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By Spencer Buell Globe Staff,Updated May 29, 2025, 4:04 a.m.

CAMBRIDGE — There is a damp dustiness down here, in the abandoned tunnel underneath Harvard Square.

Aside from the thin rays filtering through a sidewalk grate, there isn’t much light where we’re standing, 20 feet below the beer taps of Charlie’s Kitchen and the Harvard grads snapping pictures in front of the Kennedy School of Government. Only the sound of traffic overhead occasionally breaks the subterranean silence. There are no signs of life, not even rats.

Could this space, which few people have laid eyes on in more than 40 years, come alive with music and be the newest — and most unusual — addition to Boston nightlife? An under-the-ground, over-the-top, idea, for sure. But through the light of our flashlights, the possibilities seem to expand.

A local real estate mogul has long argued the music venue is not as far-fetched as it sounds on the surface. And now, he’s found a receiving audience among elected officials in Cambridge, who are exploringwhether it is, in fact, possible, and, if so, what it all might cost.

Although hidden from people driving or walking atop it, the tunnel runs between Brattle Square and the Kennedy School.

One section is used by the T for storage and for housing exhaust ducts and a high-voltage power station.

Another, a long straightaway under Eliot Street, is unused altogether.

When Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, first saw that abandoned section on a tour in 2019, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Descending down a utility stairwell, she expected to find it falling apart, or marred by a jumble of view-obstructing columns.

What she saw instead was a sturdy rectangle of wide open space that was, by her count, about 300 feet long, 22 feet high, and 58 across at its widest.

“It was pristine,” said Jillson, “as far as tunnels go.”

John DiGiovanni, the real estate mogul who brought music venue The Sinclair to Harvard Square, said his jaw dropped.

“Whoa!” he remembers thinking. “Where do you put the stage?”

Ever since, the two have been boosters of a live entertainment venue in the tunnel, showing it off to developers, officials, and business leaders. They even paid for a 3D scan of the space and hired a designer to create mockups of how concerts, TED talks, Harvard speaking engagements, art exhibits, and all kinds of events here might look.

Let us here state the obvious:Turning a century-old underground tunnel, currently without utilities, into a space fit for hundreds in a partying mood, would be no easy feat. It certainly wasn’t designed with that in mind when it was built in 1909 for trains and buses to access a now-removed transit yard, nor when it was sealed shut long ago in 1980 during the extension of the Red Line. Right now, the only access is through narrow corridors and down utility hatches or through a gap between a pair of exhaust fans the size of jet engines.

Even building above ground in Harvard Square seems to take forever. The renovation of the small plaza atop the Harvard MBTA stop has taken years, and millions of dollars, to complete.

But DiGiovanni and Jillson believe turning this unused portion of the decommissioned tunnel complex into something wondrousis too good an opportunity to pass up in a neighborhood they believe needs more live events to draw in visitors.

“It would be preposterous for me to say, ‘dig a tunnel under these streets and create a venue.’ But it’s equally preposterous that you wouldn’t study how you can transform this one,” DiGiovanni said. “It’s already excavated!”

Cambridge is starting that process now. Earlier in May, the City Council voted in favor of spending $72,000 to get a formal estimate for an engineering study.

How much a study of that kind would cost is unknown, but it is expected to be many hundreds of thousands more.

Who will pay for it is also an open question.

The tunnel is still owned by the MBTA, and Cambridge officials have expressed reluctance to invest large sums without buy-in from the T or other private investment.

Would the transit agency even be interested in becoming landlord to a nightclub or paying to have it refurbished so it can be sold? The T wouldn’t say.

But DiGiovanni believes there is good reason to do so, including that it could be a revenue source for the T at a time when it could use the money.

Much of the work of turning the tunnel into an entertainment destination would ultimately be done by a venue operator. Asked about the viability of a tunnel-based music venue, a spokesperson for AEG, which operates live event venues across the country, said it was “a little premature” to weigh in.

Still, the idea has some allure to people with experience in live events.

Ed Kane, owner of Boston nightclub and music venue company Big Night Entertainment and a Harvard alum who grew up locally, said it sounded on paper like a dream come true.

“It’s been a fantasy of mine forever,” he said. “Ever since I started nightlife I’ve dreamed of opening a place in an underground station.”

It wouldn’t necessarily be the first of its kind, according to the Harvard Square Business Association. In Washington, D.C., an abandoned subway tunnel in Dupont Circle was repurposed into an arts venue called Dupont Underground. A similar project repurposed a drinking water reservoir in Houston into a venue called The Cistern.

The primary question, according to DiGiovanni, is how many people a subterranean venue in Harvard Square could fit. Capacity would depend on the size of the usable space, and the points of egress that would need to be built into the Harvard Square streetscape to get people in and out quickly, he said.

He has crunched the numbers and believes it would need to host at least 800 in order to be worth it for the millions of dollars of investment required to get it up and running.

“What would be spectacular is a 1500-capacity venue,” he said.

There is certainly plenty of room down here in this big, long, dark tunnel under Harvard Square.

