The second branch of the bookstore is set to open in the spring of 2023.
Harvard Book Store, a landmark of Harvard Square that’s been around since 1932, announced Thursday that it’s opening a second location, in the Prudential Center in Boston next spring.
The new store will be over 29,000 square feet and take the space of Barnes and Noble, which closed on June 19.
“We are delighted to bring Harvard Book Store to the City of Boston, while continuing our long tradition of bookselling at our flagship Cambridge location,” said Jeff Mayersohn, co-owner of the Harvard Book Store with his wife, Linda Seamonson, and John Henry, who also owns Boston Globe Media, including Boston.com.
Operating under a long-term lease with Boston Properties, owner of the Prudential Center, the new location is slated to have a “state-of-the-art event space” and “vibrant community spaces” in addition to a wide range of books, children’s included, according to a release.
“This is an ambitious project and we think we’ve established an excellent team to bring it to fruition,” Mayersohn said. “We envision it as an important addition to the literary life in the city and a welcoming space serving the many communities of Boston. We thank John and Linda Henry, whose recent investment in our company enables us to expand in this way.”
The independent store has a robust author event series of book talks and signings in Cambridge. Bryan Koop, vice president of Boston Properties for the Boston region, referenced these as a specific draw for the store to be in the Prudential Center.
This addition is the latest in a recent string of indie bookstore locations opening in Boston. A new bookstore called Beacon Hill Books & Cafe is opening in Beacon Hill this fall and includes a café on the first floor with three stories of books above it. Porter Square Books opened a second branch in the Seaport called Porter Square Books: Boston Edition this past fall, partnering with the creative writing nonprofit GrubStreet. Like the Harvard Book Store, their second location took them out of Cambridge and into Boston for the first time.
The move comes several months after Red Sox and Globe owner John Henry invested in the nearly-century-old bookstore.
By Diti Kohli Globe Staff,Updated July 14, 2022, 2:58 p.m.
The Harvard Book Store in Cambridge.DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
Come spring 2023, a beloved Cambridge literary institution will add a second home across the Charles.
Harvard Book Store announced Wednesday the launch of a second location in the Prudential Center — in the spot formerly occupied by Barnes & Noble — expanding its signature collection of novels, coffee table books, and stationery to Back Bay.
“This is an ambitious project,” said co-owner Jeff Mayersohn in a statement. “We think we’ve established an excellent team to bring it to fruition. We envision it as an important addition to the literary life in the city.”
Alex Meriwether, the bookstore’s chief creative officer and former general manager, said this is the end of the road for a long-held vision.
“Jeff has been working on the idea for a second location for many years, certainly pre-pandemic, until our attention turned to month-to-month survival,” he said. “Now, the idea is to create a destination bookstore for locals and tourists alike.”
The move comes several months after the Harvard Book Store announced a new partnership with John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox and The Boston Globe. In December 2021, Henry came on as a part-owner of the shop, with plans to stabilize the original Harvard Square location and perhaps expansion beyond that.
Henry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Now, the new 29,000-square-foot location in Back Bay — which Barnes & Noble vacated when its lease ended in June — will house a host of titles, including a large children’s literature section. There will also be an event space for speaker series, community classes, and meetings.
Traffic from events could be a boon for the Prudential and “attract many thousands of visitors annually,” said Bryan Koop, Boston Properties’ executive vice president for Boston, in a statement.
It’s quite a reversal for Harvard Book Store, which struggled immensely earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. The owners continued to pay employees during the closure without revenue from its sales and literary events. “We had very few months of cash left,” Mayersohn told the Globe in December.
Federal funding, customer support, and an influx of money from the Henrys jolted it back to life soon thereafter, allowing the shop to renovate its decades-old fixtures and update its website.
The upcoming location paves a strong path forward for the nearly-century old book store, even as the particulars are coming together.
“We have not yet announced all of the details,” a press release read, “but we look forward to sharing these with you in the very near future.
Harvard Book Store owners Jeff Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson announced today they’re opening a second branch across the river – in the Prudential Center space Barnes & Noble vacated in June.
This is quite an ambitious project. The new store will comprise nearly 30,000 square feet, a space approximately five times the size of our Cambridge store. The additional space will allow us to do things that we can’t accomplish in Cambridge. For example, there will be a large section dedicated to children’s literature. There will also be a state-of-the-art event space that will host events for our award-winning speaker series and will also be available for community activities such as classes, lectures, and meetings. The new store is being designed as a warm, welcoming space that will continue our long tradition of commitment to storytelling and the written word and will be a major addition to literary life in Greater Boston.
