. The storage yard for trains was located on the current site of the Kennedy School of Government.

In 1949, Mass. Ave. was a two-way street and traffic was much more difficult to control.

The Class of '49 also witnessed the first parking meters in the Square, which appeared in 1948 and charged motorists five cents an hour.

Most of the class members' fondest memories focus on nothing more spectacular than a cup of coffee or a beer. The Square and student life in it was very different in 1949, and was more low-key over all.

"It had no big places to spend money, because none of us had much-my college allowance was $10 a week and more than enough for anything anyone could want," says Anne T. Wallach '49.

The Square in 1949 was far from being a major center of activity, Wallach recalls.

"There was one miserable dress shop not even any good for emergencies, and the news-stand at the corner was a meeting place, as well," Wallach says. "The best place was St. Clair's, an ice cream parlor where all the literary and drama people sat all day over their one cup of coffee."

"The Coop was a big attraction for its bookstore, but you had to go up Mass. Ave. to do real book shopping," she adds.

Nathaniel C. Webb '49 described the Harvard Square scene as being very different than it is today. He says that although the Coop had not moved into its extended Palmer Street location, it was still a strong influence in the Square, much more than the Coop today.

"It played a unique role in supplying green book bags, wooden 'Coop boxes' for storage, and cloth bags in which laundry was picked up by the Coop from entryways," Webb recalls.

When it comes to purveyors of food and drink, however, although the particular restaurants have turned over the atmosphere has remained collegiate.

"Admittedly, most of the store names have changed...but the feel is very much the same. I used to go to Cronin's and King's Tavern and the best hot dogs were at the Tasty," says James S. Smith '49.

Cronin's, a large bar that once occupied the site that now houses the Holyoke Center, loomed large in the memories of many '49ers. The bar was especially popular after football games, when fans would crowd the Square's watering holes.

Snook also remembers Cronin's, saying that it was a place that many students learned to drink for the first time.

"This was a bar of Irish provenance, but made accommodation for many a callow Protestant student, and that was one of the good places to get experience in that perennial unofficial part of the curriculum," he says.

Even students forced to commute by the housing shortage that afflicted the College as returning veterans swelled postwar registration enjoyed the character of the Square.

Paul E. O'Connell '49, who entered Harvard just after World War II as part of the GI Bill with his two brothers, lived with his family near Central Square.

O'Connell says that the Leavitt and Pierce tobacco store, still located on Mass. Ave., used to have a coffee counter inside that he remembers fondly.

"I would go there and have a cup of coffee and read The New York Times every morning before my 9 o'clock class," he says.

A less classy alternative was Bickford's, Rogers remembers.

"It was a kind of seedy, plain ugly food, though reputedly nourishing, plastic tabletop and wobbly steel-frame chair kind of a place with a long cafeteria serving counter and punched orange meal tickets," Rogers says.

The Square After Dark

For nightlife, graduates recall the University Theatre as one of the most important parts of the Square.

The theater was located on Mass. Ave. on the site currently occupied by CVS and the complex next door to it.

From Sunday through Tuesday, the theater would show a double feature, and then on Wednesdays would have a "review day" on which the theater would show a lot of old movies.

For night owls, the late-night Wursthaus was a central spot.

One of the most popular places in the Square, the Wursthaus was open until 1 a.m., while the rest of the Square bars closed at quarter to midnight.

"You could go there until 1 o'clock and get a hot pastrami sandwich on a roll. It was a classic. It was something that you did. I still recall it vividly," O'Connell says.

All the graduates recall football games as a big part of the weekend social life. Snook says that aside from football, many people went on dates to the Brattle Theater for movies and student Shakespeare productions.

Most coeducational socializing went on off campus because, as Robert Wechsler '49 remembers, the rules about having women in your room were strict.

"In those days," he says, "women all lived in the Radcliffe Quad, and you would be expelled with no hope of return if a female was found in your room after 10 p.m."

Town-Gown Relations

Harvard Football was not only the central social activity, but also one of the primary unifying factors within the Square and the University.

"One Friday night, a local lady stopped me and asked me whom we were playing the next day. When I told her, she immediately says, 'I hope they beat the tar outta you,' turned on her heel, and strode away. I think that summed up the town/gown relationships of that era," says Robert Wechsler '49.

Many alumni of the class of '49 recall better relations between students and Cantabrigians just after the war, saying that the war helped to bring the community together in a new way.

"[During the war,] rich kids from Nob Hill wallowed in boot camp mud along with poor townies from Southie. Fortune 500 heirs bled to death wedged into foxholes with scions of first-generation steelworkers," Rogers says.

And veterans brought their experiences back to the Square.

Rogers says he thought that the common experience of the war gave people a sense of a common cause for action. He described people as being "all together like a huge, ungainly, raucous, angry, barely post-adolescent family of 4,000 boys from anywhere and everywhere. Class evaporated."

Rogers says that all of these elements contributed to an environment with much less tension between Cambridge residents and Harvard Students than there had been in the past.

The Changing Ivory Tower

Graduates say that although the College was not as developed as it is today, the Square was in many ways a safer and more hospitable environment.

"Bikes were not stolen. The dining rooms served meals directly into depressions on metal trays but older women came in to clean rooms," Webb says.

For students, the Square was a welcome relief from Harvard's daily grind, and many grew fond of the area.

Rogers remembers the characters he met attending Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) concerts in Sanders Theatre.

"If you could tolerate and be tolerated by the little old Cambridge ladies who thought it terribly impolite to express emotion of any sort in response to, say, Shostakovich's 6th or Beethoven's 9th, it was a blast," Rogers says.

And like Cambridge today, members of the Class of '49 remember the Square always bustling and changing.

"We were in a hurry," Rogers says. "We did everything hard-studying, drinking, brawling, loving...It's a little bit like the sidewalk cafes of the Village or the Left Bank-a sense of laid-back bustle, a lot of humanity passing by, hanging out, taking it in. It's alive."