For now, there’s nothing but.

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May 28, 2025

• Nik DeCosta-Klipa

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR’s daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. 

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Pop in your headphones and listen to our critics’ roundup of the best local music released this month. But first, let’s get through the news:

Tunnel vision: With limited opportunities to build up or out, some civic leaders in Harvard Square are looking to build down. Earlier this month, the Cambridge City Council advanced a plan to study the possibility of creating an entertainment venue in an MBTA tunnel that’s been abandoned for 40 years. While the idea sounds outlandish, “it would be equally sort of insane not to take a look at what the potential is,” Denise Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, told WBUR’s Amy Sokolow. “It could be an important asset to Harvard Square that’s been sitting fallow.”

• Where is it? The tunnel dates back to the T’s pre-Red Line extension days, when trains terminated and turned around at Harvard Square. According to Jillson, who’s been in the tunnel herself, it runs underground from Brattle Square to the Harvard Kennedy School: “ If you are on Elliot Street in front of like the Harvard Square Hotel or Charlie’s Kitchen, the tunnel would be directly under your feet.”
• Zoom in: Jillson says the tunnel has 22-foot-high arched ceilings, good acoustics and is relatively “pristine.” They’re hoping to get an engineering firm to test its structural integrity, air quality and other logistics. “You could envision a conference in the morning, a TED Talk in the afternoon and a concert in the evening,” she said. (Click here to see their renderings of what it could look like.)
• Zoom out: It wouldn’t be the first abandoned subterranean space to be revived as an events space. Jillson’s group takes inspiration from other cities, like Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Underground and London’s Bankside Vaults.
• The catch: While City Council approved $72,000 in funding to put out a request for proposals, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang is leery about the costs of the feasibility study itself (not to mention any renovations). As Cambridge Day reported last week, Huang estimates an engineering firm could charge up to $1 million, and “who would fund that is unanswered.”
• What’s next: Jillson predicts it’s “easily” a five-to-six-year project. Her group plans to spend the coming year working with the MBTA, which still owns the tunnel, on an agreement to access the space for the potential study.

By Madison Lucchesi

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

RoadTrip N. via YelpGnomon Copy is closing in Harvard Square after more than 50 years.

After more than 50 years in business, Gnomon Copy closes its doors for good on Friday. A short walk from Gnomon Copy’s Harvard Square location is FlashPrint, which is acquiring the closing copy center.

Two MIT graduate students established Gnomon Copy in their dormitory in 1966, according to a 2006 profile in The Harvard Crimson, and went on to open nearly a dozen locations in college towns across New England and New York.

Gnomon Copy originally had two locations in Harvard Square: the location in operation until its closing this week at 1308 Massachusetts Ave. – for a time, it was at 1304 Massachusetts Ave., behind a storefront of large plate glass set into elaborately swirling art nouveau wood frames – and a second location at 99 Mount Auburn St. that was sold in the 1980s to Alan Shapiro.

Shapiro kept the space as a copy center and eventually renamed it FlashPrint.

“There were many copy centers in the area and as they went away, we acquired their business,” Shapiro said.

The owners of the final Gnomon Copy in Cambridge approached FlashPrint to see if Shapiro was interested in buying it too. Shapiro was not looking to buy – but made a deal to pay the Gnomon owners a commission for the business FlashPrint acquired from Gnomon clients over the next few years.

Beginning next week, the Gnomon Copy website, email, and phone number will forward to FlashPrint, and two employees will relocate there. Cambridge Day was unable to contact Gnomon Copy owners.

Gnomon Copy also has a location in Medford, which will shut at the end of the week.

Gnomon Copy played “an important role” in the community, but Harvard Square has “evolved and changed” a lot since the copy center was starting out, said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. “Copy centers are still relevant, but [without] the demand that [they] used to have.”

The Gnomon Copy storefront on Massachusetts Avenue is owned by Harvard University. It’s not known what business opens in the space next.

Robert Goulston

May 28, 2025

Local business leaders in Harvard Square are concerned about the rising tension between the Trump administration and Harvard University.

“The business community around Harvard is very embedded with the university,” said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. “They live side by side.”

The university’s students are a major source of neighborhood foot traffic and spending, according to Jillson. With the Trump administration cutting Harvard’s funding and trying to end enrollment for foreign students, Jillson said there’s a lot to worry about.

“Thinking about the square, thinking about the next few months, thinking about tourism, thinking about our businesses and the impact of the administration’s actions against the university — and not just Harvard, but what they’re doing relative to funding programs across our region here?” she said. “We’re concerned.”

The business community is watching for potential cuts to Harvard’s staff, too, as the school’s funding is slashed.

Brooke Garber owns Mint Julep, a women’s boutique, on Brattle Street known for its wide selection of clothing, jewelry and accessories. She says the Harvard campus community is a huge portion of her customer base from their first visit to tour the school through graduation day.

“They shop with us all the way through, right up until commencement — and then sometimes they stay,” Garber said.

Garber worries about the apparent standoff between the White House and Harvard escalating.

