Leavitt & Peirce: For All Your Hoity-Toity Tobacco Needs

From Gentleman Dave Brigham:

When I walk into Leavitt & Peirce in world-famous Harvard Square, the WASP in me comes out just a little bit. Located directly across from Harvard Yard, the shop has sold tobacco, chess games, barware, cologne, cigar cutters and much more to Harvard students, their families and others with too much walking-around money since 1883.

I love the cigar maiden hanging over the door, the pendant lights hanging inside and the "FAMOUS CAKE BOX MIXTURE" sign in the window. As great as the outside looks, the inside smells. I don't smoke cigars or pipes, but my nose and I enjoy the smells of those tobacco products that have seeped into Leavitt & Peirce's wood walls, floors, ceilings and display cases. I like to think, for a few minutes, that I'm a blue-blooded toff just popping in to purchase 8 ounces of Whiskey Cavendish pipe tobacco, a small vinyl chess mat and a Schnitzelbank Stein.

Truth be told, I have only purchased a few things in this store, and none of them was as glamorous as what I just listed off. I stopped in here before my wedding, 21 years ago, to buy some gifts for my two groomsmen: my brother and my best buddy from high school. I believe I bought them fancy pens.

I feel a connection to Harvard Square, not only because I've hung out there countless times in the last three decades, at places ranging from the Wursthaus (R.I.P.) to Newbury Comics, 33 Dunster Street (R.I.P., replaced by John Harvard's Brewery & Ale House) to the movie theater (now shuttered, but it might be revived), but also because my ancestors once lived there.

Thomas Brigham, considered the first Brigham to emigrate to these shores from England, settled in Cambridge in 1635. He is buried in the Old Burying Ground on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Garden Street in Harvard Square, although his grave is unmarked after all these years. At his death, he owned approximately 180 acres of farmland, with the main house situated on the outskirts of what is now the square, at the intersection of Ash and Brattle streets. So I like to think that in some alternate universe, my branch of the Brigham clan inherited that land, right near Tory Row, sold it to Harvard University and made enough money to keep me in Whiskey Cavendish and wide wale pants for the rest of my life.

For more about my WASP hang-up, see March 22, 2018, "WASP Wanderings and Wonderings".