Contrary to popular belief, the city doesn’t disappear after midnight. You can get pizza after midnight and burritos until 4 a.m. if you know where to look.
Let’s be honest – Boston has never been known as a late-night city. Last call remains at 2 a.m. – the same as when I was in college, which didn’t really matter because I had to catch the MBTA, which ceases service around 1 a.m. (This was the dark ages before ride-share services.) But that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to party – we just start early.
It’s a short walk from the Boston Calling Festival to late-night eats in Harvard Square.Boston Calling
At 1 p.m., to be precise. That’s when the gates open at Boston Calling, the three-day Memorial Day weekend music festival that attracts more than 100,000 people to the city’s biggest party. This year, organizers tell me that a redesign of the main stage should alleviate the crowd-crunch that happened last year after Chappell Roan (I squeezed behind pop-up tents to escape the fray). This year, I’m looking forward to sets by Sheryl Crow, Remi Wolf, and Vampire Weekend – and the legendary food line-up includes Boston’s best, from Summer Shack and Flour Bakery to Dumpling Daughters and Moyzilla. Not to mention Dunks dishing out free samples of ice cream-flavored coffee drinks. Fingers crossed, the lousy weather will clear out just in time, but if you need a place to relax indoors, check out the new Arena Stage, a covered and air-conditioned space featuring music from up-and-coming Berklee College jazz musicians.
Let the crowds streaming to the T stand shoulder to shoulder while you chill with a burger in a beer garden.Bill Manley
But when you are spilling out of the gates at 11 p.m., you don’t have to head straight home. In fact, don’t even try. While the ride share lot at the festival is actually pretty well-organized chaos, you don’t want to do battle with that demand pricing. And the walk to Harvard Square, which doesn’t actually disappear after midnight, is not that much longer than the walk to the ride share lot.
So chill for a while – grab a drink or a snack. Here are some prime options for late-night eats.
Enjoy a late-night menu from charcuterie specialist Kured in the Garden Bar at the Charles Hotel.Charles Hotel
The Charles Hotel: It’s about a 10-minute walk from the gates to this property, making it a great home-base for the weekend. Rooms are nearly fully booked – at press time there were only five king-bed rooms remaining, at $745 a night. A much gentler option cost-wise is to park in the garage under the hotel, which maxes out at $50 for 24 hours. The hotel’s One Reason Garden Bar is hosting a block party until midnight with music, social media friendly photo ops, specialty cocktails and a late-night menu from Kured. Or cozy up at the hotel’s Noir Bar, open until 1 a.m. with French-inspired cocktails
El Jefe’s Taqueria: Whether the line was too long at this local favorite’s booth inside the festival, or you just need one more burrito heaping with Al Pastor and Mexican rice, the Harvard Square location is open until 4 a.m.
Charlie’s Kitchen: Relax in the beer garden over one of their famous double cheeseburgers until midnight at this 76-year-old spot.
Grendel’s Den: The kitchen closes at 11:30 pm, but you can drink at this snug —and historic—underground bistro until 1 a.m.
Pinocchio’s Pizza : Craving an old-school pizza? The big decision is Sicilian or thin-crust at this spot that has been slinging pies for fans (including Ben Affleck and Mark Zuckerberg) since 1966. Seating is only at a couple of small tables, but they serve until 2 a.m.
Van Leeuwen Ice Cream: Does a scoop of Brown Sugar Cookie Dough Brownie ice cream sound like just the right ending to your day? The Harvard Square location of this booming chain is open until midnight.
Renowned Cambridge club a perfect venue for students’ final presentations, focused on the highs and lows in the city’s musical heritage
History, like music, pulses with recurring refrains. Today’s battle over immigrant rights echoes a controversy, aptly, from Boston’s musical history. Boston University students explained that episode last week on an equally apt, if unorthodox, stage: Club Passim, Cambridge’s iconic folk music venue.
Beantown’s musical heritage provided the theme for the final projects in this spring’s History of Boston class. One student team focused on the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including the World War I–era deportation of its conductor, Karl Muck, without any evidence that he’d aided his native Germany in the war. That exculpatory detail drowned in a flood of foreigners-damning press coverage, whose headlines the students flashed on a screen: “Dangerous Aliens Face Deportation,” “Alien Enemies Leave Boston Sunday.”
“Muck’s arrest was weaponized by these publications and used to grow a general xenophobic attitude towards European immigrants,” Charlotte Waeschle (COM’28) noted during her team’s presentation. The publicity’s effects rippled, added Shreeya Kulkarni (CAS’28), as “immigrants hid their cultural identities and even changed their names, and German [American] newspaper publications and schools [and] churches declined in attendance or shut down altogether.”
Other student teams addressed the role Arthur Fiedler (Hon.’51) played in in popularizing classical music as conductor of the Boston Pops for five decades, beginning in 1930; the city’s vibrant jazz scene after the Second World War; the question-authority vibe of punk music in the 1970s; and the role of Passim itself as greater Boston’s folk headquarters and launching pad for the careers of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. After the presentations, the students were treated to a buffet dinner and band: musicians, led by guitarist/vocalist Sean Staples, rocked the house with selections from two defunct local bands, Treat Her Right and Morphine.
Charlotte Waeschle (COM’28) (from left), Sarah Turner (CAS’26), Yishan He (CAS’28), Emmett Leonard (Questrom’28), and Shreeya Kulkarnie (CAS’28) took to the stage at Harvard Square’s famous Club Passim to present their final project on Boston’s musical heritage.
Few students get to present on a storied stage for their final projects, or are feted by a concert afterward. Bruce Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at the College of Arts & Sciences, never received musical accompaniment when he was a young history major, either. But in his History of Boston class, students don’t just study the past—they immerse themselves in it.
And Schulman, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, knows a thing or two about immersive teaching that grabs the attention of students by the lapels. “They never knew that doing history is not just memorizing a bunch of names and dates,” he tells BU Today. Throughout the semester, he introduced students to the city where they study via walking tours and the Passim finale. “One of the most often-stated reasons of entering students here for why they picked BU, is the Boston location. But I think the number one regret of graduating seniors is staying in the BU bubble–‘Didn’t really see much of Boston,’ ” he says.
Schulman knows the manager of Passim and arranged to rent the club for the class presentations—which were given before an invited audience of his friends and academic colleagues—while recruiting Staples, whom he had previously seen perform. Since this was a class about Boston and music, Staples chose to play repertoires by Treat Her Right and Morphine, homegrown bands.
“To my ears,” he says, “they’re two of the best acts to ever come from this area, yet never achieved the visibility of bands like Aerosmith or the Cars. Both groups were also the product of a uniquely Cambridge music scene… I figured a celebration of two incredibly cool yet mostly unknown bands that rose from the neighborhood pubs of Cambridge would be appropriate.”
Like the city it covers, the History of Boston class is always changing. Each year, the course students are assigned a main project with a different theme. Among past topics: the 17th-century King Philip’s War, the Salem witch trials, and the city’s public parks. This semester, Schulman opted for Beantown’s musical heritage, partly as “a form of self indulgence,” he admits
“I’m a big music fan. I see live music a lot,” he says. Beyond that, “Music was also a way of exploring a lot of other important themes in the city’s history, the development of the public infrastructure and architecture, race relations, class relations,” all of which his students also studied this semester. (The class subtitle is Community and Conflict.)
