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The Pit — a seating area in Harvard Square — was demolished on Tuesday this week. By Thomas Maisonneuve

By Jaya N. Karamcheti, Crimson Staff Writer

4 days ago

As part of ongoing renovations to the Harvard Square Plaza, yellow safety vests and work boots replaced black leather jackets and Doc Marten boots from the ’80s during the demolition of The Pit this past Tuesday.

Built in 1982, The Pit, a sunken brick-and-stone seating area, served as a place of “great acceptance” for individuals who were “grunge and punk,” according to Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association.

“You could be different, you could be very different, but you would be accepted. And that was really the charm and the magic of the place,” Jillson said.

New construction plans were created to reimagine the aging Harvard Square Kiosk and Plaza to be “flexible, dynamic, and welcoming community assets,” per the Cambridge Department of Public Works website. Specifically, a permanent visitor information center will be built and the space would act as a hub for “community gatherings, including civic, artistic, and social activities.”

Another reason for the redevelopment was to improve the plaza’s accessibility to people with disabilities.

But until this past week — for almost three years — no ground was broken and The Pit remained fenced off to the public. The demolition delays were caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the difficulties of building near a busy MBTA stop, and “setbacks” from Cambridge’s city government to make an appropriation for the project, according to Jillson.

The Cambridge Department of Public Works said on their website that they expect the project to be completed by summer 2026.

As the area remains under construction, Katie Labrie, the executive director of Cambridge Local First, spoke about how The Pit was not just a seating area — it was a place for anyone that felt they did not fit in.

A self-proclaimed “Pit rat” during her adolescent years, Labrie said the time she spent in The Pit during her adolescent years shaped her into the person and leader she is today.

The Pit allowed her teenager self to “find real, local community, as opposed to fabricated clubs or networks.”

“I always was drawn to living in neighborhoods that had that innate sense of sort of localism,” Labrie said. “If I hadn’t had that experience, I think so many of my life choices would have been different.”

Though Labrie said many of the people she met in The Pit were simply participating in a culture of teenage rebellion, the space had a deeper meaning for others.

“There were a lot of really, really great kids who were not just rebelling,” Labrie said. “They were escaping abusive homes, or they were voluntarily or involuntarily unhoused because their home conditions were intolerable.”

When The Pit was first announced to be remodeled in summer 2022, crowds gathered at Pit-a-Palooza, an event to celebrate “the notorious and revered Harvard Square ‘Pit’ and those who called it home,” according to its event website.

At Pit-a-Palooza, leather-clad attendees danced and moshed to New Wave and 90s punk hits, while second-hand smoke filled the air.

Though the bricks, stones, and the people who sit on them will change after reconstruction, Jillson said she hopes The Pit’s themes of acceptance will remain present.

The “expectation” for The Pit’s redevelopment is that it will be a “welcoming place” for “students and professors and unhoused people and foreigners and immigrants and people of every denomination and every way of identifying,” Jillson said.

After The Pit’s revitalization, Labrie said, “I would love to see music come back to the Square in a real serious way. There’s nothing like taking that escalator up right from the depths of the T and hearing music blasting.”

“It just makes you immediately know where you are and lifts your mood,” she added

A longtime landmark in Harvard Square is gone. “The Pit” has been demolished as part of a years-long effort to revamp the area in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The stone and brick seating area adjacent to the Red Line MBTA station served as a gathering spot for decades, but now it’s nothing more than dirt, rocks and mud. 

In 2017, the city started an $8.6 million project to reimagine and reconstruct the Harvard Square Kiosk and plaza. 

The kiosk, previously built as an entrance to the subway station in 1927, became the Out of Town News stand in 1983. It was known for selling newspapers and magazines from around the world before the business closed in 2019.

Harvard Square kiosk construction delays

The area became an eyesore, fenced in and blocked off from the public for years. The city attributed delays to COVID and work done to preserve the landmark kiosk building. Now the expectation is that a renovated kiosk will open sometime in the next few months.

