HARVARD SQUARE IN ALLSTON?
Harvard Square ain?t what it used to be. Charlie?s Kitchen and Mr. Bartley?s may still be there, but The Taystee, Wursthaus and Elsie?s have all decamped to Mom ?n? Pop Heaven --together with the various liquormongers, the quaint and funky consignment clothiers, the provisioners, bookstores and bars that once made the Square a prized retail destination for locals, Bostonians and --on weekends-- suburban pilgrims sniffing out Bohemia.
You could get a Croatian dictionary at Schoenhof?s, a Marimekko at Design Research --or at Bernheimer?s you could pick out for your honey a few c-notes? worth of turquoise amulet looted from the pharaoh?s tomb. Blacksmith House had a dobos torta some days of the week, and you could purchase Bauhaus drawer-pulls at Dixon?s when no one else carried them. You could catch a Rita Hayworth double feature at the Orson Welles, and chase it macrobiotically with a bowl of flavor-challenged rice at the restaurant beneath. Suffocating. Just think: you coulda died for the Alouette and Westphalian baguettes in the Garage; and at Iruna, the nonchalant Spaniard served up miniature squids swimming in their own ink.
Not stuff you could find in Charlotte.
Truth is, things were never really what they appeared to be. Stealth chains had infiltrated even before the halcyon Sixties were done; they just wore false beards. The Boylston Street basement saloon with the copper bar and pioneering Bass on tap belonged to New York?s Restaurant Associates --and so did ZumZum, the fast food joint with the yummy but overpriced bratwurst. And you forgot J.Press and Ann Taylor were chain stores, because they?d been around almost since the dawn of time. Brigham?s was the local chain food, along with the 24/7 Waldorf, and the Bick. WordsWorth affected valiantly to belong to local bookworms, but nobody was fooled.
Commercially fertile as a jackrabbit in heat, the Square in turn gave frequent birth to chains of its own; these would spring upon a receptive nation a year or two after their Harvard Square debuts. Tweeter Etc., Charrette Corporation, Emack and Bolio, House of Blues and various haberdashers fanned out from the Square?s hotbed of entrepreneurial creativity, and the Square?s premiere pot dealer opened a national antidrug consultancy.
For decades, powers-that-be successfully excluded McDonald?s and Dunkin? Donuts, but when Abercrombie and Fitch displaced the Taystee and other seemingly immortal fixtures in the Square?s very hub, the cognoscenti knew it was all over.
The irony, of course, is that Abercrombie itself is now gone.
* * *
PLUS ?A CHANGE?
These days it?s popular to trash Harvard Square.
Handwringing often alternates with lamentations and the gnashing of teeth over the Square?s putative mallification. To this oldtimer and frequent re-visitor, however, it seems like nothing much has changed. Most of the stores are different, but the whole remains the same.
It?s like you: aside from your brain, how many of your cells are the self-same ones they were last year? And yet, you?re the same person you were last November. And next year, when you?re made of all new cells, you?ll still be you.
Anyway, the Business Journal says the tide has turned away from chains: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/06/12/story3.html .
And on top of everything, the retail experience, though important, is not even the essence of Harvard Square?s strange power to attract.
* * *
Over the years, I?ve lived in an even dozen places in the Boston area. In the suburbs: Milton and Newton; further in: Coolidge Corner, Jamaica Plain, Union Square, East Boston and Porter Square. In Back Bay, it was Marlborough and Newbury Streets. I have fond memories of all these places. But best of all --by far-- were the years spent living in Harvard Square on Trowbridge Street, Franklin Street and Dana Street.
If I won the lottery tomorrow I?d rush to snap up a little place near where Green Street meets Putnam, and I?d live happily ever after. (If I won it five times I?d add to my collection an efficiency on West End Avenue in the Seventies, a town house in the perched village of Haut-de-Cagnes near Nice (so aptly named!), a little condo in Pacific Heights, a mews house near the South Kensington tube station, and a tout petit Latin Quarter garret near the Pantheon. Life for a globetrotting Hobbitt.)
* * *
We talk a lot on this forum about what makes a place unique, without taking full cognizance that the UNI in unique means ONE. One of a kind. By that measure, not many places are unique in their essence, including Harvard Square. But it almost is; that is, Harvard Square is almost unique in its essential character.
