The Cambridge Historical Commission approved a proposal to redevelop the Harriet Jacobs House in a Thursday hearing, despite backlash over the size of the building.
The Jacobs House, which was run by Harriet Jacobs after she escaped from slavery, served as a boarding house for Harvard faculty and students in the late 1800s. The house has since been passed through multiple private owners and fallen into disrepair.
Developers proposed turning the property into a hotel and additional housing units, keeping a museum of Harriet Jacobs in the new building’s lobby. The proposed development would preserve the original house and add eight stories of residential property behind it.
The proposal has stalled in front of the Commission for nearly a year as residents repeatedly criticized the development for being too large. Many argued that the city should restore the house without the addition.
The house sits on the edge of the Harvard Square Conservation District, which has stricter guidelines on the allowed size of new construction and requires approval from the Commission before construction can begin.
Janet Jiang, who has owned the house for the last five years, said that Cambridge’s expensive real estate market posed a challenge to preserving the Jacobs House. Jiang hired CambridgeSeven, a local architecture firm, to begin redeveloping the property.
CambridgeSeven met with the Commission last month, and faced backlash from abutting residents who felt the development was too close to their property. The architects returned to the Commission on Thursday with a plan to increase the distance between the building and its property line.
A group of neighbors living on Hilliard Street, which is on the backside of the Jacobs House, have strongly opposed the redevelopment — asking the Commission to adopt a set of guidelines to limit the allowed size of the development.
“Dwarfing the Harriet Jacobs House under an eight-story building is not the best way to honor her legacy,” Nicole Bryant, a Hilliard Street resident who spoke on behalf of neighbors, said in the Thursday hearing.
CambridgeSeven has refused to consider lowering the height and size of the building further.
“If we’re coming back for a smaller building, we should probably not continue,” Patrick W. Barrett, Jiang’s lawyer, said.
Though the Commission unanimously approved the project on Thursday, they must meet with the developers again to review the final proposal before construction can begin.
“We want to try to see if we can find some way to find a path forward, because we have to get to work,” Barrett said, “and either we have a project or we don’t.”
Even though Cambridge newcomer PopUp Bagels just opened in Harvard Square last Friday, students and Cambridge residents already see the store as a “staple” of the Square.
“They literally have a Harvard 2029 pennant hanging,” Taylor P. Beljon-Regen ’29 said. “I feel like it’s very integrated into the community already.”
The chain celebrated its grand opening to a welcoming crowd — after seven months of anticipation — when workers opened their doors early Friday morning. Customers streamed in and out of their 1440 Massachusetts Ave. storefront as a DJ blasted music from inside the store.
“We were listening to good music, and it was just delicious,” said Kimaya Bhangle, a resident of the suburbs of Cambridge who visited just for PopUp’s opening day.
Harvard Square is already home to multiple bagel stores, but PopUp differentiates itself through its sales model. Customers purchase bagels in packs of three, six, or 12 with accompanying tubs of schmear — but cannot purchase a traditional bagel sandwich.
“It’s definitely a good option, especially since it’s not filled with a lot of things,” Emily C. Stringer ’29 said. “It’s not a competitor for people who want a bagel sandwich as a meal, but for people who want just a bagel.”
Students also said the unique business model encouraged snacking and sharing.
“The bagels are smaller, but they sell them in three packs, which I think is great to have as a snack,” Beljon-Regen said. “I gave them to my roommates. I think it gave us a lot of community,” she added.
PopUp offers five bagel types and three schmears. The store also features two weekly schmears which change every Thursday.
“I see myself especially going back if they have good schmears of the week,” Stringer said.
But bagels were not the only thing on the menu during Friday’s grand opening. Store employees also distributed merchandise with the store’s motto, “Not Famous But Known,” at random moments from the early morning opening until PopUp’s 3:00 p.m. closing .
The bagel franchise got its start in Brooklyn, New York in 2020, and has quickly expanded in the five years since it opened. Now, the franchise operates 15 locations in New York, Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts.
“I loved it in New York, and it’s even better in Boston,” Sofiya Iovenko ’29 said. “It’s more of a community feel.”
Despite its national presence, students and residents said they appreciated the franchise’s attention to regional culture in the store’s first Cambridge location.
“It felt like I was walking home,” Nell A. Sparks ’29 said. “The music, people outside were very welcoming, very inviting.”
Beljon-Regen added that she looks forward to grabbing a bagel on a “sad Monday morning,” since the storefront is only a one-minute walk from her dorm.
“It feels like it’s going to be a staple in the neighborhood for years to come,” she added.
SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS: ‘Dr. Yes,’ plays his sousaphone as he marches with the Expandable Brass Band in the 20th annual Honk! Festival parade, on Oct. 12 2025. Over 30 bands from all over the United States, including Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh, took part in the annual parade with this year’s theme, ‘Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet’. (CJ Gunther/Boston Herald)
Over thirty bands took to the roads of Cambridge and Somerville Sunday for the annual HONK! festival, celebrating reclaiming the streets for “horns, bikes, and feet.”
“At full power, these bands create an irresistible spectacle of creative movement and sonic self-expression directed at making the world a better place,” the HONK! organizers stated. “This is the movement we call HONK!”
The colorful, musical march from Davis Square to Harvard Square in Cambridge, arriving to join the 46th annual Oktoberfest on Sunday. Thirty-two in-person bands were scheduled to join in the revelry Sunday, organizers said, with 11 from Massachusetts and others from Seattle to New Orleans to Minneapolis.
The annual parade wrapped up days of events, beginning Thursday with a new-to-the-festival free all-day HONK! U “Conference Celebrating 20 Years of Street Music Activism.” The first-time addition included presentations, workshops and more discussing the development of HONK!, organizers said.
The festival continued Friday and Saturday in Davis Square with street music, workshops and lantern parades.
The HONK! organizers noted that though international bands were not present, virtual performances would be broadcast from Brazil, Chile, Italy, England and more during Sunday’s celebrations.
PopUp Bagels, a rapidly expanding Connecticut-based chain famous for its “grip-rip-and-dip” interpretation of New York-style bagels, has opened its third Massachusetts location in Cambridge’s Harvard Square. The Cambridge store, at…
PopUp Bagels, a rapidly expanding Connecticut-based chain famous for its “grip-rip-and-dip” interpretation of New York-style bagels, has opened its third Massachusetts location in Cambridge’s Harvard Square.
The Cambridge store, at 1440 Massachusetts Ave., held a grand opening on Friday, Oct. 10. It operates daily from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
PopUp Bagels’ new Cambridge shop joins two existing Massachusetts locations. The first, which opened in January, is in Boston’s Seaport, 70 Pier 4 Blvd., Suite 330. The second, at 495 Revolution Drive in Somerville, opened in July.
PopUp Bagels boasts a signature serving style. The company invites customers to rip apart the bagels and dip them into “schmears” like cream cheese or butter, without slicing or toasting them.
According to a WickedLocal.com report, the company’s menu is intentionally limited to five types of bagels —plain, salt, sesame, poppy seed, and everything.
Adam Goldberg of Westport, Connecticut, founded PopUp Bagels during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Designs for an eight-story hotel-and-homes project incorporating the historic Harriet Jacobs House in Harvard Square drew debate Thursday at a Cambridge Historical Commission meeting, which ended with a 7-0 vote for design work to continue with a “certificate of appropriateness with a condition.”
That means the project continues while considering compromises with its neighbors, and under a label that is a step forward from the vote at a Sept. 4 meeting. That one ended with the granting of a “certificate of appropriateness in principle,” meaning members were supportive enough to want more details.
Committee members expressed frustration at having to facilitate a political conversation, though. Member Liz Lyster said that their job is to assess public good and historical preservation, but the debate had become about the transition of the building into the neighborhood separate from the restoration of the Jacobs House.
“This is so frustrating that we’re in this position of litigating a political issue. It just sucks,” Lyster said.
Neighbors on Hilliard Street worry about what the building will look like and how it will affect their homes and privacy, and those concerns are having an effect on the project, moving the proposed structure back 8 feet from a fence line from the previous plan of 5 feet, removing balconies from the second and third stories and recessing or “chamfering” as many as five stories – creating stepbacks that reduce the building’s mass.
With the loss in square footage, the balance of uses is changing too, developers said. While the project was once described as having as many as 67 hotel rooms and 50 condominiums, now the ratio has switched to being predominantly homes.
“The setup right now looks closer to like 70-30 in terms of housing versus hotel,” developer Patrick Barrett told commissioners, “as a ratio, because we haven’t designed the units yet.”
Under city zoning laws, 15 to 16 of the possibly 50 residences would be inclusionary – identical to other units but set aside for people with lower incomes – and two of those would be three-bedroom homes, Barrett said. Three-bedroom homes are understood to be family-friendly.
“Our goal was 50,” Barrett said of residences. “I think we can do better … the last time 50-plus units dropped into Harvard Square, it was the 1900s, as my kids like to say. It was just a long time ago, and we haven’t really seen that kind of development here for lots of different reasons.”