“The interior of the Kiosk would function as a flexible space accommodating permanent and temporary community uses,” planners say. “Permanent uses would feature a Visitor Information Center with displays focused on Cambridge history and happenings and the provision of news, brochures, and other materials.”

Harvard Square plaza renovations

As for the rest of the plaza, renderings show there wouldn’t be a circular “pit” anymore.

A project report envisions the plaza as a place for “informal social seating and community gathering,” and also as a temporary use spot for performances, art installations, family friendly activities, outdoor markets and demonstrations.

It’s estimated that it could take as much as two more years to finish the construction work.

The seating area in Harvard Square known as The Pit has been demolished, a new milestone for an ongoing renovation of the plaza on which it sat for decades — and the end of an era.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

CAMBRIDGE — In its heyday, they called it The Pit.

This week, it’s more like The Swamp.

Construction crews have begun pulverizing the former brick and stone sitting area, which had been a gathering space for young people in the region’s counterculture and those who bonded over not fitting in.

Tuesday, as part of broader Harvard Square renovations, workers scooped out chunks of rock as a pumpsucked brown water and mud pooling at the base of what was once a cherished and infamous landmark.

“There’s a feeling people have for that area, and it has to do with acceptance,” said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. “Anybody who went in there, regardless of their political persuasion, their race, their sexual persuasion, it didn’t matter. Everybody was welcomed. Even kids that were a little bit odd and outside the mainstream felt welcomed there.”

Jillson said her organization has salvaged several hundred bricks from The Pit, some of which it emblazoned with a metal plaque and sold off for $25 apiece in a fund-raiser for Bridge Over Troubled Waters, a nonprofit that works with homeless youth. About 200 are still stored in her office.

Local punks, alternative types, and street performers of all stripes played music, met friends, or simply hung around there with the other young people who showed up there day after day.

One of them was Marc McGovern, now a Cambridge city councilor and the city’s vice mayor, who was a self-described “pit rat” as a teen in the 1980s. (The Business Association this year paid tribute to this little-known aspect of McGovern’s past by gifting him a framed photo of himself taken when he was a spiky-haired high-schooler hanging around in a leather jacket).

He’s still nostalgic for those days all these years later, McGovern said.

“That time of my life was an unsettled time for me, and I found protection and community in The Pit. So it’s really important to me,” McGovern said.

Related: ‘It shouldn’t be this difficult’: Why fixing up a kiosk in Harvard Square is costing millions and taking years

“Pit rats” weren’t always beloved by everyone in the square, he recalls. Some of the kids and young adults who hung around got into trouble with drinking or drug use, and there could be violence. But the space had vast meaning for many and a reputation.

He remembers tourists and families of prospective students got a kick out of seeing real Boston punks so close to the serene Harvard campus. “We used to charge people to take our pictures,” he said.

McGovern hopes the new version of the plaza when it reopens will also offer a place for all kinds of people, perhaps wayward youths included, to go. And that there aren’t calls to shoo away whoever winds up in the plaza.

“Hopefully, it can still be a place where people can gather and meet friends and feel that they’re part of something,” he said.

People who weren’t whiling away afternoons there remember The Pit, too.

It wasn’t exactly John Olsen’s scene, but the 74-year-old said that while growing up in the area, he appreciated that The Pit existed as a refuge for the people who found camaraderie there.

“ It had its pluses and minuses, but it was home to a lot of people,” said Olsen, a retired architect who lives in Winchester, who was out for a stroll through the square on a recent springlike morning.

He said he has had mixed feelings about the changes that have come to the neighborhood over time, but believes the new spaces being built by the city to replace the old can themselves become as beloved as The Pit once was.

“It’s a very different place than it was when I was here in my younger years, but I’m growing to appreciate it now,” Olsen said of the square. “I just hope that it develops its own character over the years.”

By the 2010s, when talk began of renovating the plaza to bring it up to modern standards of urban design and accessibility, it had begun to show its age.

The project has been delayed again and again amid a combination of supply chain issues and the difficulties of building in a crowded intersection atop a troubled MBTA stop.

Demolition work on the plaza began recently, Cambridge spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said.