During the last class before the presentations, Schulman coached students on prepping for the big night at Passim, suggesting that dressing up wasn’t necessary for a music club—but they shouldn’t dress down too much, either (“Don’t be wearing what you would mow the lawn in”) He also encouraged them to applaud their peer presenters and the musicians. And while it wasn’t required for when he stepped on stage: “You are absolutely permitted to clap and cheer wildly.”
He has alternated teaching the class with colleagues for about 12 years. A key takeaway—conveyed by tapping into Boston as a living laboratory-—is that history isn’t made only by great forces and people who came before, but by those who study them as well.
Plus, expansions for Anna’s Taqueria, Mr. Tamole, Post 1917, and more.
By Kara Baskin Globe Correspondent,Updated May 8, 2025, 12:00 p.m.
A burrito assortment at Anna’s Taqueria, new in Natick.
Coming soon: All-day café Daily Provisions opens this summer in Harvard Square (1 Brattle Square), new from New York restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. As we reported in March, Meyer will also open another Daily Provisions, plus Italian restaurant Ci Siamo, at Commonwealth Pier in the Seaport this summer.
In an earlier interview, Daily Provisions culinary director Claudia Fleming recommended crullers; Mediterranean tuna sandwiches with tapenade; and roast chicken.
“We’re there all day, for whatever you want,” she said.
Canadian chain Cactus Club Café opens in the Back Bay later this year (500 Boylston St.), marking its 34th location. It’s big — 9,500 square feet, with lounges, all-season patios, and al fresco spots — with a large menu, too, ranging from burgers to tacos to curries, pastas, and steaks.
On the South Shore, Salty Days Fish Co. (1 Shipyard Drive) brings patio-service cocktails, sushi, and seafood to Hingham’s Shipyard this summer, joining a sibling location in Cohasset.
In Foxborough, Patriot Place (2 Patriot Place) launches a suburban location of Downtown Crossing’s Estella this summer with an eclectic menu: chicken wings, yucca fries, Haitian spaghetti, lobster ravioli, and Hungarian filet mignon.
And in Lexington, look for a second outpost of swanky Reading steakhousePost 1917 in June (27 Waltham St.).
Openings: The Boston Public Market (100 Hanover St.) gets spicier with the addition of Mr. Tamole, softly opened this week. Andres Medina-Carreto and his mom, Margarita Carreto, began with a mobile food stand, serving tamales with their signature, family-recipe mole sauce, which is vegan and gluten-free. At the Market, they’ll serve tamale plates with red, green, or mole sauce; tacos (including a potatoes and jalapenos version); and chilaquiles (which the menu cheekily notes are helpful during hangovers).
CanalSide Food + Drink at CambridgeSide (47 CambridgeSide Place) welcomes Chilacates (Mexican street food) and Fresh (smoothies, sandwiches, and acai bowls) to their food hall, joining established vendors like Lala’s Neapolitan-ish Pizza and Nu Burger.
And in Natick, Anna’s Taqueria opens on Tuesday, May 13, with a 2,000-square-foot restaurant and patio space (1265 Worcester St.). Exclusive to this location: corn tortillas made to order. Visit daily from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m.
Many Cambridge residents know Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, as the heart of the local economy. But beyond her work at the HSBA, Jillson also has a deep history of political advocacy in the city.
Harvard Square Business Association executive director Denise A. Jillson sits for an interview in the Smith Campus Center. Years before she led the HSBA, Jillson was a leader in efforts to repeal rent control in Cambridge. By Grace E. Yoon
Many Cambridge residents know Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, as the heart of the local economy.
“She’s got her finger in everything, and she just cares so passionately about the Square that when I need something, I call Denise,” Carol Lewis, the congregational administrator at First Parish in Cambridge, said.
But beyond her work at the HSBA, Jillson also has a deep history of political advocacy in the city. As former co-chair of the the Small Property Owners Association and chair of the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition, Jillson helped lead the charge to repeal rent control in Massachusetts during the 1994 state election.
Rent control, which was established in Cambridge during the 1970s, subjected more than a third of the city’s residential units to strict regulations on rent-price increases. Since the state referendum banning rent control narrowly passed, Cambridge’s housing stock increased by nearly $2 billion while residential turnover sharply increased.
John P. DiGiovanni, who worked with Jillson on the rent control repeal campaign, credited their success to Jillson’s dedication and leadership.
“I was really a soldier in her army, and she was the general,” he said.
‘We’re Not Alone in This’
Jillson said her interest in property ownership stems from her long family history in Cambridge.
“My family’s been in this area for generations, so the first family member that purchased property was here in Harvard Square in 1654,” Jillson said.
“Property ownership has always been in my DNA,” she added.
But it was not until 1986, when Jillson bought a rent controlled property with her husband, that she began advocating against rent control.
Jillson said that her experience as a landlord showed her the flaws of the rent control system. Despite the policy’s goal to help low-income individuals secure housing, Jillson said it inevitably caused landlords to “rent to the person with the highest credit rating.”
“So, if a single mom with three kids shows up to rent a unit, and a single person with a good job and no children, and is a young professional, who am I going to rent to?” Jillson said.
Frustrated by the policy, Jillson was spurred to action after seeing a flyer advocating against rent control — demonstrating that landlords were going through the same situation as her.
“I said to my husband, ‘We’re not alone in this. There are apparently other people that are having difficulty,’” she said.
Jillson then attended a meeting hosted by the Small Property Owners Association, an advocacy organization formed in opposition to rent control. After seeing how “fired up” other attendees were about the issue, Jillson decided to fully “jump in” to the world of advocacy.
When she became co-chair of SPOA in 1992, Jillson worked with an MIT economist to perform a demographic analysis of renters in Cambridge. The study found that 90percent of renters were white, single, and college-educated, she said.
“That’s who it was, because we put them there. We did that because we had to pay our mortgage,” Jillson said. “The system doesn’t work, and it has the fundamental flaw, and that’s the part that was so upsetting.”
‘Brokered A Deal’
Two years into Jillson’s tenure as SPOA co-chair, she set her sights on the state elections, working as the chair of the Massachusetts Housing Coalition to get the repeal of rent control on the ballot.
For an initiative to qualify for the ballot, organizers needed to collect signatures from across the state equaling the amount of three percent of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election. DiGiovanni said Jillson was the primary force responsible for securing these signatures.
“She was out in front of the room giving people and groups their assignments. She was the one keeping the trains on time. She had a whole map plan on how we were going to go and make this case to the people,” he said.
Jillson said her advocacy for rent control — combined with her full-time career and family life — was made possible by her partnership with her husband, George Pereira.
“There were no breaks, there were no holidays, there was no such thing as Thanksgiving,” Jillson said. “We were always, always, working.”
“I would get home from work, feed the kids, check their homework, George would take over, and I would take to the street,” she added.
The rent control repeal ballot initiative was ultimately successful, passing with a narrow 51percent of the vote. But the policy battle did not end at the ballot box.
After the narrow win, municipalities – including Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline — filed home rule petitions in an attempt to extend rent control protections. State legislators approved the Cambridge petition, but ran into complications with anti-rent control governor William F. Weld ’66.
DiGiovanni said that Jillson stepped in to help resolve the complex situation.
“She brokered a deal with the legislature,” he said. “And legislature was unhappy, a good portion of them, and they had the majority — but they didn’t have enough to overturn a veto. So they needed the governor to agree.”
“He basically said to the legislature, ‘I’ll take my lead from Denise Jillson,” he added. “So that told them to get in a room and broker a deal with Denise.”
Jillson worked with legislators to expand rent-control protections for two years for certain income-eligible tenants — paving the way for its eventual abolition.
