Harvard Square was once a durable destination with a variety of coffeehouses, bars, diners, boutiques and music venues, as well as being home to new and used book and record shops. Here was the foundation of the "Great American Folk Music Scare," as Martin Mull called it, with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at places like Club 47.
Joan Baez inside Club 47 in the early 60s
Harvard Square's celebrated notoriety grew in the later 60's as hippies, hustlers and happenings became part of the Square's milieu, and street culture spread around the area. In 1970 it culminated in massive protests against the war in Viet Nam.
Through the years, old-timers have always insisted that the Harvard Square of their day was the way it was truly meant to be. "You should have seen Harvard Square when it was a square," goes the gist of the Boomer thesis. "Today it's nothing but a corporate wasteland."
Perhaps the beginning of the end came when the Old MBTA yards were replaced with the then glittering new Charles Hotel, opened following the new MBTA tunnel from Harvard to Alewife.
Eliot Square MBTA Yard
Glittering New Charles Hotel where the Eliot Square Yard once stood
“Beginning in 1968,” Mo Lotman wrote in his 2009 book, Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950, “the Common was transformed every warm Sunday afternoon into a bohemian free-for-all, with drum circles, bead-sellers, tranced-out dancers, and a ton of pot.”
Photo by Nick DeWolf
Boomers love to tell tall tales of the legendary locales of yesteryear: The Idler, the Oxford Ale House, daily double bills for a dollar at the Harvard Square Theatre, foreign films at the Galeria Theater, cool used clothes at the Pennsylvania Company, The Blue Parrot, Bailey’s Ice Cream, sandwiches at Elsie’s. And of course, the venerable Tasty, taken from the Square in 1997. To this day that move peeves off many a Square vet. A perfect symbol, many say, of the perils of gentrification.
Inside the Tasty in the 80s. Photo by David Henry
The Tasty was a one-room diner estimated to be 30 feet long and seven feet wide. Customers ate burgers and dogs on a yellow linoleum counter. With 16 stools, The Tasty on busy nights would be stuffed with 60-80 people at a time. On these nights between 300–400 burgers and doggies were served between the hours of midnight and 4am. Its informal atmosphere and friendly staff drew in long-time residents, college students and working people and became one of the few places where locals and visitors from different social and economic classes easily mixed. Cambridge Savings Bank, the building's owner, eventually saw green as the chain store crawl moved quickly into Harvard Square. Higher rents and changing times forced The Tasty's hand and despite protests from the Harvard Square Defense Fund along with Click and Clack, the guys who hosted Car Talk on NPR, The Tasty shut it's door for good in 1997. Gone was a spot where you could fill up for cheap. Banks and ATMs, here we come. Gone are the idealists and rebels. Gone is the Harvard Square of celebrated nototiety.
70 comments
The last nail in the coffin was the day The Wursthause closed it’s doors.
No Mention of Monkey Bussiness fun antiques or the ajoining store Dazzle( clothing and paraphernalia from 30s. In the entrance way there were old Penny machines from Revere Beach also Monkey Business were antique jewelry pocket watches, Indian jewelry novelty items from the past and in Dazzle the clothes store raccoon coat they also had a
Machine that you could apply studs clean chrome and glass studs of different colors put onto dungaree materials such as women’s skirts shift and jeans it was right in the middle of Harvard Square cross the street are above Cochran’s great place I work there at Monkey Bizness for about 3 years loud music playing lots of people kind of window shopping and just enjoying the inventory and the music.
Great article!
I was lucky to grow up in Cambridge and the Square was where my friends and I spent most of our time there. We got to walk through the Harvard Yard to get to our High School; hang out in front of the Coop and meet on the Charles River at night when the weather was good. Good times!!!!
Don’t forget the venerable, old head shop, Truc!!
More, please!
Missing the famous egg creams from the tasty !
Love it!
I used to sell “poems with a peal like a chime, for only a dime” all over Harvard Square in 1971. Interesting times on the streets.
Nice nostalgic look about a place I only visited twice. First time in 1967 right after graduating HS. I then went into the Military in 1968 and Harvard Square was not a place a member of the military would visit during those years. I was back in Boston on business in 2001. Took a nostalgia trip to Harvard Square. Didn’t look at all like the memory I had from 1967. I agree with you. Some gentrification is unnecessary and ruins instead of restores a neighborhood.
I bought my first pair of Frye square toed boots in Harvard square in 1968. My wife to be went to The Club 47 many times during the 60s and saw early performances of Joni, Tom Rush and Doc. Quite a place back then…