Related: Harvard Square was never what it used to be

People with fond feelings for the landmark held a well-attended goodbye ceremony in June 2022 called Pit-A-Palooza that featured a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” tribute and a rowdy performance from the Boston hardcore punk band Colin of Arabia.

“Dress the part – drag out your fishnets, leather and studs!” an invitation to the party read. “Show your kids how cool you were!”

During the festivities, the city officially proclaimed June 25 as “Pit Rat Day.”

It stayed open to the public for nearly three more years as other work in the plaza got underway.

Now, it’s gone.

Given The Pit’s state of disrepair in its latter days, that’s for the better, said Peri Onipede, of Watertown, as she stopped to grab a coffee at a nearby café.

“Just walking through it, there would be water puddles and ice, so you had to be careful,” Onipede said. “I know it was popular with the kids and the students, but I always felt I had to walk carefully through The Pit.”

So she won’t miss it. She hopes the renovation turns the spot into a more accessible place for people to spend time, and considers it a good sign that the plaza renovation will preserve the kiosk that was the longtime home of Out of Town News, which she frequented.

The plans for the kiosk call for it to be a combination information booth and a pop-up.

Overall, Onipede said she just wants the plaza project to be done with already — for the construction to stop, for all the barricades to be removed, and for the next phase of the square, however, it will be, to begin.

“It’s long overdue,” she said. “It’s been closed for so long, and it’s just been an eyesore for a number of years now. I hope there will be something attractive that brings people here.”

Many people have fond memories of the Harvard Square landmark. But The Pit had a dark side that shouldn’t be glossed over.

Io Nachtwey’s doomed life in The Pit, the circular brick plaza above the Harvard Square T station, began sometime in the summer of 2001. Originally from Hawaii, she was 22 and homeless when she drifted into Cambridge. She quickly joined a loose-knit community of misfits who loitered and skateboarded in and around The Pit, often panhandling and sleeping on nearby streets or in graveyards.

Within a few months, she was dead — murdered in an especially savage attack.

On Tuesday, the Globe reported that the city had demolished the Pit, which originally opened in 1982, provoking an outpouring of nostalgia for the days when “pit kids” (or, to some people, “pit rats”) gave Harvard Square a grittier punk vibe. A mythology seems to have emerged that back in its heyday, The Pit provided a welcoming environment for troubled teens and runaways, who returned the favor by keeping the soul of “real” Harvard Square alive before the ATMs and high-end boutiques took over.

“Anybody who went in there, regardless of their political persuasion, their race, their sexual persuasion, it didn’t matter. Everybody was welcomed. Even kids that were a little bit odd and outside the mainstream felt welcomed there,” Denise Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, told the Globe.

I don’t mean to argue with people who have happy memories of their time in The Pit. And it’s certainly true that The Pit in the daytime was a less menacing place than it was at night.

Related

Readers recall their halcyon Harvard Square daysHarvard Square was never what it used to beEnd of an era: The Pit, a landmark of Harvard Square, is demolished

But anyone tempted to romanticize The Pit and all it supposedly represented should read about Nachtwey’s death. The Pit “community” didn’t welcome her. It quite literally killed her. Described as sweet and naive, Nachtwey was raped, stabbed by another Pit regular, finished off with a nunchuck blow to the head, and then dumped into the Charles River.

Former Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley, who prosecuted hundreds of homicides in 17 years in office, said Nachtwey’s killing was “one of the most horrific, horrifying murders in my time as DA.”

“This young woman was truly an innocent kid,” he told me. Four people were convicted in her murder; two others pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony.

It was not the only crime associated with The Pit. As an announcement for Cambridge’s 2022 “Pit-a-palooza” gingerly acknowledged, “[s]ome of the rats were victims of violence and sexual assault and their experiences are the dark side of this otherwise positive experience.”

You think?

There are, obviously, crimes in every setting. But the rose-tinted nostalgia for the era of The Pit kids strikes me as deeply misplaced, and a continuation of the willful indifference by many Cantabrigians to The Pit’s “dark side” that set the stage for Nachtwey’s death in the first place.