The plan, with developers operating under the name 17 Story Street, involves demolishing a building at 129 Mount Auburn St., across a small corner parking lot from the Regency-style home built in 1846 that once belonged to the writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs. The Jacobs house would be moved 30 feet from 17 Story St. to the corner of Story and Mount Auburn streets to be restored. In addition to using the interior to honor Jacobs, abolitionist and author of the 1861 memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” a cafe would be added connect the house and building behind it. Also, “it will have hotel rooms or lodging house rooms on the second and third floor,” Barrett said.
In putting up the eight-story structure, developers would minimize tree removal, limit outdoor lighting and ensure the building would meet “passive house” standards, with insulation to reduce noise, they said.
Looking for more change
Neighbors say the changes are not enough.
“You asked the development team for meaningful changes to height and setback,” said Nicole Bryant, a resident on Hilliard Street, to commissioners. “This project remains essentially unchanged today from that which you saw one month ago.”
Another resident of Hilliard Street said conversations with developers had been futile.
“These meetings seem to have been little more than boxes to check off for them,” the resident said.
Their own architect
Noah Nathan, one of the Hilliard residents, referred to developer plans in telling commissioners, “The choice before you is not simply this exact design as drawn versus nothing. You have the latitude to seek a more appropriate scale, and I hope you continue to take it by imposing specific dimensional requirements.”
Bryant and other neighbors asking for height reductions and other changes said they had enlisted an architect of their own to show that more changes could be made. “The proposal we put together shows that there are viable designs that have greater setbacks and less overall mass of the project than the one that has been presented today,” another resident said.
Developers spoke against changes to the dimensions of the building, saying any decrease would have a detrimental effect on the amount of housing available and risk the project’s financial feasibility.
Plan for housing has fans
There was also support heard for the developer plans.
Jess Sheehan, a Central Square resident, argued that a shorter building, as Hilliard Street residents wanted, would mean fewer homes and that any delay in plans could increase costs. She said that with this, homes within the building would be made more expensive, which would go against inclusionary affordable housing.
“I don’t think the abutters are bad people, I don’t think they have bad intent,” Sheehan said. “But they are definitionally people who live in Harvard Square, and in asking you to mandate the removal of potential homes, they are asking you to deny to other families what they themselves already have.”
Steven Ortega, a resident of West Cambridge, said, “If it’s true that there’ll be 15 to 16 units built, then that’ll be 15 to 16 individuals or families who will have places to live.”
Massachusetts is home to several Indigenous tribes upholding vibrant cultures and active, engaged communities, and historically, Indigenous people lived in the state for thousands of years before European settlement. On Monday, we honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a celebration of their legacies, traditions, and heritage. Institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Institute of Contemporary Arts/Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will offer free admission. We’ve rounded up a few more events held in recognition of the holiday, and more, below.
Organized by artist Jeffrey Gibson and independent curator Jenelle Porter, “An Indigenous Present” displays 100 years of contemporary Indigenous art that “represent personal and collective narratives, describe specific and imagined places, and build upon cultural and aesthetic traditions,” according to the ICA website. It features the works of 15 artists, including Diné composer and musician Raven Chacon, and Caroline Monnet, an Anishinaabe French and Canadian contemporary artist and filmmaker. [Want more visual arts exhibit recommendations? Check out our fall guide.]
Dakota Mace, “So’II (Stars II),” 2022. Unique arrangement of 40 chemigrams. (Courtesy the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery)
The 20th annual HONK! Festival comes to Somerville for the weekend, bringing brass bands from around the world to the city’s streets. The event spotlights activist music groups participating in social engagement or political protest. On Thursday, Tufts University will co-host the conference HONK! U, offering panels, workshops and presentations about the history of street music activism. Concerts will be held in Union Square and Davis Square on Friday and Saturday, while the “Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet” Parade will traverse the roads leading to Harvard Square on Sunday, joining the Harvard Square Oktoberfest (come for beer gardens, craft and vintage markets, and more).
aNova Brazil, a band led by Brazilian-native Marcus Santos. (Courtesy HONK!)
A nicho is a small, embellished shadow box where mementos of deceased loved ones can be kept. At Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, multidisciplinary artist Brioch Ochoa will lead a two-hour workshop where participants will create these artifacts in honor of Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Ribbons, patterned papers and acrylic paints will be used to fabricate the nichos, and imagination is encouraged. To register, members pay $30, while nonmembers pay $35. The fees include museum admission, and guests are welcome to stay before and after to explore the exhibits.