And that is ? ?
Well, it?s not Georgian buildings. It?s not traditional buildings, or cutting-edge buildings, or buildings of any particular style. It?s not short buildings or tall buildings or in-between buildings. In fact it?s not buildings at all --although it is partly the relationships between buildings.
It?s neither specialty retail nor neighborhood shopping. Though both these are Harvard Square assets, they?re not the essentials of the UNIqueness of this place; they?re easy to find elsewhere.
It?s not that the preservationists did a good job of saving what?s best from the past, nor is it --for goodness sake ! -- that it reflects dynamically the best thoughts about the future.
It?s not cultural institutions or traditions, though --like many another place-- Harvard Square has plenty: the Loeb, the Fogg, the Sackler, the Sanders, the Brattle, the Busch-Reisinger, the University Museum, the Crimson, the Hasty Pudding, the Game.
It?s not parks, old buildings or the pervasive sense of history; Cambridge has a long way to go to match in this regard its namesake in England --though Harvard Yard simultaneously wows the rubes and regales them with green. Combined with Winthrop Square and the distant riverfront, it?s all the park the nabe really needs; the Common is almost superfluous.
It?s not only the walkability; lots of places are walkable besides Harvard Square. And for the same reason, it?s not the streetlife --though the streetlife is certainly a consequence of what it is.
It?s not just the college town vibe or the urban bustle; you can find the former in Princeton and Chapel Hill, and the latter at Berkeley and Columbia.
It?s not just the large student population --UMass Amherst has that. It?s not just an adjacent, urban commercial district --B.U., Northeastern and Columbia can boast of some of that across the street.
Well, actually it is ALL of the above, but that still doesn?t yield the dish that?s so tasty. For that, you need a pair of secret ingredients that zero in on Harvard Square?s near-uniqueness. These are:
1. Passionate Embrace. Like lovers intertwined, university and city are shot through with each other: not just across the street or nearby, but almost incestuously intimate. Sometimes Harvard University and Harvard Square even co-exist in a single building (Holyoke Center --big but emphatically not out of scale or out of place-- and the new building on Mt. Auburn Street). Cambridge and Oxford are similar salmagundis of town and gown, though the buildings are segregated by use if not placement; and NYU shows likeminded propensities, but there it?s done by taking over commercial buildings, evicting the retail and converting to academic uses. Mixed-use doesn?t actually invade the buildings in either case.
Figure-ground of the slightly-more-than-square-mile in the Cambridge city limits that contains Harvard Square and over 40,000 inhabitants, including students, within walking distance of the Harvard T-stop. The curve?s radius is ? mile, and the square is a mile to a side. University buildings are in red, purplish buildings are used for university and retail functions. Harvard owns many additional properties as commercial investments.
2. And ? the ultimate secret weapon: a subway station right in the middle. This is the animator of the mix, the easy gateway from the cosmos. The greater world?s entry point, near-seamlessly connected via transit and airport to the very corners of the world (though it would help if the Blue Line reached to Charles/MGH). I can think of only one other place on the face of the planet that shares this one feature with Harvard Square, along with everything else on the list above; and it looks quite different --proving, I think, that looks are not the core of essence.
That makes Harvard Square nearly unique.
And now, SURPRISE ! ? every element enumerated above is available in Allston!
* * *
People who design cities should like cities. Problem is, cities these days are mostly not designed by people who like cities. The people who make decisions that eventually give rise to development say they like cities, they believe they like cities, but actually they hate cities; they love suburbs instead. Is it any wonder they put effort into making cities more like the suburbs?
I?ve had lengthy philosophical discussions with one of the principals of the first firm that worked on the Allston campus. This man has been around; he likes cities a lot, and has worked on many projects that have transformed major cities. Problem is, though his heart?s in the right place, he personally lacks artistic brilliance. The result is work that many of us on this forum would regard as uninspired. Add to that, the avalanche of amateurish advice and short-sighted demands coming from self-appointed representatives of the community, and you have a formula for something very brown indeed.
If I were a betting man, I?d bet against anything even remotely as good as Harvard Square materializing in Allston.
Of course, there?s always the possibility of someone showing up who?s an artist ? and who takes the almost-uniqueness of Harvard Square seriously enough to emulate.
Like John Harvard himself, that person will have a bronze statue a coupla hundred years from now.
