Harvard Square in Allston?

[Ron Newman]

Before trying to clone Harvard Square, let's think a bit about keeping healthy the one we already have.

 

[ablarc]

Crate and Barrel is no great loss, Ron. They were always a poor substitute for Design Research and a soulless chain store to boot. I'm sure Pourvu will find tenant who's equal or better for the space:

While a new occupant has not yet been found, Poorvu said he was searching for a company with ?design qualities that go together with and enhance the building, with exciting merchandise.?

Out of Town is another story. Will be missed.

Btw, did someone propose cloning Harvard Square?

 

[kennedy]

I think that Crate & Barrel is definitely a loss. While a chain, it was at least a pretty decent chain.

 

[ablarc]

It's not lost, Kennedy; they have another Harvard Square store on Mass Ave.

Ben Thompson's Design Research used to take maximum advantage of this building's showcase configuration to do vast, coordinated, multi-story displays that were breathtakingly dramatic and tasteful. Being a chain run from Chicago, Crate and Barrel couldn't be bothered with all the window dressing this involved. Maybe the new tenant will take the trouble; the landlord certainly intends for it to be so.

Anyway, we're off-topic; I think this thread is supposed to be about the future of Allston.

 

[ablarc]

a subway station right in the middle ... 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.

I thought someone would have risen to the bait and guessed this one by now.

 

[kennedy]

I don't know, Times Square maybe?

 

[Lrfox]

I thought someone would have risen to the bait and guessed this one by now.

I'm really not sure. Am I going to feel dumb when it's revealed?

*Edit for the sake of not being a spoil sport, I'm going to guess Piccadilly Circus (London), and though I know it's not correct, I can't in this brief moment, think of another place that fits the bill as well as Piccadilly.

 

[ablarc]

Neither Times Square nor Piccadilly is the center of a university district.

 

[disturbanist]

Greenwich Village?

 

[ablarc]

It would be Greenwich Village if the subway came up into Washington Square.

 

[CDubs]

Berkeley, CA?

 

[Beton Brut]

With the growth of Emerson College, Suffolk University, New England School of Law, and Tufts Med School, Downtown Crossing should turn out this way.

Ask our idiot king and his vassals why it isn't that way already.

 

[ablarc]

Berkeley, CA?

At Berkeley, the subway comes up at the university's edge, and the university and town are strictly separated, not interspersed.

Otherwise, there sure are a lot of similarities.

 

[Ron Newman]

I'm going to guess that the place ablarc refers to is on the Left Bank in Paris.

 

[ablarc]

Bingo, Ron!

Every time I visit there I'm struck with just how much the Quartier Latin functions like Harvard Square.

Of course, it looks quite different, and the heat's turned up on the cooker: more density, more activity, more cosmos, more everything...

 

[Ron Newman]

Thanks. What I don't remember is the name of the subway station (isn't there more than one over there?)

My alternate guesses would have been NYU or Columbia. Do neither of them fit?

 

[ablarc]

Thanks. What I don't remember is the name of the subway station (isn't there more than one over there?)

Yes. There used to be four stations. These were: Luxembourg (for a long time, a terminus of a suburban R.E.R. line, just as Harvard was a terminus through most of its history), Odeon, St. Michel, and Cluny. For many years, the latter was shuttered because --like Bowdoin-- it was so close to another station. That made Odeon and St. Michel the principal stations for the Sorbonne, though Luxembourg was actually closest to the university's heart; it was really useful only to folks coming from the vast Cite Universitaire dormitory complex and the southern suburbs. Then they extended the R.E.R. past Luxembourg and re-opened the Cluny station. They amalgamated St. Michel and Cluny into a mega-station where four lines come together in a maze of underground connections --one of the busiest in Paris: Cluny/La Sorbonne/ St. Michel/Notre Dame.

My alternate guesses would have been NYU or Columbia. Do neither of them fit?

Almost, in both cases.

Columbia has a gated campus all to one side of the 116th Street subway station; and NYU's heart is subway-less Washington Square, a few blocks from the West 4th Street Station.

 

[Chessplayer]

I've never been, but how well would University City in Philadelphia fit?

Anyway, Minneapolis is attempting its own transit within a University idea with the Central Corridor Light Rail Line - passing through the University of Minnesota en route between both downtowns. The East and West Bank stations are in the heart of the University, with Stadium Village abutting Dinkytown, the school's town/gown amalgam.

 

[ablarc]

^ Campus on both sides of the river, huh? With a double-decker bridge connecting the two halves, upper level pedestrian? Is the center part of that bridge roofed for walking on rainy and snowy days? I bet some students arrange their schedules to minimize crossing that bridge.

Will they run the light rail on the upper level or the lower?

 

[ablarc]

Now that everyone has done their several years of fiddling, squabbling and grandstanding, Harvard-in-Allston is stone dead, and everyone involved ends up with less than nothing.

Check in again after a decade if the economy recovers. Otherwise ... would it be too much to ask for folks to learn something from this debacle?

Or is everyone too intent on justifying their actions?