Coming back to life: A walk around Harvard Square

Tumbleweed. That’s the word that came to mind when walking through Harvard Square in Cambridge during the pandemic years. Not actual tumbleweed, but metaphorical tumbleweed because few formerly vibrant, well-heeled neighborhoods seemed as hard hit by shutdowns and for longer than this celebrated square. Business owners who weren’t shutting down were almost in despair. Not even almost.

Even as the square’s great economic engine Harvard University opened up it just seemed to take a long time before street life vitality came back. Finally, the eminently strollable square almost has its usual vibrancy back, signifying, if not yet a glowing renaissance, then survivability.

Back to School

Fall marks a new university year and along with students bringing back considerable buzz to the square’s street life, this fall semester sees a new Harvard University president arriving with them.

Founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as Harvard College, the pandemic really proved Harvard University is the driving economic factor for its namesake hub. Harvard Yard, the oldest part of the campus, is encircled by wrought iron fencing and mature trees, and marked by Daniel Chester French’s solemn statue of an imagined John Harvard — the college’s first major benefactor — and the elegant spire of the nondenominational Memorial Church.

Harvard University is home to world class museums, including the Harvard Art Museums, which are often overshadowed by the high profile museums of its neighbor across the Charles River.

This past summer, the Harvard Art Museums’ admission fee was dropped. There are three different museums: the largest, the Fogg Museum is the oldest and opened to the public in 1896, but was extensively renovated circa 1925. It houses Western art from the Middle Ages through to contemporary works. The Busch-Reisinger Museum was founded in 1901 and is the only such museum in North America to focus solely on works from Germany and Northern Europe, including a considerable collection related to Germany’s famed Bauhaus art and architecture school. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which opened in 1985, houses Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Asian art.

The Changing Square

Until recently, Out of Town News stood on Massachusetts Avenue, across from the university’s historic campus. Though a resident of the square for over 60 years, the beloved Out of Town News moved into this beautiful kiosk, formerly the original Harvard Square MBTA Station entrance in the 1980s. This onetime institution had a selection of daily newspapers and magazines rarely seen now.  Sadly, it  closed in 2019, a victim not of the pandemic but of digital dominance. (Ya don’t support it, ya lose it, folks.)

The kiosk had been added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, thus preserving the small, ornate building’s existence at least.

It is currently shrouded as the City of Cambridge oversees its conversion to house both the Cambridge Office for Tourism and a small nonprofit event/performance organization called Culture House. Completion is expected next spring.

Though it seems a place of long traditions and history, of course Cambridge has changed greatly since it was founded in the 1600s as Newtowne, part of what is Newton. But some of the oldest homes in Greater Boston still stand here on Winthrop Street in Winthrop Square, ‘twixt Mount Auburn, Eliot and JFK streets.

Things to Do, Place to Visit

As the leaves turn in October, the now 58-year-old Head of the Charles regatta returns to the Charles River, its course completing just past Eliot Bridge in Watertown (hocr.org). The square is where many choose to celebrate or commiserate after the international boat race — and there are all manner of places to do both!

Keith Richards, cockroaches, and the somewhat divey Charlie’s Kitchen on Eliot Street seem to share the same indestructible DNA — nothing can take them down: Charlie’s beer garden and its raucous upstairs punk rock Monday nights remain perennial crowd bringers.

At the opposite end of the dining/drinking scale, relative newcomer Life Alive + Down Under on JFK Street unites Boston’s plant-forward café chain Life Alive with the Down Under School of Yoga. Downstairs, there are yoga and meditation studios, an Ayurvedic consultation and massage room, and changing rooms and showers. Upstairs, Life Alive has a really tasty selection of healthy plant-focused dishes and drinks.

Bookending the square are chef Michael Scelfo’s Alden & Harlow and Waypoint, two popular restaurants on Brattle Street and Mass. Ave., respectively. Alden & Harlow, a smoking and pickling centric New England bistro in the spot occupied by the longstanding Casablanca came first; Waypoint brings wood fired oven baked pizzas and New England oysters, and a lot more, to the far side of Harvard Square, just before it becomes Central Square.

Then came Scelfo’s latest and undeniably prettiest addition, Longfellow Bar at the top of Alden and Harlow. Drink and dine in the spot that was the Algiers Café (an adjunct to Casablanca — yes, both are a reference to a certain movie), where exposed brick and original Federal style windows give a feeling of a cozy, secret attic bar. Here one might toast with dandelion singani (Bolivian brandy) paired with grapefruit, lychee, and watermelon; or sip mezcal with prickly pear and lime — that’s the Mezcal Cosmo.