.
Harvard Square ain?t what it used to be. Charlie?s Kitchen and Mr. Bartley?s may still be there, but The Taystee, Wursthaus and Elsie?s have all decamped to Mom ?n? Pop Heaven --together with the various liquormongers, the quaint and funky consignment clothiers, the provisioners, bookstores and bars that once made the Square a prized retail destination for locals, Bostonians and --on weekends-- suburban pilgrims sniffing out Bohemia.
You could get a Croatian dictionary at Schoenhof?s, a Marimekko at Design Research --or at Bernheimer?s you could pick out for your honey a few c-notes? worth of turquoise amulet looted from the pharaoh?s tomb. Blacksmith House had a dobos torta some days of the week, and you could purchase Bauhaus drawer-pulls at Dixon?s when no one else carried them. You could catch a Rita Hayworth double feature at the Orson Welles, and chase it macrobiotically with a bowl of flavor-challenged rice at the restaurant beneath. Suffocating. Just think: you coulda died for the Alouette and Westphalian baguettes in the Garage; and at Iruna, the nonchalant Spaniard served up miniature squids swimming in their own ink.
Not stuff you could find in Charlotte.
Truth is, things were never really what they appeared to be. Stealth chains had infiltrated even before the halcyon Sixties were done; they just wore false beards. The Boylston Street basement saloon with the copper bar and pioneering Bass on tap belonged to New York?s Restaurant Associates --and so did ZumZum, the fast food joint with the yummy but overpriced bratwurst. And you forgot J.Press and Ann Taylor were chain stores, because they?d been around almost since the dawn of time. Brigham?s was the local chain food, along with the 24/7 Waldorf, and the Bick. WordsWorth affected valiantly to belong to local bookworms, but nobody was fooled.
Commercially fertile as a jackrabbit in heat, the Square in turn gave frequent birth to chains of its own; these would spring upon a receptive nation a year or two after their Harvard Square debuts. Tweeter Etc., Charrette Corporation, Emack and Bolio, House of Blues and various haberdashers fanned out from the Square?s hotbed of entrepreneurial creativity, and the Square?s premiere pot dealer opened a national antidrug consultancy.
For decades, powers-that-be successfully excluded McDonald?s and Dunkin? Donuts, but when Abercrombie and Fitch displaced the Taystee and other seemingly immortal fixtures in the Square?s very hub, the cognoscenti knew it was all over.
The irony, of course, is that Abercrombie itself is now gone.
* * *
PLUS ?A CHANGE?
These days it?s popular to trash Harvard Square.
Handwringing often alternates with lamentations and the gnashing of teeth over the Square?s putative mallification. To this oldtimer and frequent re-visitor, however, it seems like nothing much has changed. Most of the stores are different, but the whole remains the same.
It?s like you: aside from your brain, how many of your cells are the self-same ones they were last year? And yet, you?re the same person you were last November. And next year, when you?re made of all new cells, you?ll still be you.
Anyway, the Business Journal says the tide has turned away from chains: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/06/12/story3.html .
And on top of everything, the retail experience, though important, is not even the essence of Harvard Square?s strange power to attract.
* * *
Over the years, I?ve lived in an even dozen places in the Boston area. In the suburbs: Milton and Newton; further in: Coolidge Corner, Jamaica Plain, Union Square, East Boston and Porter Square. In Back Bay, it was Marlborough and Newbury Streets. I have fond memories of all these places. But best of all --by far-- were the years spent living in Harvard Square on Trowbridge Street, Franklin Street and Dana Street.
If I won the lottery tomorrow I?d rush to snap up a little place near where Green Street meets Putnam, and I?d live happily ever after. (If I won it five times I?d add to my collection an efficiency on West End Avenue in the Seventies, a town house in the perched village of Haut-de-Cagnes near Nice (so aptly named!), a little condo in Pacific Heights, a mews house near the South Kensington tube station, and a tout petit Latin Quarter garret near the Pantheon. Life for a globetrotting Hobbitt.)
* * *
We talk a lot on this forum about what makes a place unique, without taking full cognizance that the UNI in unique means ONE. One of a kind. By that measure, not many places are unique in their essence, including Harvard Square. But it almost is; that is, Harvard Square is almost unique in its essential character.
And that is ? ?