“Politics is about the art of compromise,” Jillson said.
“It can’t be all or nothing,” she added.
Now, as cities move to reinstate rent control protections across the state, Jillson has continued her advocacy against the protections. In 2019, she published an op-ed in Wicked Local titled “Rent control in Cambridge – why it didn’t work then and won’t work now.”
But others are not so sure. In 2023, the Cambridge City Council voted to support a bill from the state legislature that would repeal the ban on rent control.
Despite recent activism to reinstate rent control, Jillson stands by her work, saying that it helped pave the way for Cambridge’s current success.
“During the 70s and 80s and the early 90s, the city was really in very tough shape financially,” she said. “Then when rent control went away, as well as the advent of Kendall, with all the biotech, we now have a city.”
“Now, 20 years later, 30 years later, the city is in a remarkable, enviable financial situation,” she added.
A news-based journal on the Boston restaurant scene. The owner of this blog is also the founder of Boston’s Hidden Restaurants, a website that focuses on local dining spots.
Tuesday, May 06, 2025
A couple of months ago, it was reported that the person behind a NYC-based restaurant group would be bringing two dining spots to Boston, and now we have learned that he will also be bringing one of those places to Cambridge as well.
According to an article from Eater Boston, Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group are planning to open a location of Daily Provisions in Harvard Square this summer, and it appears that this outlet will debut before the one coming to the Seaport District. As mentioned in an earlier article here, Meyer is going to be opening both Daily Provisions and a location of Ci Siamo (an Italian restaurant) at Commonwealth Pier in the fall/winter, and expect both locations of Daily Provisions to be all-day cafes that offer such options as crullers, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, roast chicken, and coffee (the Seaport location will also serve beer and wine, though it is not yet known whether the Harvard Square location will do so as well).
Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group includes such restaurants as Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and The Modern, while Meyer is also behind the Shake Shack chain.
The address for the upcoming location of Daily Provisions in Harvard Square is 1 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for Daily Provisions is at https://www.dailyprovisionsnyc.com/
All-day cafe Daily Provisions is opening in Cambridge this summer
A sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich from Daily Provisions.
Erika Adams is the deputy editor of Eater Northeast, covering restaurant news and dining trends in Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York. She has worked for Eater for five years in roles across the region, including reporter and deputy editor for Eater New York and editor for Eater Boston.
Union Square Hospitality Group, the NYC-based restaurant empire founded by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer, has something else in the works for Boston before the highly anticipated Seaport restaurants arrive later this year. The company will be opening a location of its fan-favorite all-day cafe, Daily Provisions, in Harvard Square, at 1 Brattle Square, this summer.
The cafe is on track to open before the already announced Seaport locations of Daily Provisions and Italian restaurant Ci Siamo, according to Daily Provisions president Zach Koff.
“At its heart, Daily Provisions is a neighborhood cafe and Harvard Square is one of the country’s celebrated neighborhoods,” Koff said in an email. “The unique mix of longtime residents, a diverse international demographic, and plenty of new visitors — all of whom are curious, smart and actively engaged — make it a perfect fit for Daily Provisions.”
At the Harvard Square spot, customers can expect all the hits that put Daily Provisions on the map in New York City, including the excellent breakfast sandwiches with thick slabs of bacon, juicy roast chicken, and the widely sought-after French crullers. There will be some Boston-specific menu items, according to Koff, but no details were disclosed yet.
The summer opening marks the first time that Union Square Hospitality Group has expanded Daily Provisions outside of the New York City area. (A location in Jersey City opened in March.) The company is also working on another outpost of the cafe to open in Washington, D.C., which is also slated to debut this summer.
The cafe joins another New York expat in Harvard Square, Joe’s Pizza (located just a couple of blocks away at 3 Brattle Street) as well as several other coffee shops and all-day cafes around the square, including outposts of Tatte, Blank Street, Flour, and Blue Bottle, plus newcomer Lovestruck Books, which is a cafe, wine bar, and romance bookstore all rolled into one.
For former accountant Anh Phi Tran, things just weren’t adding up to happiness. Then he bought the truck.
By Arya Zade Globe correspondent,Updated April 29, 2025, 7:00 a.m.
Zinneken ’s Waffle Truck owner Anh-Phi Tran makes Belgian Waffles while parked in front of Boston University’s College of Communications.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
The smell of buttery dough crisping on a hot waffle iron mingles with the sweetness of caramelized pearl sugar, drawing passersby to Zinneken’s Waffle Truck. Often parked on Commonwealth Avenue near the Boston University campus or on Oxford Street in Harvard Square, the truck offers a taste of Belgium’s street food culture.
Thick, crusty, airy Belgian waffles are nothing like their American counterparts. Where the American recipe is typically made with baking powder, the Belgian version is crafted from a yeast-based dough. Each waffle caramelizes on the hot iron, forming a golden crust that crackles with every bite.
Zinneken’s waffles, dense yet airy, with a very appealing texture, are served warm in paper trays or paper boxes. In Belgium, they’re a beloved street food enjoyed any time of day, purchased from kiosks or carts for a quick indulgence. Toppings include strawberries, blueberries, bananas, Nutella, chocolate, and speculoos, Belgium’s famous butter-spice cookies.
“Anyone can make waffles,” says Anh Phi Tran, the owner of Zinneken’s Waffle Truck. “But they’re best in the hands of someone who grew up with them.” He was raised in Brussels by Vietnamese immigrants, and besides English, he speaks Vietnamese and French.
Zinneken’s is not only a waffle truck. Its brick-and-mortar cafe in Harvard Square offers a cozy retreat where patrons can savor freshly made waffles paired with seasonal drinks. While the cafe caters to those seeking a leisurely dining experience, the truck embodies the mobility of Belgian street food, taking Zinneken’s signature offerings to Boston’s streets. “The truck is about bringing waffles to people, wherever they are,” says Tran.
Whether served from the cafe or the truck, Zinneken’s waffles remain rooted in tradition and are made with a recipe that pays homage to Belgium’s rich culinary heritage. The Liège waffle, named after the Belgian town where it was created, dates back to the 1700s, when the chef of the prince-bishop of Liège adapted brioche dough into a dense, caramelized waffle.
Tran and his team have extended Zinneken’s reach through a catering service, in which they send a truck to weddings, bar mitzvahs, and corporate events. “Catering now makes up 70 percent of our business,” says the entrepreneur. This shift, largely driven by the pandemic, has allowed Zinneken’s to thrive in a changing dining landscape.
Tran spent nearly a decade steering Boston’s first Belgian waffle truck to success via an unconventional path.
Born to Vietnamese refugee parents in Belgium, Tran grew up surrounded by the cultural staples of his homeland, waffles among them. His father worked as an engineer, while his mother was employed in a chocolate factory. Now retired, they remained in Belgium as Tran pursued opportunities abroad. His family’s strict emphasis on preserving Vietnamese culture meant Tran had to navigate multiple identities from a young age. “I wasn’t the stereotypical Asian kid who stayed quiet and avoided conflict. I did a lot of sports, even though my parents preferred I focus on academics,” he says.
People wait in line for their food from Zinneken’s Waffle Truck last month.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Tran has an older brother who eventually moved to New York City. His brother, who holds a PhD in biochemistry, now works in banking. Unlike his parents, Tran was the first in his family to enter the food industry, forging his own path in Boston’s culinary scene. His initial career took him to corporate America, where he worked for six years as an accountant, a job that taught him valuable skills but ultimately left him unfulfilled. “I just wanted to do something different,” he says.