Many of the kids who slept in and around The Pit needed help, and maybe they would have received it if more people in Cambridge had viewed The Pit as a problem and not as a perverse source of pride. Cambridge wore its willingness to let Pit kids sleep on the street as some kind of badge of countercultural honor. Embracing The Pit flattered Cambridge’s self-image as a Bohemian enclave; it also left the kids themselves in danger.

“The street is a very dangerous place, it’s a dangerous environment for anybody,” Conley said.

What does it matter? The Pit kids are long gone, and now so is The Pit itself. But there’s still plenty of homelessness, and plenty of dispute over what to do about it. So mourn the end of an era if you must — you can even buy a brick salvaged from The Pit, with the proceeds going to a charity that supports homeless youth. But hopefully the next time some vulnerable young person like Nachtwey ends up here, there’s no pit quite so deep waiting for them.

The Longfellow House is located at 105 Brattle Street. The site’s credit card limit had been reduced to $1.00 by the Trump administration. By Ike J. Park

By Jaya N. Karamcheti and Kevin Zhong, Crimson Staff Writers

Yesterday

The Trump administration’s funding cuts are hitting close to home for Cambridge residents, as the historic Longfellow House had its credit card limit dramatically reduced by the U.S. General Services Administration last week.

When the Longfellow House-Washington Headquarters National Historic Site tried to pay their annual dues of $110 to the Harvard Square Business Association last week, their credit card payment was denied.

In a statement posted on Harvard Square’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, Denise A. Jillson, executive director of the HSBA, wrote that when she called to confirm the credit card number, she was informed that the Longfellow House received notice from the federal government that their credit card limit had been reduced to $1.00.

The Longfellow House, located on 105 Brattle St., is a mansion that was built in 1759. The House was George Washington’s first long-term headquarters during the American Revolution, and was also the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The site is preserved by the National Park Service.

National parks across the country have faced staffing cuts since President Donald Trump took office, with 1,000 employees being laid off on Feb. 14. Since the staffing cuts, the Trump administration has also announced a planned 30 percent payroll deduction at the National Park Service.

The U.S. General Services Administration, which manages federal property and government operations, wrote in a public statement that they directed 15 federal agencies — including the National Park Service — to limit cardholder accounts under the GSA SmartPay to $1.00.

“GSA has implemented a review and approval process to ensure that purchases that directly support mission-critical activities can still be made in a timely manner,” they wrote in a press release.

“Under this administration, GSA is committed to saving every single dollar and helping federal agency partners prevent all fraud, waste, and abuse,” they added.

Jillson blasted the funding freeze as “appalling” and “unconscionable,” and committed to keeping the Longfellow House part of the HSBA.

“Their partnership is too important, their presence is too sacred to all we hold dear,” Jillson wrote.

Jillson said that although the Longfellow House is not connected to education, healthcare, or other “bigger issues at stake,” its contributions to culture and history are vital to Harvard Square and Cambridge.

“The Longfellow House — Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site provides visitors from across the globe with historical knowledge and offers folks the experience of being in the same physical space as the first President of the United States of America,” Jillson wrote in a post on Instagram.

As the HSBA reaffirms its commitment to the Longfellow House, Jillson said that Cambridge residents are concerned about the funding cuts.

“Mostly, people are appalled,” Jillson said. “Just appalled.”

The Longfellow House is not the only historic site in Massachusetts to be affected by President Trump’s recent executive orders attempting to downsize the federal government. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston was closed this past February, but was reopened just a day later. Jillson hopes something similar will happen for the Longfellow House.

“We’re hopeful that this will be one of the reversals,” Jillson said. “The good news is, I received a newsletter from the Longfellow House this afternoon, so staff is still there.”

In these times of uncertainty for businesses and cultural institutions in Cambridge and beyond, Jillson encouraged residents to speak up about what matters most to them.

“It is unprecedented for us to use this platform in this manner, but these are unprecedented times,” Jillson wrote. “Silence is complicity. We will not be complicit.”