Ceilidh YurenkaDenise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, at a City Council meeting in 2016.
The Cambridge City Council pushed pause Monday on a potential 22 percent hike in the commercial property tax rate, as city officials tried to ease concerns about the jump.
Councillor Paul Toner, who is not running for reelection, used his “charter right” to stop discussion, saying it would give the city “another two weeks for us to be able to let people settle down, absorb the information. Maybe the staff has a Zoom call with the business associations to answer their questions.” The decision is delayed until Oct. 20.
City manager Yi-An Huang welcomed the pause, acknowledging “a need to have engagement especially with the businesses that are saying, ‘Oh, this is a really high rate.’”
Huang, other staff and councillors had calming messages for commercial property owners about the proposed rate, which would shift to $14.07 from $11.52 per thousand dollars of assessed value. It was noted that total commercial property values fell by 11.5 percent based on market activity in 2024, which is studied to set property assessments for the current 2026 fiscal year. In contrast, total residential property values rose by 2.6 percent.
Values also varied across industry sectors, said Claire Spinner, assistant city manager for fiscal affairs. Laboratory space saw significant drops, while hotels did not, she said. That means an average increase in tax payments of 8 percent. “We are going to raise 8 percent more taxes, but how it will be felt across the class will be different,” Spinner said. She acknowledged some taxpayers “may indeed feel a 22 percent increase – if their value stayed exactly the same as last year and the rate increased by 22 percent.”
Restaurants and hotels will feel more of the brunt of the higher tax rate, retail somewhat less so, said Gayle Willett, the city’s director of assessment. Commercial property owners carry roughly two-thirds of Cambridge’s tax levy burden.
A staff memo for Monday’s hearing noted that even with a 22 percent increase, rates for Cambridge property owners – commercial and residential – remain the lowest in the area. Cambridge’s proposed $14.07 rate is below Brookline’s existing $16.56 rate, Newton’s $18.34, Somerville’s $18.92, Watertown’s $22.83 and Boston’s $25.96. Rates in those communities are likely to rise this year, staff noted.
City officials justified the proposed rate hikes by noting that it is contending with an economic downturn and federal hostility, so must both tighten its spending and lock down revenue. Cambridge’s $991.2 million budget, approved in June, was only 3.7 percent higher than last year’s; not long ago, annually there were “budget growth rates of 7, 8, 9 percent,” Huang said.
There’s a disconnect between a budget that rises only 3.7 percent and the higher property tax rate increases, Toner said, because the city has “to pay the bills for all the things we’ve accumulated over the years,” from universal prekindergarten to weekly recycling pickups.
Business struggles
The first public speaker on Monday was Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, who called for the vote to be postponed. On Tuesday, though, she seemed resigned to the rate increase. “I don’t think they can reconsider it,” Jillson said. “But I’m grateful to have it to chew on for a couple of weeks, to talk about what this really means.” She said the hearing was “a wakeup call.”
Stuart Rothman of First Cambridge Realty would like to see conversations held with business owners and tenants. Most of his commercial tenants have pass-through leases that put them on the hook for increased property costs. “I’m not saying [the rate increase is] unreasonable or reasonable, but there should be a conversation about it,” he said.
Some businesses may leave, warned Ted Galante, an architect based in Cambridge for 28 years. Galante’s Architecture Studio leases space, and said even if Cambridge tax rates are low compared with its neighbors, a square foot of office space in Harvard Square is $60, versus $35 in Boston’s Post Office Square. He knows of a firm that just signed a lease that moves it out of Cambridge, and said he too was “very seriously considering a move.”
In her public comments Monday, Jillson warned that while the rate might seem to affect mainly “large, possibly faceless, corporate property owners,” it would still wind up hurting small family firms and businesses that were struggling.
The next day Jillson said she follows the council fairly closely but still was taken by surprise by the arrival of the tax rate hearing. “There’s so much coming at us all the time now,” Jillson said. “We’re overwhelmed.”
This Sunday, the streets of Harvard Square will buzz with festivity and music, but drivers beware: the 46th annual Oktoberfest and Honk! Parade will cause significant traffic disruptions. Cambridge officials have announced that starting at 7 a.m., Massachusetts Avenue southbound, among other streets, will be closed for the parade which kicks off at noon from Davis Square, weaving its way to Harvard Square and signaling the jubilant opening for Oktoberfest’s revelers.