In 2014, Tran partnered with Zinneken’s founder, Nhon Ma, a French and Belgian citizen of Vietnamese descent, to expand the brand beyond its Harvard Square cafe.
The name Zinneken’s comes from the Zenne River, which runs through the center of Brussels. Historically, locals referred to the stray dogs near the river as “zinneke,” a term that evolved into a symbol of the city’s mixed Dutch and French heritage. The name pays tribute to Brussels’ multiculturalism.
The transition was not smooth. The waffle truck faced logistical hurdles, including finding suitable parking spots, sourcing fresh ingredients, and dealing with frequent mechanical issues. “People think it’s easy to operate a truck, but it’s not as simple as it looks,” Tran says.
He remained focused on the business, especially growing it organically. “We don’t make risky investments but instead invest from money that we make and have saved,” Tran says. “We tried to go nuclear in the beginning — adding more trucks and scaling quickly — but that didn’t work.” Instead, he adopted a more cautious approach, refining processes and focusing on consistent quality.
Now, Zinneken’s has one waffle truck and hires about five or six part-time employees, while the store employs around nine to 10 full-time and part-time staff members. Their brick-and-mortar stores are also located in Glastonbury, Conn., and Providence, R.I.
Tran’s decision to leave Belgium for Boston was shaped by both personal and practical factors. “I had a strained relationship with my father,” he says. With family already in Boston and ambitions in business, the move made sense. Though adapting to a new country came with its challenges. “It was a little lonely the first year, but I quickly made friends.”
Strawberries and whip cream atop a Zinneken’s waffle.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Growing up in Belgium as the child of Vietnamese refugees profoundly influenced Tran’s perspective. “I do consider myself Vietnamese-Belgian, and now also Bostonian,” he says. His Vietnamese heritage shaped his approach to family and relationships, while Belgium instilled in him a rigorous work ethic and a nuanced political view. “Knowing my Vietnamese culture actually helped me here,” Tran says. His ability to navigate multiple cultures became a cornerstone of his approach to running Zinneken’s.
He sees his success rooted in his ability to connect with people. “Corporate was just about numbers,” he says about his time as an accountant. “Here, it’s about people.” The truck’s mobility allows it to cater to diverse communities, and Tran finds immense satisfaction in seeing familiar faces at events or repeat customers at the truck.
A highlight of moving the trucks around was parking it at PAX East, a large gaming convention at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. “It’s a lot of planning and long hours, but my staff loves it,” he says. “You see all these crazy costumes and young people — it’s stressful but also a lot of fun.” Events like these highlight Zinneken’s role as a community builder.
As Zinneken’s approaches its 10th anniversary, Tran has no immediate plans for expansion, but he dreams of introducing an electric or solar-powered truck to reduce emissions. He acknowledges the cost is a significant barrier.
Tran’s workload varies by season — some weeks are as light as 20 hours, while others stretch to 60 hours or more. Despite the long hours, he finds his motivation in the connections he’s built along the way. “I have a really young crew, and they keep me going,” he says. Most of his part-time staff are students from Boston University and Simmons College. “This year was hard because many of them moved on, but I feel honored they chose to work with a small business like ours.”
Tran shrugs off the idea of success as an endpoint. “Entrepreneurship to me is still a job,” he says. “I work for my truck, and that’s how I see it.” He says it’s not about recognition — it’s about showing up, waffle by waffle, and letting the work speak for itself.
Revisit a 2015 Globe Magazine profile of the reclusive investor and philanthropist who’d quietly bought up swaths of Harvard Square. By Neil Swidey – May 2, 2015, 12:00 a.m.
Gerald Chan at his Newton office, which he decorated in part with furniture from eBay. Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe
This article is part of an effort to resurface Globe readers’ most loved stories or timeless reports you might have missed. It was originally published on May 2, 2015. It was updated on April 10, 2025, with a new headline,but is otherwise unchanged.
As usual, Longwood Avenue, the main artery through Boston’s vast medical-industrial complex, is as clogged as any in even the most desperate cardiac patient. The lines into the overwhelmed parking garages back up, pushing minivans and Mercedes into the street, forcing other motorists to idle on Longwood as traffic lights change, tempers flare, and horns blare.
The driver calmly maneuvers past the jam, turning down a ramp into a garage underneath Harvard Medical School. His car is immaculate but otherwise unremarkable, a white 2010 Volkswagen Passat wagon that he bought used. He pauses at the entrance to fish out a crimson pass from his armrest compartment, flashing it at the attendant. As the gate to this private refuge opens, he turns to me. “This is the highest status symbol in the medical area,” he says, waving the pass. “Parking!”
That’s quite a statement coming from Gerald Chan, a man who has four university degrees, is on the Forbes billionaire list, and who, with his family, just gave the world’s wealthiest university the largest gift in its history. As thanks for that $350 million, Harvard renamed its public health school after Chan’s late father — it’s now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It was the first time the university had named one of its schools after a benefactor since 1639, when the donation of 400 books and 779 pounds earned immortality for a minister by the name of John Harvard.
Chan places the pass on his dashboard. He had been given it only recently, after having arrived late for a meeting with the dean and apologizing that he’d been circling the block looking for a space. The garage under the Harvard Longwood campus leverages every inch of its precious real estate, using racks that accommodate two cars for every space, one on top of another. Just a few spaces are rack-free, and those are labeled for trucks and vans only. Chan’s Passat is neither, yet he begins backing it into one of the solo spaces.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” comes a loud voice from the distance. Soon, a young parking attendant with a dark beard and a serious face appears at Chan’s window. “Those spaces are for trucks.”
“Ah, but it’s late enough in the day,” Chan replies hopefully. “C’mon, it’s five o’clock.”
The attendant shakes his head sternly and points to a rack space nearby. “I can put you right there.”
Chan demurs, explaining that he is not comfortable parking in a space where his car would get raised above another.
“I can park it for you,” the attendant says.
“But I’ll still have to bring it out.”
When the attendant pauses, Chan moves in to close the deal. “Please, please!” he pleads, before pointing to another small car in a regular spot. “C’mon, look at that Honda over there.”
“We only have a few spaces,” the attendant starts to say. But then, motivated either by compassion or about-to-punch-out-for-the-day fatigue, he relents. “OK, you’re good.”
“Thanks sooooo much,” Chan says respectfully, drawing out that modifier to the point where, by the time he has finished the sentence, the attendant has disappeared.
I turn to Chan and smile. “He has no idea who you are.”
Chan lets out a huge full-bellied laugh. That’s just how he likes it.
Gerald Chan projects refinement and restraint, right down to his habit of excusing himself to use the “loo.” At the same time, he comes across as unpretentious and accessible. He stretches out your name whenever he greets you (“Neil” becomes “Neeeeil”) and often finishes his sentences with the word “huh?” as if waiting for you to signal either comprehension or buy-in. When Chan laughs, which he does often, he puts his whole body into it, shaking his shoulders and thrusting his chin up toward the sky, like a Peanuts character.
As his laugh about the exchange with the parking attendant subsides, it’s clear it had gone exactly the way things in his life tend to go. He had gotten his way using only soft power, relying on his wiles and persistence without ever having to pull rank or surrender his anonymity — something more valuable to him than even his parking pass.