March 07, 2025 • 6 days ago

The Cambridge Police Department (CPD) would like to congratulate Elana Klein, who was recently recognized by the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA) with their Public Service Award. Elana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who works as part of the CPD’s Clinical Support Unit.

Through her work, Elana has been a tireless advocate for many who frequent Harvard Square and in doing so has helped to improve the overall community. In describing Elana’s award Executive Director of the HSBA, Denise Jillson, noted Elana’s “dedication to our unhoused, underserved, vulnerable and sometimes forgotten friends and neighbors.” As a nod to Harvard Square’s iconic culture, the award is made using a brick that was part of “The Pit”, that once marked the center of the square.

The award was presented during the HSBA’s 115^th Annual Meeting which was held on Thursday.  This event was well attended by numerous members of the community including Vice-Mayor Marc McGovern, several City Council members, City Manager Yi-An Huang, and Police Commissioner Christine Elow. The CPD was also represented by other members of the Clinical Support Unit including Director of Clinical Support Services Dr. James Barrett as well as members of the Community Action Team.  

The CPD joins the HSBA in our appreciation for Elana’s work and congratulates her on receiving the Public Service Award.

The culinary icon will oversee the Charles Hotel’s Italian restaurant while still running Scampo on Beacon Hill, too.

By Rachel Leah Blumenthal_· 3/6/2025, 12:51 p.m.

Fans of chef and restaurateur Lydia Shire, a matriarch of Boston’s dining scene, can now catch her on both sides of the river. While she’s continuing in her longtime role as chef and co-owner at Scampo inside Beacon Hill’s Liberty Hotel, she’s also joining the team at Italian restaurant Bar Enza inside Cambridge’s Charles Hotel as culinary director.

She’ll “continue to elevate the Bar Enza experience,” per a press release, “oversee[ing] menu additions and put[ting] her signature cooking techniques on it.” No word yet on exactly what that might look like on the menu, but Shire makes a mean lobster pizza—and is a skilled butcher, too. The powerhouse chef has been in the industry since the 1970s, famously co-owned the historic downtown restaurant Locke-Ober in the early aughts, and has mentored countless young chefs over the years.

One of those mentees? Jody Adams, now an iconic Boston chef and restaurateur in her own right. Adams ran Italian restaurant Rialto for nearly two decades—in the space that Bar Enza now inhabits. That Charles Hotel space has stayed with Italian cuisine ever since. After Rialto’s 2016 closure, the Giulia team operated Benedetto in the location for several years but closed during the pandemic. Bar Enza opened in 2021, a collaboration between the Charles Hotel and Lyons Group (which oversees Scampo as well as Sonsie, Rochambeau, and more), with chef Mark Ladner running the kitchen. (The Belmont native rose to culinary stardom in New York City at Del Posto before returning to Boston; these days, he’s back in New York.) Then, Tony Susi—a longtime Boston chef with a penchant for pasta—led Bar Enza for a couple years. And now, it’s Shire’s turn.

In early 2023, Shire was planning a Seaport restaurant at the under-development Seaport Science Center on Congress Street. There have been no updates since the initial announcement, but several people with knowledge of the project have told Boston that it’s on hold for now. With her focus trained on just Scampo and Bar Enza for the moment, we’re excited to see what Shire continues to bring to the table in the sixth decade of her impressive career.

Bar Enza. / Photo by Maria DeNapoli

1 Bennett St. (Charles Hotel), Harvard Square, Cambridge, 617-661-5050, bar-enza.com.

Monday February 17 2025

Time Out says

Who said fast food can’t be fancy? Bertil Jean-Chronberg, Bonde Fine Wine Shop’s owner and artisan curator, breaks all the rules with a fun fast food pairing during his upcoming Big Mac & Wine Tasting & Class. During the class held at 7pm on Feb. 20  at his tiny upbeat wine shop in Harvard Square – known for its small-scale, eco-responsible wines – he will guide you through an hour of learning about and sharing impressions of four wines with one all-dressed hamburger sitting sidecar.