Both top the historic old Brattle Theatre, which still regularly screens the Bogart-Bergman classic, Casablanca. This nonprofit movie theater is a clear example of survival not always dependent on the being the fittest, but on having integrity, too. Specifically, to the art of cinema: arthouse favorites and rarities are honored here, as are not-quite-defunct mediums such as movies shot on 35 mm film. First run movies are shown, too.

Further up Brattle, the Harvard affiliated American Repertory Theater, the lauded ART, is eventually upping sticks and moving to the new Harvard campus under construction in Allston — it will be a while before that happens though. For now,  ART operates from its traditional home, the Loeb Drama Center, where next year it is due to debut the new musical version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" with a score by Florence Welch (of the rock band Florence and the Machine) and Grammy Award nominee Thomas Bartlett, and a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok.

Fixtures are something most loved in this square—these immovable feasts, big and small; beloved institutions. The years — well, high rents actually — nixed most of its bohemian boutiques. But there’s some cultural candy to be found at the dazzling Cambridge Artists Cooperative on Church Street, which is filled with beautifully crafted jewelry, pottery, quilts, et al. Just up Church towards Mass. Ave., venerable folk music nonprofit Club Passim, near the Harvard Coop, is now joined by the newer music club Sinclair, a great arts addition to the square.

Foodie Favorites

One social lynchpin is Harvest restaurant, a modern American restaurant and bar tucked onto a narrow, red bricked alley running between Mount Auburn and Brattle streets.

Opened in 1975, Harvard Square’s celebrated foodie resident Julia Child was a regular at Harvest and the restaurant served as an incubator for several contemporary American chefs: like Lydia Shire, Frank McClelland, Sara Moulton, Chris Schlesinger, and Robert Kinkead.

Dine inside or on the secluded patio, where current executive chef Nick Deutmeyer rolls out his new Farmer's Market Dinner series this fall.

When it comes to farm-to-table eating, Charles Square, the square within the square, is ground zero. More specifically, Henrietta’s Table, inside the Charles Hotel on Bennett Street, is one of the nation’s original farm-to-table restaurants. Before that was a thing, Henrietta’s former chef Peter Davis devoutly supported New England farmers both with his menus and an annual farm benefit dine-around held outside the restaurant in Charles Square. Local produce was further supported by the Friday and Sunday Farmers Market outside on Bennett Street, right by the hotel’s entrance.

With Davis retired, chef Sean Lizotte, who attended culinary school at Johnson & Wales in Providence, and has been with Henrietta’s Table since 2005, was promoted to executive chef in July 2022.

Lizotte now heads the breakfast through dinner menus, served inside the Shaker chic meets New England modern restaurant, with its soft blue gray wood paneling and rail-back wood seats (with wonderfully comfy blue upholstery); or outside on the pretty Charles Square patio. Courtesy of Henrietta’s, The Charles still serves a proper in-room breakfast, wheeled in on plates on a linen dressed trolley, and not delivered in take-out boxes in a bag!

Opposite Henrietta’s sits Bar Enza, a stylish Italian restaurant, part of the local Lyons Group, but still accessed from within the hotel. The sleek restaurant, which has a cute balcony overlooking Charles Square, recently added chef Tony Susi, whose pedigree includes Sage, which once graced the North End. Bar Enza continues Susi’s and this location’s long exploration of Italian classics with a New England coastal twist.

Center of Culture

The Dalai Lama, John Malkovich, and Michelle and Barack Obama have called the Charles Hotel a home away from home. It’s a place where luxury is at its most finessed: a simple thing where fussy over-design is swapped for quality and elegant functionality. The hotel certainly felt the pandemic pinch, which held up its extensive renovations, now completed with the newly created fourth floor West Wing’s three gorgeous new suites over the area where the small pool once sat. This fall, the reopening of the Regattabar jazz club, one of the finest music venues, brings considerable pizzazz back to the square.

The square also houses one of the area’s best spas: Corbu Spa & Salon, named for French architect Le Corbusier, who designed Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

While the weather still holds out, the Charles Hotel’s new outdoor One Reason Garden Bar — named for a Tracy Chapman song, no less — is a great spot for a casual bite and a beer. It’s flanked by the hotel’s chic Noir cocktail bar’s reimagined patio — and also by Charlie’s across on Eliot Street! Scruffy, comforting Charlie’s; soothing, chic Noir: two opposite sides of the same coin, and survivors both.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: After COVID shutdown, Harvard Square is finding its way back to life