Chan’s determination to preserve his privacy while simultaneously emblazoning his alma mater with his family name is just one of the many contradictions that make him fascinating. He is a fabulously successful 64-year-old investor who is relentless in building his family’s empire even as he warns us about the dangers of becoming “mere economic beings.” He is a devout Christian who begins his mornings reading Scripture and a serious scientist who spends his days working with people on the front lines of research, where faith in God is often viewed as some kind of mental defect. He is a highly influential funder of novel cancer treatments who speaks passionately about the coming revolution in oncology even as he confides a more fatalistic belief that “cancer is Nature’s mechanism for making sure we don’t live forever.” And he is someone who evinces little interest in the real estate business, even as he has quietly scooped up enough buildings in Harvard Square to become the neighborhood’s biggest property player besides the university, almost overnight.
In his quest to keep a low profile, Chan has long been aided by his peripatetic lifestyle. The Hong Kong native became a US citizen in the 1970s, but for decades functioned as a citizen of the world, operating out of offices and homes in Massachusetts, California, London, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. For many years, though, Newton has served as his primary office for the Morningside Group, the private equity and venture capital investment firm he cofounded with his brother. About a year ago he made Newton his official home base, going so far as to surrender his California driver’s license and wait in line at the Registry in Watertown to get one for Massachusetts.
The decision reflects Chan’s increased business and philanthropic footprint here as well as Boston’s emergence as the global hub for his true passion: the life sciences. It also reveals Chan as the embodiment of Boston’s ambitions in the 21st century — a new version of the old Brahmin, a wealthy, civic-minded businessman able to connect East with West, the past with the future, and the academy with the marketplace.
Chan holds a doctorate from Harvard as well as two master’s degrees. What he doesn’t own is a high school diploma.
In 1967, amid political unrest in Hong Kong, his parents sent 16-year-old Gerald and his 17-year-old brother Ronnie to the United States. Their father, Tseng-hsi, had fled poverty and war in mainland China to build a booming Hong Kong real estate company, Hang Lung Group. But he insisted that his family continue to live frugally, sharing an apartment that was well below their means. Their mother, who worked as a nurse, taught them the important role hygiene plays in avoiding infection. Her public health lessons stuck even if Gerald wanted to slink under the table when she insisted on disinfecting tableware with ethanol pads whenever they went to a restaurant.
In the States, while Ronnie enrolled at UCLA, Gerald took the unlimited Greyhound bus ticket his parents had bought him ($99 for 99 days) and headed east. He took summer courses at Columbia, living in Morningside Heights (a name he would recall years later when it came time for him and Ronnie to name their investment company). But when Gerald tried to enroll in college that fall, his lack of a high school diploma boxed him out. He eventually found a tiny engineering school by the airport in Los Angeles, which accepted him and the report card he had proudly proffered, even if it was entirely in Chinese.
He transferred to UCLA, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, then to the Harvard School of Public Health in 1973. He picked up another master’s, in medical radiological physics, then switched his focus to biology thanks to a radiobiology course taught by legendary professor John Little. He earned his doctorate in 1979, then headed for a fellowship at Dana-Farber, paving the way for a future where life sciences would loom large.
By that time, Ronnie had been back in Hong Kong for years, working in their father’s real estate company, but Gerald’s parents were pleased that he was headed for a life in academia. Still, a taste of the family business couldn’t hurt.
While Chan was studying for his doctorate, his father had given him some money and encouraged him to invest in real estate. Chan plunked down $145,000 for a six-bedroom Gambrel Colonial on Brattle Street, not far from the Harvard campus. He and his wife, Beryl, moved in, and the following year, Ashley, the first of their two sons, was born. Chan sold that house for nearly $450,000 in 1982, more than tripling his investment in just five years. His father was proud. “I was a hero,” Chan says, “huh?”
To this day, Chan speaks of his father in only reverent tones. Gerald stands 5-foot-8 but says his father was “almost six foot, I think,” even if the framed photos on his desk suggest they may have been closer in height.
His father had been able to visit Gerald during his Harvard days just once, in the mid-1970s. But as Gerald later described it in a speech, the memory of that visit never left him. While the two men perused the stacks at a bookstore, a coffee table book of Norman Rockwell paintings caught his father’s eye. Drawn to the warmth of nostalgia woven into those paintings, his father asked his son to buy him the book. Chan did, inscribing it “To Dad, as a token of affection.” That Rockwell book, Chan told his audience decades later, “was the medium by which my father and I communicated a tender feeling between us from the depth of his soul and mine.”
After graduating, Chan continued to build his life in the States, weighing several offers for assistant professorships. A bit burned out, he decided to take a break from the lab. He bided his time buying apartment buildings around Boston and making a living as a landlord, though he expected to return to science.
But one day back in Hong Kong, his father urinated blood. He went to his doctor, who diagnosed him with bladder cancer and sent him to a specialist at UCLA. That doctor performed a partial operation rather than removing the entire bladder, a decision Gerald rues to this day. The cancer continued to spread. After further treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, his father decided he wanted to return to Hong Kong to die. Even then, he insisted on flying coach, until his son pleaded with him to go business class. In 1986, within nine months of his diagnosis, his father was gone, at age 65. Gerald returned to Hong Kong to help his brother run the family business.
Across my many hours with Chan, in various settings, he was thoughtful and expansive. He grew silent only once, when I asked him to tell me more about his father’s visit to the Harvard campus. Because the exchange over the Rockwell book had taken place in the Coop, I wondered if the Square had any added meaning for him.
Politely but firmly, Chan refused to talk about it further. “With some things,” he told me, closing his eyes, “less is more.”
On a Tuesday morning in April, after much prodding, Chan agrees to take me on a walk around Harvard Square. As we stroll Harvard Yard, I ask what the campus means to him. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, drawing out his words. “These buildings are very old.”
When Chan wants to deflect, he opts for an empty sentence like that.
Yet it’s clear the Harvard campuses, both the main one here and the medical campus in Longwood where he toiled for years in the lab, hold special significance for him.
Yuling Luo is the founder of Silicon Valley-based Advanced Cell Diagnostics, one of the many biotech startups for which Chan has been the principal early funder. When Luo came to Boston for a meeting, Chan picked him up in his VW, drove him to Cambridge, and gave him a personalized tour of the yard. “He clearly showed a lot of attachment to the campus of Harvard,” Luo says. “He was taking pictures of me, like a proud father. I was very touched.”
After I mention Luo’s comments, Chan grows more introspective. “When I do this,” he says, “I am sharing with them part of my world.”
There is real meaning for him in all those red bricks. He seems at home among them. As Harvard provost Alan Garber says, anyone who saw Chan walking around Harvard Square “would probably assume he was a Harvard professor.” Of course, that’s the life he once envisioned for himself, but things worked out differently. The Chan brothers have turned their father’s very successful company into one of the biggest real estate developers in Hong Kong and an increasingly important presence in mainland China. While Ronnie oversees the Hang Lung real estate operation, Gerald leads their Morningside investment firm, putting all his lab knowledge to use investing in life-science startups and his landlord background to work buying up buildings around Boston. (Despite Gerald’s Newton base, Morningside remains incorporated in Hong Kong.)
In April 2012, Chan bought two buildings in Harvard Square for $16 million. Over the next 18 or so months, using a series of shell companies, he spent more than $100 million more on nearly a dozen other buildings in the Square. In some cases, rents went up and leases were not renewed. Fixtures like UpStairs on the Square and Leo’s Place were soon gone. There was fear about who would be next.
A year ago, merchants and tenants in Harvard Square were feverishly trying to divine what Chan’s grand plan might be. Denise Jillson, who runs the Harvard Square Business Association, says those worries have largely abated, since Chan’s buying binge hasn’t been followed by any radical changes.