“Every day we say, could something crazier happen today? And every day something crazier happens,” she said. “Last week with the assault on the international students, it’s just unbelievable. And a lot of our customers are international and their families are, too, so I hope that it doesn’t come to that because it would be very sad for higher ed in general, but also for tourism in Boston and in the U.S.”

Around the corner, Anna Shine owns and operates New England School of English, an English as a Second Language (ESL) program primarily for international students.

“My students spend a lot of money in Harvard Square, a lot of money in Boston and so money spent in Harvard Square is good for everyone, including Harvard. It keeps the businesses alive,” Shine said.

Shine, who is originally from the United Kingdom, says her four-week class typically enrolls about a dozen students who are immersed in local culture while enhancing their English skills.

“Whether you’re a Jew or an Arab, Black or white, when you’re in this environment there’s this environment of kindness and tolerance and acceptance, people come together, and there’s this magic that happens. The power of internationalism,” said Shine. “What happens to all the soft power? What happens to all of the goodwill that goes back to their countries?”

Jillson, who advocates for about 400 members of the Harvard Square Business Association, believes the community will persevere.

“As we look back over the COVID years, even further with the Great Recession, with the dot-com bubble, all of those are within a lifetime,” Jillson pointed out. “We know what that was like and our businesses were able to respond. And we will respond to this, and we will not be defeated, not by our own government.”

By adamg on Sat., 5/24/2025 – 12:05 pm

Cambridge Day reports on the idea of reusing a tunnel left over from the days when the Red Line ended in Harvard Square instead of continuing to Alewife. The tunnel runs between Mount Auburn and Eliot streets and the John F. Kennedy School.

By Meg Richards

Friday, May 23, 2025

An empty tunnel under Harvard Square could be turned into a venue hosting a variety of events, the Harvard Square Business Association says.

Underneath Harvard Square in Cambridge lies an abandoned MBTA tunnel, unseen by passengers for 40 years. The Harvard Square Business Association proposes to transform it into an entertainment venue – or at least look at the idea seriously.

The tunnel starts at Mount Auburn and Eliot streets and stretches to the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government. The MBTA uses some of it for ventilation and other mechanical purposes; aside from transportation workers, the tunnel is accessed regularly by students of the Harvard Graduate School of Design who craft creative proposals for how life could be breathed into it.

Now the association has funding to explore putting the plan in motion.

“It’s something that we’ve been working on for a very long time,” said Denise Jillson, executive director of the HSBA. “It’s been relevant for a long time, but these things don’t move quickly.”

She imagines a revamp that would turning the tunnel into an entertainment venue that’s versatile, artistic and “youthful.”

“You could do a Ted Talk in the morning, you could do an art exhibit in the afternoon and a concert in the evening,” Jillson said.

John DiGiovanni, Harvard Square developer and former president of the HSBA, said the association has been thinking about the project for 10 years and paid for its own 3D imaging of the space to help craft designs – part of some $50,000 to $60,000 in private dollars already put toward the idea.

While the ultimate project would be funded largely by an outside private developer, there have been frustrations in getting to being able to argue the venue would be economically viable and a worthwhile investment as well as a potentially “important economic engine for the city,” DiGiovanni said.

In February 2020 the association met with city leaders and several property owners to outline a plan, then “lost three years the pandemic, then spent the last couple of years working with the city manager,” DiGiovanni said. “He is skeptical about the ability to develop the tunnel into a venue. I appreciate his skepticism and his innate determination to be frugal with public funds. However, there are a variety of reasons why it’s worth spending these initial investment dollars.”

“Ticketed venues are the new anchors for districts,” DiGiovanni said. “We’re late – other districts are doing this.”

Sean Hope, who co-owns the Dx nightclub and event venue in Harvard Square, said the tunnel represents a significant opportunity, considering the challenge of finding more space in a city as old and dense as Cambridge. “This is an opportunity for Cambridge and one of our historic squares to look toward the future,” Hope said. “If you look at Assembly Row, if you look at The Seaport, these all have anchor opportunities and open spaces and something unique to draw them there.”

City manager Yi-An Huang clarified that redirecting $72,000 to find an engineering firm was “reasonable,” but the firm’s study would cost conservatively $500,000 to $1 million, and “who would fund that is unanswered.”

“I have concerns regarding whether the economics would work out – that the significant capital cost and risk would mean that it would be very difficult to bring private capital into a project like this, and ultimately it would have to be publicly funded or there would have to be a pretty significant donation,” Huang said. The refurbishment of the Harvard Square at a reported $3.3 million was on his mind he said – and that structure is small and overground.

A proposal before the City Council on May 12 asked city staff to meet with the HSBA about the tunnel proposal and consider getting started with a study of the idea. A $72,000 request for proposals would be carved out of an existing $300,000 earmarked to study closing off some Harvard Square streets to car traffic. Councillors approved the request Monday, adding the MBTA formally to the discussion.

Councillor Cathie Zusy started as a skeptic and said by Monday she’d come around to the expenditure. “Harvard Square needs a boost, and this could be just the boost that it needs,” Zusy said.