From Dave Brigham:
Parking in and around Harvard Square can be a real pain in the ass. That's because there are so many reasons to visit the beating heart of Cambridge: clothing stores, restaurants, coffee shops, ice cream parlors, barber shops, bars, churches, bookstores, the Harvard Lampoon building.
The Harvard Lampoon is the undergraduate humor magazine of the World's Greatest University. Founded in 1876, the magazine has produced many well-known writers and comedians, including Kurt Andersen, co-founder of Spy magazine; Andy Borowitz, writer, comedian and satirist known for The Borowitz Report; Greg Daniels, who created the American version of the ridiculously popular TV show "The Office"; Fred Gwynne (aka Herman Munster); TV and podcast host Conan O'Brien; and and novelist John Updike.
The magazine has been based in this amazing building since it was built in 1909. I'd admired the Victorian Eclectic building for many years before finding out it was home to the magazine. I discovered National Lampoon, a humor magazine that was spun out of Harvard's publication, when I was in high school. I lived for that rag for a few years, absorbing every stupid cartoon, gratuitous flash of nudity and brilliant long-form story.
From the Lampoon building I bounced over to the Galeria, which I guess is a mini-mall. I've never patronized any of the businesses here, but man do I like the sign.
MACRIS says this place was built in 1975. Current tenants include CorePower Yoga, Shake Shack, The Maharaja Indian restaurant and Staples. The building's owner has floated a plan to add residential units in new construction above the mall.
Around the corner, on Eliot Street facing the Harvard Square Hotel, is the institution known as Charlie's Kitchen.
I'm almost ashamed to say I've never eaten here, even though I've lived in the Boston area for more than three decades and Charlie's has been in business more than twice as long.
Walking up Winthrop Street back towards the Galeria, I had to make a shot of a legendary place that I bet few passers-by know about.
Currently occupied by the Boiling Crab Cajun seafood restaurant, this old house was the original location of the House of Blues. I wrote about this joint many years ago; to learn more, see August 8, 2017, "This Old House of Blues."
Across Winthrop Street is Grendel's Den, a cozy institution founded in the 1960s (not, as the sign says, 1271).
The eatery's name comes from "a monstrous creature defeated by Beowulf in the Old English poem Beowulf," per Britannica.
I zig-zagged around the square, remembering places I used to frequent, mourning places that are gone (Border Cafe, Wursthaus) and eventually made my way to the impressive Sheraton Commader Hotel.
Opened in 1927, the hotel is named in memory of George Washington, who assumed command of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War near this spot. That sign is something else, isn't it?!
I headed southeast along Garden Street and just before the Old Burial Ground (where one of my ancestors is allegedly buried) I checked out the lovely and historic Christ Church Cambridge, from the backside of course.
From the nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places: "Christ Church, Cambridge, designed by Peter Harrison, colonial America's most skilled gentleman-amateur architect, was constructed between 1757-61. The design reflects Harrison's increasing freedom from his dependence upon English design books, perhaps augmented in this case by the need for original solutions placed upon the architect by financial restrictions of the project. The simple exterior, with planked walls and plain wooden belfry belies the refined elegance of the interior. Christ Church is one of the surviving landmarks of colonial Cambridge Common, retaining the quiet charm of its original environment within the busy area of Harvard University."
In the heart of the square is another stately building, this one with a different sort of place in local history.
Located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and John F. Kennedy and Brattle streets, the Abbott Building dates to 1909, and was recently renovated. But it's the sign in the window that I want to bring to your attention: Dewey, Cheetham & Howe. If you don't know about this sign, read it aloud a few times. You'll get it.
Behind that cleverly amusing window was the headquarters of the "Car Talk" universe. The nationally syndicated National Public Radio show was hosted by Click and Clack, aka brothers Ray and Tom Magliozzi. From 1977 to 2012, the Tappet Brothers, as they called themselves, dispensed advice to callers with car problems, cracking up each other and their audience as they did so. I listened casually back in the '90s, and always enjoyed it, even though I knew nothing about cars. To read many of these same words, check out this June 24, 2023, post about Cambridgeport, which includes the brothers' auto body shop.
While the building has been renovated, and the brothers no longer work there (Tom died in 2014), the sign remains the same. That's nice.
Just south of the Magliozzis' old office is a sign for another place that oldtimers will remember.
Like "Car Talk" and the Edsel, Whitney's dive bar is no longer in business. Opened in 1953, the tavern shut down at the end of 2024, either because it was too loud, or because the tenant didn't keep up with rent, depending on who you believe in this Cambridge Day article.
Across the street is a great sign that I've admired for years.
I've shopped at The Garage Mall countless times over the years, mostly at the Newbury Comics store (for music, not comics). I never gave the history of this place much thought until I made this photo. Built in 1924, this building at the corner of John F. Kennedy and Mt. Auburn streets was a parking garage for nearly 50 years before being converted to a shopping and eating destination.
As with so much of Harvard Square, this site is destined to be updated. "The proposed project will create a new, contextually appropriate building on the current site...that offers a more robust ground floor retail presence, establishes an underground space for entertainment and dining, and creates new commercial office with 6 outdoor terraces," per Trinity Property Management.
I'll admit that the current iteration of the mall is fairly lame. So I'm not opposed to progress in this case.
At this point I headed west on Mt. Auburn Street, to make photos of a quaint place out of another time.
This Norwegian-style beauty was designed by architect Allen W. Jackson (no, not this guy) in 1930 for the Cambridge Skating Club, which was founded in 1897. Located next to Longfellow Park, the property was "once known as Mrs. Thorp’s Field," according to the web site for the Cambridge Tennis Club, which was incorporated in 1954 and which shares the property and the building.
In the early days, the site "was flooded during winters and neighborhood folks ice skated there. Annie Longfellow Thorp was a daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," the web site continues. The club is private.
From there I headed southeast to Memorial Drive until I was in front of a place I've long been curious about....
....a gen-u-wine monastery.
I used to spend a lot more time in and around Harvard Square. For years when driving by this complex I paid it little mind. Increasingly, though, I wondered about it. Located steps from the hustle and bustle of the square, it seemed quite peaceful and separated from the mundane. Eventually I learned that it was exactly that: the Society of Saint John the Evangelist is "[r]ooted in the ancient monastic traditions of prayer and community life," per the group's web site.
As for the church, MACRIS has this to say: "This distinguished Romanesque building is the last in a series of Medieval Revival Cambridge churches. This 1936 design by Cram & Ferguson is the most archaeologically correct of all the City's Medieval churches. The church is enhanced by the riverfront setting, with flanking monastery buildings and walled gardens."
Ralph Adams Cram, who died in 1942 at age 78, "was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style," per Wikipedia. Among his projects are All Saints Parish in Brookline, Mass., Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, N.Y., First Unitarian Society in Newton, Mass., St. Florian Church in Hamtramck, Mich., and the public library in Fall River, Mass.
Back on John F. Kennedy Street, I diverted down South Street to check out a beautiful building that I assumed was much older than it turns out to be.
This is the headquarters of the Harvard Advocate, which claims to be the oldest continuously published collegiate literary magazine in the country, having been founded in 1866. As for the building, it rose in 1956 but looks like it could have been erected at the periodical's founding, don'tcha think?
My final stop was Pinocchio's Pizza & Subs on Winthrop Street.
This little joint with the great sign has been slinging pies since 1966.