Well, it?s not Georgian buildings. It?s not traditional buildings, or cutting-edge buildings, or buildings of any particular style. It?s not short buildings or tall buildings or in-between buildings. In fact it?s not buildings at all --although it is partly the relationships between buildings.
It?s neither specialty retail nor neighborhood shopping. Though both these are Harvard Square assets, they?re not the essentials of the UNIqueness of this place; they?re easy to find elsewhere.
It?s not that the preservationists did a good job of saving what?s best from the past, nor is it --for goodness sake ! -- that it reflects dynamically the best thoughts about the future.
It?s not cultural institutions or traditions, though --like many another place-- Harvard Square has plenty: the Loeb, the Fogg, the Sackler, the Sanders, the Brattle, the Busch-Reisinger, the University Museum, the Crimson, the Hasty Pudding, the Game.
It?s not parks, old buildings or the pervasive sense of history; Cambridge has a long way to go to match in this regard its namesake in England --though Harvard Yard simultaneously wows the rubes and regales them with green. Combined with Winthrop Square and the distant riverfront, it?s all the park the nabe really needs; the Common is almost superfluous.
It?s not only the walkability; lots of places are walkable besides Harvard Square. And for the same reason, it?s not the streetlife --though the streetlife is certainly a consequence of what it is.
It?s not just the college town vibe or the urban bustle; you can find the former in Princeton and Chapel Hill, and the latter at Berkeley and Columbia.
It?s not just the large student population --UMass Amherst has that. It?s not just an adjacent, urban commercial district --B.U., Northeastern and Columbia can boast of some of that across the street.
Well, actually it is ALL of the above, but that still doesn?t yield the dish that?s so tasty. For that, you need a pair of secret ingredients that zero in on Harvard Square?s near-uniqueness. These are:
1. Passionate Embrace. Like lovers intertwined, university and city are shot through with each other: not just across the street or nearby, but almost incestuously intimate. Sometimes Harvard University and Harvard Square even co-exist in a single building (Holyoke Center --big but emphatically not out of scale or out of place-- and the new building on Mt. Auburn Street). Cambridge and Oxford are similar salmagundis of town and gown, though the buildings are segregated by use if not placement; and NYU shows likeminded propensities, but there it?s done by taking over commercial buildings, evicting the retail and converting to academic uses. Mixed-use doesn?t actually invade the buildings in either case.
Figure-ground of the slightly-more-than-square-mile in the Cambridge city limits that contains Harvard Square and over 40,000 inhabitants, including students, within walking distance of the Harvard T-stop. The curve?s radius is ? mile, and the square is a mile to a side. University buildings are in red, purplish buildings are used for university and retail functions. Harvard owns many additional properties as commercial investments.
2. And ? the ultimate secret weapon: a subway station right in the middle. This is the animator of the mix, the easy gateway from the cosmos. The greater world?s entry point, near-seamlessly connected via transit and airport to the very corners of the world (though it would help if the Blue Line reached to Charles/MGH). I can think of only one other place on the face of the planet that shares this one feature with Harvard Square, along with everything else on the list above; and it looks quite different --proving, I think, that looks are not the core of essence.
That makes Harvard Square nearly unique.
And now, SURPRISE ! ? every element enumerated above is available in Allston!
* * *
People who design cities should like cities. Problem is, cities these days are mostly not designed by people who like cities. The people who make decisions that eventually give rise to development say they like cities, they believe they like cities, but actually they hate cities; they love suburbs instead. Is it any wonder they put effort into making cities more like the suburbs?
I?ve had lengthy philosophical discussions with one of the principals of the first firm that worked on the Allston campus. This man has been around; he likes cities a lot, and has worked on many projects that have transformed major cities. Problem is, though his heart?s in the right place, he personally lacks artistic brilliance. The result is work that many of us on this forum would regard as uninspired. Add to that, the avalanche of amateurish advice and short-sighted demands coming from self-appointed representatives of the community, and you have a formula for something very brown indeed.
If I were a betting man, I?d bet against anything even remotely as good as Harvard Square materializing in Allston.
Of course, there?s always the possibility of someone showing up who?s an artist ? and who takes the almost-uniqueness of Harvard Square seriously enough to emulate.
Like John Harvard himself, that person will have a bronze statue a coupla hundred years from now.
.
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