Al's Cafe opens in Harvard Square

Alan Costello who has become well known downtown with his locations at 112 State St and 179 Essex St has officially opened his long planned Harvard Square location.

It is located in the Holyoke Center Arcade at 1350 Massachusetts Ave - entrance is to the left of Au Bon Pain. His menu offers Hot Gourmet Subs, Cold Gourmet Subs, Soups ,Salads and Kabobs. He will also offer his famed Bag Lunch and Soup Lunch.

Hours Monday-Saturday 10 AM to 9 PM - Sunday 11 AM - 8 PM Phone 617-441-9100


Website is under construction but will be www.alscafes.com

I wish him well as Harvard Sq can always use a good, inexpensive meal option.

        

TIME MACHINE - Harvard Square when it was special (and even had a Mug and Muffin)

A wonderful book was published last year which is a picture history of Harvard Square from 1950 to the present. 

 The author Mo Lotman describes the book

The well-trod patch of Cambridge turf at the corner of the nation's most renowned university has long been a crossroads where poetry, politics, retailing, architecture, performance, design, and every other cultural endeavor intersect. Harvard Square is more than a beloved space, it is a state of mind. Inside the pages of this book, one is immediately transported there.

From the Square's tweedy 1950s through the tumultuous ’60s, the colorful ’70s, and all the way up to the present, Mo Lotman gives a decade-by-decade account of Harvard Square's traditions, history, and lore. The bookstores, the billiard parlors, the barbershops, the booze and burger joints: they're all here. Compiling interviews with more than 100 of the Square's movers and shakers, a treasure-trove of archival and modern photographs, and texts by John Updike, Bill McKibben, Governor Bill Weld, and others, Harvard Square brings "the smartest urban space in America" to vivid life.

Many of these pictures are in the book and a few are others I have collected. It is a wonderful look back.

The subway construction was brutal

1970's - The Tasty can be seen to the right

snow looked the same in the 50's

mid 1960's

This was torn down in 1962 for Holyoke Center.

This would be late 70's as the BayBank name has appeared but the subway construction has yet to start,

The Mug and Muffin was my office back in the late 70's and you could meet anyone there from a Harvard professor to a homeless person and everything in between. It was a little fancier than the 'Tasty' but it had a gritty charm of its own.
The night manager Annie was an absolute sweetheart who had a heart of gold. Nobody seems to know what happened to her but she is fondly remembered by many. 

Thank you Mo.....

His website also has a detailed list of the stores that were in the Square.....

9 Minutes from Kenmore to Park Street?

More photos from the MIT Libraries

The archive was compiled by two MIT researchers who were studying urban planning. A research assistant on their project shot 2,000 photos of city neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area from 1954 to 1959. The pictures taken by Nishan Bichajian provide stark, black-and-white documentation of a bygone era. The Kepes/Lynch Collection, named for the researchers, is hosted by the university’s Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning.

9 minutes in 1957 :)

So in 1956 the Green Line was called Rapid Transit

No Charley Card machines in 1956

This is the 'arcade' that was located at what is now the Downtown Crossing T station - it had a food market, bakery and other stores.

Today this is the Orange Line platform heading towards Oak Grove.
In 1956 - it was called Summer Station

Stairs to Washington Station

Park Street 

Wish we had signs like this today

Fare was 20 cents in 1956

No Spitting??

Recently there has been a major issue about signs on buildings in Cambridge......ummm where were these people 55 years ago?

Pearl and Green Street (Central Sq)

The old F and T Diner in Kendall Square

 Massachusetts Ave between Central and MIT

Where the Asgard Irish Pub is today was a Chevy Dealership

This was the Kendall Sq bus station in 1957 - notice an old JENNY gas station nearby

Bob Slate's survived but .....

Heinz Building on Vassar Street

Eight Minutes To Park Street???????

Going through more pictures of long lost Cambridge-Boston.

 EIGHT MINUTES TO PARK STREET??????

  The Harvard Trust Building (now Bank of America) being built 1956

The Celtic Cafe pictured here is where the 1369 Coffee House in Inman Square is located today.

     The College Grille is now known as the Cambridge Common on Mass Ave.

     Cambridge City Hall looks exactly the same today as it did in 1955

    Richard's Drive-In on Memorial Drive near River Street

   The Harvard Square Subway Station before it was rebuilt in the 80's

Kendall Square Station

 Years ago companies on Memorial Drive had signs on the roof

 Newtowne Grille looks the same today

  Brattle St

My thanks again to the Rotch Visual Collections

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge

I am seeing voter anger firsthand

I have spent a few hours today helping out at a polling place just outside of Harvard Sq. What I have seen so far is a heavy turnout of senior citizens and they are unified in their anger at Beacon Hill and Washington. Keep in mind many of these elders came of age with Jack Kennedy and Tip O'Neill in Cambridge. Yet today I have seen many clutching the Metro and NY POST and saying how they agree.

What is fueling their anger is the announcement a couple of weeks ago that the cost of living index has not gone up enough to merit an increase in their social security checks. They are very, very upset.

This polling place also has several Harvard undergraduate and graduate residences in it and as of 2:30 PM the students are NOT voting at all.

Tip O'Neill said famously "ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL" - and he would be listening to these people. I fear Obama and his advisors do not.

Send Us Your Tourists

I am amused to find out that the feature travel destination in the Sunday Chicago Tribune on October 18th is CAMBRIDGE?????

Cambridge: the original college town
This city is more than worth your study time

The story offers gems like

• If you must revisit the Cambridge Police Department's globally famous arrest and release of professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in July, don't go looking for his house. Instead, look for Gates, a regular customer, in the crowd at Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers (aka Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, 1246 Massachusetts Ave.), a Mass Ave fixture since Bob Dylan and Joan Baez chowed down there in the 1960s.


• Look both ways. The streets are teeming with New England drivers (not known for their congeniality) and Cambridge pedestrians, which is just a fancy way of saying jaywalkers. Maybe the locals will think you're a dweeb, waiting for a green light. But sometimes dweebs live longer.