Harvard Square’s Waning Days

Nostalgia has a broad constituency at today’s Harvard.

Some of us yearn for the days when social gatherings were more than the sweating, writhing gyrations and acts of license which comprise today’s claustrophobic dorm room party.

Others remember fondly the days when campus activism was not the ho-hum spectacle of modern times, when a takeover of University Hall might be incautiously reciprocated with tear gas rather than an offer to talk things over.

Yet nothing better epitomizes our time’s bland character than the decline of Harvard Square.

In more engaged times, Harvard Square featured many more independent bookstores than most other city squares in the world. Many of these—especially specialty and used bookstores—have disappeared in the past decade.

The best of them, McIntyre and Moore, the immense used book store with a Harvard-appropriate emphasis on scholarly nonfiction in many languages, started at 8 Mt. Auburn St. People now must leave Cambridge and go to Tufts’ Davis Square in Somerville to visit it. (Last year, the tiny but gratifying Raven Used Books opened at 52-B JFK St. hoping to fill this niche; suffice it to say, the shop has an uphill battle.)

The iconic Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton St.) has twice threatened to close, surviving only on donations which came after those dire announcements. Since the spring, it has been under new ownership—the proprietor is a Wellesley philosophy professor who promises more poetry readings featuring a wider variety of international poets. To make it float, the 79-year-old shop is being reorganized as a non-profit entity.

The Coop long ago lost whatever “student bookstore” charm it once had. As might be gleaned from the alleged “Bestsellers” on display at the front, the store is being managed by Barnes & Noble.

A rare exception is the well-stocked Harvard Book Store, a delightful hanger-on with guest speakers far more interesting and engaging than the drones one so often finds at the Institute of Politics or elsewhere on campus.

The photography shop Ferranti-Dege closed several months ago and, with it, one more bit of single-proprietor charm.

Its neighbor Toscanini’s (1310 Mass. Ave.) will also soon close—probably permanently—when its premises are renovated this winter.

With it go the black-clad servers of coffee and sass. I’m not a masochist, but there’s a charm in culling an eye-roll or heaving sigh from a barista disappointed at how I stumble for a half-second before rattling off an order. The joint’s attitude is nicely summed up by its counter-top sign, which depicts an all-too-cheery blonde chatting it up on a mobile phone. The following words are written alongside: “Hey! Cell phone-face! You’re out of line! Now! The Human Beings.”

The trend these days is poseur-kitsch. Chain stores like Urban Outfitters, Jasmine Sola, and the Garage’s newest clutch of shops have adopted the crass marketing strategy of oozing collegiate campiness.

Then there is the vile “Adidas Originals” store (1270 Mass. Ave.), a telling example of the dross that has infiltrated the Square. Blast some loud music, gut your elegant digs, and replace them with a first floor redone in concrete, dismal lighting, exposed piping, and sparse décor: It is a contrived approximation of what is taken to be Cambridge’s flavor.

Central, Davis, and even Inman Squares are heaps more exciting than Harvard, but the latter’s flavor has stubbornly held out at a select few locales.

Cambridge’s smoking ban deprived it of its hookahs, but Algiers (40 Brattle St.) still serves up delicious Arabic coffee, mint tea, and hummus—an indulgent place to ruminate after a film screening at Brattle Theatre, the only remaining independent film theatre left in the city, which is itself in a struggle for existence.

There’s also Leavitt & Peirce (1316 Mass. Ave.), the century-old tobacconist—one of America’s oldest. Don’t smoke? You really ought to make an exception, since their stock of cigars, pipe tobacco, and cigarettes is enchantingly vast. The staff is solicitous and helpful—a nice contrast to Toscanini’s next door—especially for those who don’t know what they’re doing. The same attitude prevails at Cardullo’s (6 Brattle St.), with its amazing selection of cheese.

The come-and-go nature of student populations means that many students are ignorant of what they’ve missed in coming to Harvard in the 21st century, when there are more banks in Cambridge than bookstores. If Harvard is not to be merely a meaningful experience but a special place, do business with those handful of remaining establishments who furnish the goods and demeanor that have so long given the Square its character.



Travis R. Kavulla ’06-’07 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.