Not that there aren’t still critics. Psychologist Lin Reicher is one of a couple dozen mental health professionals working out of 1218 Massachusetts Avenue, which Chan bought last year. She complains that rents have gone way up, she and others have been switched from long-term leases to month-to-month, and they’ve been stymied in their efforts to reach Chan directly. She’s read about the humanitarian who had given Harvard such a historic gift, but says “there’s nothing recognizable in that description in our experience.”
The Chan family at the dedication ceremony for Harvard’s public health school in September 2014. Chan’s brother (and business partner) Ronnie stands at center with his arm around their mother (in green); Gerald Chan is fourth from the left.From the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Earlier this year, news filtered out about Chan’s highest-profile purchase yet, the 21,000-square-foot structure on Church Street that had housed a movie theater since 1925. Chan bought it for $17.5 million — $11 million more than Charles Hotel owner Dick Friedman had paid for the shuttered theater two years earlier.
Because Chan paid such a premium for a theater that reportedly wasn’t even for sale, the purchase fueled more speculation that he must have some secret master plan. But Chan tells me that, in fact, the building was being quietly shopped around, and the purchase had come about like all his others in the Square: A broker had approached his team. “All the brokers in the Square know me, and they know I always close on deals,” he says.
Chan’s reputation has become so well known that brokers seem to be invoking his name to increase the buzz on their properties. The newest property to go on the market in the Square is the unmistakable “Curious George” flatiron building, which comes with a sticker-shock asking price of $80 million. A story in the trade press suggested Chan is the most likely buyer, since he’s fueled the neighborhood’s recent gravy train of high-priced purchases. “I’m not in the gravy train business,” he tells me. “There’s a lot more that I can do with $80 million.”
While Chan gets passionate whenever he talks about science, for him, real estate appears to be purely transactional. “You buy it, you rent it, you put it out of your mind,” he says. If he has a guiding philosophy with real estate, it is this: “Hang on to it. Don’t sell.”
“In all my real estate purchases over the years — let me think about this — no, there is not one property that I regret having bought,” he tells me. “There are many that I regret having sold.”
Among the regrets was his first purchase, that Cambridge house on Brattle Street that made him a hero when he sold it for three times what he’d paid. Shortly after that first sale, he expressed interest in buying it back — “seller’s remorse, I guess,” he says — though the new owners didn’t bite. The remorse may not have been entirely sentimental. The house is now assessed for $2.5 million.
No matter. He recently paid millions more than that for a historic house on Brattle Street, this one even closer to the Square. He says he hasn’t decided yet how he will divide his time between it and his longtime home in Newton, except that he will keep them both. Lately, he’s been doing quite a bit of shopping for furniture, favoring the same source he used to furnish his Newton office: eBay.
Chan says he spends only a tiny fraction of his time thinking about real estate. But as we walk along JFK Street in Cambridge and I ask him about a vacant double-wide storefront in one of his buildings, I’m not surprised that he knows the fine details of its lease. Capital One has paid its rent on the space every month for more than two years, even though it has never opened a branch there. Chan says he’d prefer an active business, but he inherited the long-term lease, so there’s little he can do.
I bring up the theory floated in The Harvard Crimson that Chan may be snatching up all these buildings with the plan of one day donating them to the university. “Ah, speculation is what students do,” he says, though he doesn’t actually reject the suggestion.
We head down Winthrop Street, where his Passat is parked in a reserved space outside another of his acquisitions. In the basement where the Indian bistro Tamarind Bay once operated there is now Night Market, a funky small-plates Asian restaurant that his older son, Ash, opened late last year. An artsy entrepreneur in his mid-30s, Ash is building his own portfolio of eateries and real estate here and in California.
Chan says he has no grand vision for the Square. (“Nah. I’m too busy trying to cure cancer!”) But he admits that it doesn’t seem as vibrant as it once was, and says Davis Square in Somerville, where he’s also picked up some property, seems to be humming more. Adding restaurants is one way to inject more life. But truly making Harvard Square more vibrant, he tells me, “is above my pay grade.”
“Just what is your pay grade?” I ask, mentioning that Forbes has estimated that he and Ronnie are together worth about $3 billion.
“My pay grade? GS-8,” he says with a wry smile, invoking the salary schedules for government functionaries.
While Chan’s buying spree was originally met with suspicion, now the more common reaction is impatience. Leo’s Place, once a favorite hangout of Ben Affleck’s, has been gone for more than a year. Chan’s representatives secured city approval to open a noodle restaurant there but then shifted gears and got the OK for a breakfast joint. They told the licensing board they planned to open it last June. It is still vacant.
Parsnip, a fine-dining restaurant taking over the space once occupied by UpStairs on the Square, was supposed to open last fall. The space is being remodeled with spare-no-expense meticulousness, and Chan says it will open soon. But, as with most of his initiatives, he seems thoroughly unhurried.
About 15 years ago he bought an 18th-century manor house called Heckfield Place, which sits on 400 acres in the English countryside about an hour from London. He did little with it for years, and it fell into further disrepair. But in 2011, he closed it to start a massive renovation and turn Heckfield into a luxury countryside hotel. Progress, however, has been slow. A British food blogger recently wrote that the opening has been delayed so many times that “it is now farcical to actually conceive that it will ever open.”
But friend Ben Elliot, a notable Brit whose aunt is Camilla Parker Bowles and father-in-law is Steve Winwood, says he is confident Heckfield will open later this year. (“He is perhaps more confident than I am,” Chan says with a chuckle.) As Elliot puts it, “Gerald wants it to be the very best country-house hotel in the world, and I imagine it will be.” He cites the example of Spring, the restaurant Chan recently opened in the august Somerset House in London. With a kitchen run by Michelin-starred chef Skye Gyngell, Spring has become what Elliot calls one of the hottest tables in the city.
Another chef Chan met through Heckfield, Peter Quinion, will oversee Parsnip. But until it opens, Quinion on many nights can be found offering previews of his plates in Chan’s Newton home.
It’s late evening, and the table has been cleared of the lamb with rosemary puree and the chili roasted pineapple with pain perdu. Although “Chef Peter” is packing up his things for another night, the conversation still has hours more life left in it, lubricated with red wine and mint tea.
People who know both Gerald and Ronnie Chan well describe the brothers as incredibly close yet remarkably different. In Hong Kong business and political circles, Ronnie is a boldface player — an outgoing, outspoken character who fills every room he enters. Gerald prefers to slip into most rooms unnoticed. (He tells me their younger brother, Andy, who is eight years his junior, lives in Canada and is “mostly retired.”)
But in his own element, at home in Newton, Gerald can also be charismatic. Nowhere is that more true than when he is sitting at his table, surrounded by good food and smart company. He calls these dinner gatherings his “salons,” and there is something decidedly 19th century about them, even if a recurring theme is how to push science toward the 22d century. (He says his wife isn’t usually an active participant because she’s not particularly interested in specialized science talk. “She’s very quiet,” he says, “very spiritual.”)
On the second of two dinners I attend on back-to-back weeknights in April, the guests include the chief of neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the head of innovation for Partners HealthCare. The conversation jumps from researchers who peddle “old data” to the flat tax to birth order. There is usually at least one member of his small Morningside investment team at these dinners, since business is the backdrop. (Morningside patent attorney Jason Dinges, seated next to me, is one of roughly 20 employees working out of the Newton office.) But the salons appear to be less about transacting business and more about Chan leading an Old World-style, import-export exchange of ideas.
