Posts Tagged ‘Harvard Square’
Self-Guided Tour: Monuments and Memorials in Cambridge
Cambridge is a city filled with monuments. Statues, plaques, and memorials across the city commemorate people and events from its nearly four hundred years of settlement. But who decides what is worthy of commemoration, and how does the memorial landscape of the city reinforce certain narratives of Cambridge history and exclude others? In this tour…
Read MoreMemories of Nineteenth-Century Cambridge
By Lois Lilley Howe Read January 22, 1952 This article originally appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, Volume 34, pages 59-76 ONE of my earliest recollections — I cannot date it — is that I asked some older member of my family if it was probable that I should be alive when 1900, the new century,…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Loyalist Women of Cambridge
By MaryKate Smolenski, Tufts University Intern, June 2020 Download the tour here as a PDF with photos or without photos Funding for this project was made possible through the generosity of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati For further reading, see: Who were the Loyalist Women of Cambridge? Introductory post and Part 1: Mary Browne…
Read MoreTouching History; Harvard Square, The Bank and The Tasty Diner [video]
The closing of the beloved Harvard Square restaurant The Tasty in the late 1990s was a source of tension in Cambridge. Filmmaker Federico Muchnik documented the controversy in his short film, “Touching History; Harvard Square, The Bank and The Tasty Diner.” From the filmmaker: “Touching History tells the story of the re-development of Harvard Square’s…
Read More50 Years Later: Harvard’s 1969 Protests
In Cambridge, as in the rest of America, the late 1960s were a period of unrest and upheaval. As we consider our 2019 theme “How Does Cambridge Engage?” we benefit from looking back fifty years to the Spring of 1969. The events of April 8th-10th, 1969 were a response to the Vietnam War and the social…
Read MoreHarvard Square in the ‘Seventies and ‘Eighties
By Lois Lilley Howe Read January 25, 1944 This article originally appeared in the Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, Volume 30, pages 11-27 Reminiscences, which should really have been called Harvard Square and its Environs in the ‘Seventies and ‘Eighties, have been in the back of my mind long enough for me to have verified details by…
Read MoreNew Wine in Old Bottles
By Michael Kenney, 2017 Sunday brunch time and weekday happy hours, the courtyard at the corner of Broadway and Hampshire Street is a lively place, with hipsters and families enjoying the bars and restaurants grouped around the open brick-paved space. Hard to believe, but it was even more bustling a century ago, when shifts of…
Read MorePrinting In Cambridge Since 1800
by Norman Hill White, Jr., 1920 This article can be found in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society Volume 15, from the years 1920-1921. From 1692, when Samuel Green retired as manager of the college press, there was no printing done in Cambridge for over a hundred years, except that done by the brothers…
Read MoreEighty-five Aromatic Years In Harvard Square by Catharine K. Wilder
Eighty-five Aromatic Years In Harvard Square By Catharine K. Wilder, 1968 A tiny island exists today in Harvard Square about which the poet Robert Hillyer, Harvard ’17, writes: Not all goes up in smoke, here smoke appears To give stability in changing years. Leavitt & Peirce, whose name evokes a host of blue haze memories,…
Read MoreCafé Algiers: A hidden gem with a long history
by Ruth Hobeika After almost five decades in Harvard Square — at 40 Brattle Street, home of the Brattle Theatre — this much beloved international style coffeehouse shuttered on August 31. The final decision was reached August 25 after negotiations between the land-lord, who cancelled the lease, and original owner Emil Durzi fell through. “It…
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