For those planning to navigate around Harvard Square this Sunday, adjustments are necessary; Massachusetts Avenue southbound from Garden to Brattle Street will be off-limits, the northbound lane however will remain a vein for the arterial flow of the neighborhood’s lifeblood — its traffic. The same fate awaits Brattle Street stretching to Story Street, Mount Auburn, Elliott, Church, and Palmer Streets. All will succumb to the festivities, their normal rhythms of vehicles and passersby transmuted into the thumping of feet and the heartbeats of tradition.
The city encourages attendees and residents alike to lean on alternative modes of transportation to dodge the logistical snarl that will undoubtedly take hold of the area. The tangle of road closures includes Mount Auburn Street from University Road to JFK and JFK Street from Mount Auburn and Massachusetts Avenue, as well as Elliott Street down to Bennett Street. Finding sanctuary in public transport may not only ease personal frustrations but will aide the city in cutting down the congestion that events of such magnitude invariably induce.
Expect the vibrant procession to depart at the chimes of noon, descending upon the city through its arteries, its final destination the historic heart of Harvard Square where entertainer will mingle with spectator in a dance as old as communal celebration itself. Oktoberfest activities, beginning at 11 a.m., will fill the air until 6 p.m., after which streets will reopen once cleanup crews dispel the last vestiges of the day’s euphoria and vendors retreat into memory.
For a detailed breakdown of the day’s proceedings, including parade paths and event scheduling, festivalgoers can chart their course through the city’s festivities at the official events page, giving insight into the cavalcade of cultural fanfare that awaits.
Please be advised of traffic impacts this Sunday, October 12, 2025, due to the Harvard Square Business Association’s 46th annual Oktoberfest and Honk! Parade. Please follow all posted detour signage, plan ahead, and consider using alternative routes or modes of transportation.
The following streets will be closed starting around 7 a.m. on Sunday, October 12th:
Massachusetts Avenue southbound from Garden Street to Brattle Street (northbound lane will remain open)
Brattle Street from Massachusetts Avenue to Story Street
Mount Auburn Street from University Road to JFK Street
JFK Street from Mount Auburn and Massachusetts Avenue
Elliott Street from Mount Auburn Street to Bennett Street
Church Street
Palmer Street
The parade will depart from Davis Square at noon, travel down Massachusetts Avenue, and arrive in Harvard Square around 1 p.m. Oktoberfest festivities will take place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Streets will reopen to traffic once the event area has been cleared and vendors have packed up.
Harvard students will be able to pop in to PopUp Bagels starting next Friday, Oct. 10, seven months after the East Coast bagel chain announced it was coming to Harvard Square.
“We have a DJ at every one of them, so it’ll be super high energy and great music. We have a couple little things planned that are a surprise the day of,” Harrington said.
“We have some fun stuff that we’re doing here as well, but they got to come and find out,” he added.
PopUp Bagels announced the new Harvard Square location back in March after opening its first Boston location in Seaport at the beginning of the year. Harrington said that since their announcement, people have been looking forward to the new bagel spot.
“People just constantly stepping in the door saying, ‘When are you opening?’ and ‘We’re super excited,’” Harrington said. “We’re right in front of the T stop, so everybody that comes up the steps sees it and generates a lot of buzz from that.”
Harvard Square is already home to Black Sheep Bagel Cafe and Pavement Coffeehouse, with Bagelsaurus just down the street. But Harrington said PopUp Bagels will make a name for itself as a no-frills eatery with bagels and rotating flavors of cream cheese and whipped butter.
“The bagels are fantastic,” Harrington said. “We don’t complicate them with eggs and turkey and lettuce and sprouts and figs. It’s just all about the bagel.”
Customers at PopUp Bagels must choose at least three bagels and a schmear when ordering, which Harrington said would appeal to Harvard students as they study and socialize on campus.
“Three bagels and a schmear is the perfect snack to grab when you’re heading to study for a midterm or crank out a paper or do a group project,” he added.
Harrington said he looks forward to the increased foot traffic from the many annual fall traditions in Harvard Square and Cambridge.
“We’re opening the day before Oktoberfest and a week before Head of the Charles, so we’re coming right into a really busy time of the year in Harvard Square,” Harrington said.
More than anything, Harrington wants PopUp Bagels to provide a positive pick-me-up for Harvard students, Cambridge residents, and other visitors at any time of the day.
“It’s the best six minutes of everybody’s day that walks in the door,” Harrington said. “It’s the happiest place in the world.”
“The tunes are great, the vibe is awesome, and then the bagels are incredible,” he added.
After its opening on Oct. 10, PopUp Bagels will begin their normal hours of operation — 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week.
Source: Google Street View