While managing the discussion, Chan uses his iPad to take a picture of each dish that Chef Peter has set before him. He says he does this “so I can critique Peter later, though I never do.”
At my first dinner, after the final cheese course has been cleared, Chan steps away to speak privately with Nancy Ip, who holds a professorship his family endowed at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, another out-of-town guest, Cedric Francois, explains to me what makes Chan so different from most venture-capital investors.
Francois runs Apellis, a biotech startup based in Kentucky. “Gerald doesn’t ask the questions most VC investors are asking,” he says. Those people want assurances about certain financial metrics, so they can satisfy their limited partners. Chan doesn’t have to answer to anyone besides his inner scientist.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Francois says. “He wants to make money. And he is a tough negotiator. But if he believes in something, that’s the most important part.”
Chan’s deep interest in science — he doesn’t watch TV and his bedtime reading includes rafts of papers from scientific journals — led him to the field of immunotherapy. Based on tantalizing early results, this emerging field has begun to attract billions from big pharmaceutical companies, making Chan’s investments that much more valuable.
Usually, Francois explains, when a new pathogen enters our body, our immune system can figure out how to conquer it within about three days. But cancer and other diseases are like sophisticated cat burglars that manage to disable our immune systems’ alarm sensors so they can do their dirty work undetected. With immunotherapy, however, cells are injected with viruses — such as polio, HIV, or measles — that have been reengineered so as not to be deadly to the patient, only to the cancer. The introduction of this foreign foe serves to reactivate the patient’s internal alarms, firing up the immune system to go on the attack against the tumor.
Chan bet early on a company named BioVex, which developed an immunotherapy treatment using a modified herpes virus to treat melanoma. In 2011, pharma giant Amgen bought the company in a deal valued at up to $1 billion. Although its run of promising results suffered a setback last spring, Chan remains bullish.
Four years ago, key investors backed away from a startup called Aduro Biotech in part because some patients in its immunotherapy trial developed fevers. Chan, however, saw the fevers as a sign that their immune systems were revving up, and he became the company’s biggest investor. In March, pharmaceutical giant Novartis hatched a cooperation deal with Aduro valued at up to $750 million, which will give it a small stake in the company. Johnson & Johnson also owns a slice. Chan’s firm owned nearly half the pie until a couple of weeks ago. That’s when Aduro, whose treatment for pancreatic cancer was awarded “breakthrough” status by the Food and Drug Administration, raised $124 million more in an IPO.
Chan is also the largest investor in Apellis, the startup that Francois runs, which is developing immunotherapy treatments for autoimmune disorders, such as obstructive pulmonary disease.
As an investor, Francois tells me, “Gerald is shrewd, but he’s not calculating.” If money were his driving force, he says, Chan would clearly make different choices. “Look around. This is a nice house, but this is not the house of a multibillionaire.” His house is hardly the grandest on the block. Although it has a dining room, Chan holds these dinners in his kitchen, around a simple blond-wood table. On the mirror in the first-floor bathroom is a handwritten Post-it that reads, “When flushing the toilet, please hold the handle for a longer time before letting go.”
When Chan returns to the table, he says immunotherapy provides the potential for a paradigm shift in cancer care. Chemotherapy, he points out, “is basically poison.” (The treatment has its roots in research involving World War II veterans who’d been exposed to mustard gas.) Still, he cautions: “Nature has its boundaries. We all have to die.”
When I ask how he squares those two sentiments of optimism and fatalism, he says, “What we’re tackling is premature death.” Life expectancy in America is now around 79. “So I guess anything before that is premature,” he says.
When he answers another question by once again saying it is above his “pay grade,” I call him on it. “You told me the other day you were GS-8, so I looked that up. That’s like thirty-nine grand.”
“Oh,” he says, flashing a smile. “I guess I’m more like GS-13.”
Anticipating this move, I had looked ahead on the chart of base salaries. “That’s about seventy-three grand,” I say.
He pauses for a beat and then says, “Getting closer.” With that, he tips his chin toward the ceiling and lets out a roar of a laugh.
Harvard officially renamed its School of Public Health after Chan’s father last September. But seven months later, as we walk into the main entrance, I ask him if he’s disappointed that the big sign facing the courtyard makes no mention of his family name. “Not at all,” he says, explaining that he’s sympathetic to all the complicated logistics of renaming a century-old institution.
Settling into a seat in the first-floor cafeteria, Chan tells me he wouldn’t mind if it took longer. “I want my private space, you know? I don’t want to be a public figure,” he says. “So I hate you for changing my life.”
He laughs, because we both know this article, as much as he initially resisted it, isn’t what threatens his low profile. “You can’t give Harvard the biggest gift in its history and ask it to rename one its schools and expect to remain anonymous,” I remind him.
As it turns out, though, Chan had hoped to do exactly that.
It’s not that he didn’t clearly intend to have his alma mater bear his father’s name for posterity. He’d been interested in pursuing this route from the moment his old friend Larry Bacow, the former president of Tufts University and a current Harvard trustee, had informed him that the university corporation would be willing to rename one of its schools. Chan didn’t even quibble with the price the corporation quoted him for naming rights. It’s just that he hoped to do all of this without calling attention to himself.
Bill Lee, who serves as Harvard’s equivalent of trustee board chair, tells me Chan had wanted to give the money but delay the renaming and not reveal the identity of the $350 million donor for several years, so he could hang on to his anonymity awhile longer. But Harvard opposed that request, arguing that such secrecy could only fuel speculation that there might be dodgy money behind the gift.
In the end, Chan relented. Unlike most major gifts, his family’s is unrestricted. Harvard has already gotten the first payment of $60 million and will receive five more payments over the next five years, dean Julio Frenk explains. The money will go to the School of Public Health’s endowment, though the principal will remain off-limits. In five years, the school will be getting an annual annuity of about $15 million to use however its dean sees fit.
Chan knew that putting no restrictions on his family’s gift was the way to strengthen the public health school as it enters its second century. (Although Harvard’s overall endowment has galloped past $36 billion, only about $1 billion of that belongs to the public health school.) Chan also knew that agreeing to reveal his identity would help Harvard in its effort to attract other mega-donors with naming rights. “I don’t know which school will be renamed next,” he says. “Probably the ed school.”
And as much as Chan talks about his desire to remain a private figure, now that he is in his 60s, there are hints that he is not entirely opposed to being noticed. He enjoys having top university administrators solicit his thoughts, mentioning to me a lunch meeting he would be having the next day with the president of MIT. (“I hope he arranged for parking!”) And he keeps a website where he warehouses the full texts of the various speeches he has delivered, mostly at universities. Like the professor he might have otherwise become, he regularly directs people to pore over one speech or another of his, as though he’s handing out a reading assignment. Yet he seems to do this more out of pride than vanity. He puts considerable thought into challenging the minds under all those mortarboards.
In one commencement address for a Johns Hopkins program in China, he warned the graduates to “never let the forces of economic imperialism reduce you to a mere economic being,” and he admitted that his contemporaries, the baby boomers, “are the most selfish generation that ever lived and are truly guilty of generational child abuse.”
While it may seem easy for a billionaire to tell debt-saddled twentysomethings not to become overly focused on money and consumption — “If one iPad makes you happy, two iPads will not make you twice as happy” — Chan is careful to keep his own money in perspective. “Where people get into trouble is they let money get in them,” he says.
That’s why he says he has no hesitation about carrying out the plan that he and his older brother hatched with their father shortly before his death: They would aggressively build up the family empire and then just as aggressively give it away.
Ronnie alluded to this pact during a different renaming ceremony last fall, at the University of Southern California, when a $20 million family gift in honor of their mother ushered in the new, respectfully titled, Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Speaking of the next generation of Chans, Ronnie said, “The money will never go to them!”
When I ask Gerald if his two sons are on board, he says, “Of course!” Ash has his restaurant and real estate work, while his younger son, Evan, who is in his late 20s, works as a Christian campus minister in California. Each son is pursuing something important to their father, the hard-charging businessman who is also deeply spiritual. “Without faith,” he says, “life becomes empty.”
It’s starting to get late, as we sit in the cafeteria at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, when our conversation is interrupted by a young master’s student. She approaches us to explain that she and some fellow students have reserved the cafeteria to hold a workshop.
“What is the subject of the session?” Chan asks.
“Power and identity,” she replies. “Sorry I have to kick you out.”
“That’s OK,” Chan says, clearly pleased that he remains unrecognized. “You’re more powerful than we are now. So we’ll move.”
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News Flash: Memory Shop and Anime Zakka to Open in Harvard Square
Anime Zakka and Memory Shop are set to move into Harvard Square in June. The stores are owned separately by a father and son duo. By Hugo C. Chiasson
A snapshot of Asian culture will light up Harvard Square with the anticipated openings of photo booth store Memory Shop and Anime Zakka this June.
Father and son pair Henry and Brian Cheung are separately opening Korean-style photo booth store Memory Shop and Anime Zakka — a family-owned Japanese anime shop — in The Garage on JFK St.
Brian Cheung, a senior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said he was inspired to open Memory Shop after traveling to Vietnam last summer. He noticed that photo booth stores were very common in Asia, and he wanted to bring the experience to the United States.
“Some streets had four photobooth stores on the same street,” Brian Cheung said. “To be honest, we went to every single one, and it was just a super fun experience.”
“I was like, ‘If it’s this fun, why don’t we have something like this in Boston?’” he added.
Brian Cheung opened Memory Shop on Newbury St. in September 2024, and is now planning to expand into Harvard Square. He said he is eager to harness the “Harvard energy” of the Square to serve the “college crowd” and “local visitors” that frequent the area.
He added that the store will bring back the vintage charm of Harvard Square that he remembers from his childhood.
“Ever since I was a kid, I remember Harvard Square being that vintage place where you can hang out,” Brian Cheung said. “There’s a lot of small things you can do, but lately I feel like it lost a little bit of fire — there’s something missing.”
Henry Cheung, who grew up visiting Harvard Square and ran an Anime Zakka store in The Garage from 2012 to 2021, agreed with his son.
“Harvard Square is supposed to be like, very local, school area,” Henry Cheung said. “But now? Totally different. All the big corporations there, they don’t even know who you are.”
But Brian Cheung said he believes his family’s businesses will help change that trend.
“Just bringing back Anime Zakka plus Memory Shop in that main Harvard Square center would boost the fun that everyone can have,” he said. “Our end goal is just to have everybody have fun. We just want everyone to make memories of each other, bring it home, share with their family.”
Henry Cheung echoed his son’s sentiments, and said he was motivated to bring Anime Zakka back to the Square to “make the customer happy” and provide a way for residents to “buy a lot of anime stuff locally.”
“This is my passion,” he added. “If the customer is happy, I’ll be happy.”
Henry Cheung, whose family partly comes from Japanese descent, was inspired to start Anime Zakka after seeing local stores only selling comics and superhero content. He hopes Anime Zakka will attract more customers to Harvard Square through authentic anime products imported from Japan.
“Japanese culture is always the top culture people looking into,” Henry Cheung said.
Harvard students are excited for the Asian culture and friendship-building activity Memory Shop and Anime Zakka will bring to the Square.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Ashley B. Ding ’28 said. “I’ve only been to a photo booth in New York or Korea, so I’m glad there’s one coming in Cambridge. I’ll definitely go.”
Kylie S. Oh ’28, who also went to photo booths in Korea, said the activity “holds very fond memories.”
“I actually have the photo strips up by my room,” Oh added. “So I think having this in Cambridge is very full circle. So super exciting.”
The Harvard Square Theater, located at 10 Church St. and owned by billionaire investor Gerald L. Chan, has been vacant for 13 years. On Monday, the Cambridge City Council voted to ask owners of long-vacant buildings to describe their plans for development. By Brenda Lu
The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to ask owners of long-vacant buildings to come before the city council to discuss next steps for their properties in a resolution that specificallycalled out Gerald L. Chan, the billionaire real estate owner and Harvard donor who owns the former Harvard Square Theatre.
The vote is a step forward for several groups, including the Harvard Square Business Association and the city council, who are looking to pressure Chan into action over his long-delayed plans to redevelop the theater — a large building on Church Street that has sat vacant for 13 years.
At a committee hearing last month, councilors floated the idea of establishing fines for the owners of vacant property to reduce the problem generally, although they have not since taken any action toward such a policy.
That discussion did, however, catalyze Monday’s resolution to invite Chan to testify, with Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern citing the vacant theater as an egregious example of harmful vacant property in the city.
“It’s the heart of one of the busiest commercial districts and most important commercial districts in our city,” McGovern said.
“The vibrancy of our squares are really dependent upon businesses being there,” Councilor Ayesha M. Wilson said. “The theater, being such a historic space, is something that we can’t turn a blind eye on.”
While the policy order originally targeted Chan alone over his vacant theater, councilors agreed to amend the order to include the owners of 22 other properties that have sat vacant for five years or longer, at the suggestion of Councilor Paul F. Toner.
Councilors, residents, and business owners at the hearing all emphasized that the shuttered Harvard Square Theatre particularly detracted from visitors’ experience of the Square because it is so large and central to the area.
The Harvard Square Theatre first closed in 2012 after AMC sold it to local developer Richard L. Friedman. Chan then bought the building from Friedman in 2015, and put forward a proposal two years later for its redevelopment into a multi-use complex that would include storefronts, movie screens, and office space.
That plan received conditional approval from the Cambridge Historical Commission, but Chan never took the proposal to the Cambridge Planning Board.
Since 2019, the project has stalled.
Dan White, the manager of Chan’s investment firm which owns the theater, blamed the Covid-19 pandemic for the company’s lack of action in a statement to the Crimson.
“Our previous plan, which was well received and on its way to final approval, was derailed by the pandemic, requiring us to reappraise what might work best for the site,” White wrote. “We continue to work diligently on these efforts.”
Ivy Moylan, executive director of the nearby Brattle Theatre, said at the hearing she and her team had tried to speak with Chan regarding his intentions for the Harvard Square Theatre, but had never been able to make contact.
Moylan called the theater “a blight on a beautiful, historic street.”
While the order ultimately received support from all councilors, Toner and Councilor Catherine “Cathie” Zusy both criticized the original draft for targeting Chan too directly.
“I don’t think shaming is the best way to motivate people,” Zusy said. “We want to partner with Mr. Chan. We don’t want to humiliate him.”
Suzanne P. Blier, president of the Cambridge Citizens Coalition and professor of fine arts and African and African American studies at Harvard, offered a rare defense of Chan during public comment, calling him “a generous individual who cares very much about Harvard Square.”
Many of the dozen public commenters on the vacancy issue emphasized their personal fondness for the theater and the “bohemian” character of the area it represented, while urging the council to take action.
“It’s an emotional connection that people have,” McGovern said during the hearing. “It has such an incredible history and has meant so much to so many people, particularly those of us who grew up here.”