They said they hope to open the new location in the spring.
Mayersohn and Seamonson continued that Harvard Square book shoppers can expect nothing to change:
In fact, in the next few months, we will begin renovation projects in Cambridge that will both improve the use of that space and make it more welcoming for customers, all while continuing our commitment to being a world-class academic bookstore.
The inscription on the casket just read “Michael”, fitting, as from all appearances, the deceased led a simple life. At the time of death, he had no home, no car, and no discernible possessions but for a few blankets and the clothes on his back. And even those were spare: light brown khakis with some grass stains, a pink and purple tie-dye shirt, a black Patagonia style jacket. No belt or shoes, despite the efforts of local business owners to provide them over the many months that Michael called Harvard Square home.
Celebrating, remembering ‘Michael’
No one can even be sure if his name was Michael, much less what his last name might have been.
For 7-plus months after Michael was discovered, dead, in front of the entrance to the Bank of America branch in the square, state authorities – in particular, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner – had worked to investigate the manner in which he died (required by law for any deaths that occur under violent, suspicious, or unexplained circumstances). CMEO conducted a thorough autopsy, performed extensive genetic testing, and tried DNA matching through a vast, national database.
Community members, led by Harvard Square Business Association Denise Jilson inquired about Michael’s case all along, wanting to look out for him in death as they had tried to in life. What would happen to his body? Would they be allowed to create a loving – and lasting – farewell for a man who touched them all, in different ways, almost every day?
Month after month, authorities said little beyond “can’t say,” hamstrung by their inability to identify any next of kin. But on May 24, their message shifted dramatically: “[we] have exhausted all efforts in trying make a positive identification for the Unknown Male that was pronounced dead at Mt. Auburn Hospital. He will be released from our office as Unknown.” Suddenly, Michael was on his way back into the arms of a community that hoped to celebrate him as respectfully as they would any other resident of the square.
“One of my big hopes for this gathering today is that Michael is a catalyst for us to see each other and to look at each other with a different sense of truth. To actually recognize each other as we pass …and maybe take that one step further beyond just seeing, and know each other.”
The Rev. Adam Dyer stood on the front steps of the First Parish Church in Harvard Square, welcoming a small group in celebration and remembrance of Michael’s life.
A proper sendoff
Mother Nature must have been part of the planning committee. The skies could hardly have been bluer as Tim Keefe of Keefe Funeral Homes pulled the hearse onto the sidewalk in front of the church, opening the back door so that people could linger, look, and honor the deceased. Members of the Cambridge police department stood watch nearby. Some had been among the first to find Michael, lying expressionless and alone, that November morning.
Passersby stopped and seemed to take note as others came forward to deliver additional remarks. Among them, Harvard Extension School student, Kody Christensen, who was among the first to find Michael the morning he passed and who revisited a tribute he had penned and shared publicly soon after Michael’s death. Councilor Marc McGovern and Cambridge Police Chief Christine Elow also spoke.
The mood was a strange mix of understated sadness and joy, appropriate for a man whose daily life was a challenge but who, despite it all, very quietly, left a lasting mark for the better on those who came to know of him.
Dyer thanked those in attendance for honoring Michael, adding “may Michael’s life continue to shine within each of us…may we honor his memory in all we do.”
And with that, a short 30 minutes after it had begun, the service ended. The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band – a local Honk! favorite – again eased into a mournful dirge before quickly pivoting to a rousing, “stomp your foot”-style Dixieland tune, sending the gatherers on their way and Michael off, finally, to his resting place in a Cambridge Cemetery plot, donated by Paine Senior Services.
As she left, Jillson, who had taken the lead in seeing Michael’s case through to a proper end, once again turned the spotlight toward all those who had a hand in the day: Keefe Funeral Home (Tim Keefe) who had prepared Michael for burial and contributed the inscribed casket and transportation; Dyer who had offered to conduct the service and provide the streetside venue; Paine Senior Services, for their generous donation of a plot; and her HSBA board who trusted her to do whatever she needed to do, in order to do “right’ for another member of the square community. Behind her dark glasses, she murmured “we are blessed,” something Michael might have wanted to say to her as well.
Community members interested in making a donation in Michael’s name are encouraged to consider Paine Senior Services, the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and the Capuchin Fathers, and through HSBA, the community refrigerator, located in Harvard Square for all those in need.
Soft serve ice cream store Taiyaki NYC will open a Harvard Square location in July, joining a growing number of chains setting up shop in the area.
Taiyaki NYC, which serves ice cream in fish-shaped waffles, gained fame on social media channels like Instagram and TikTok for its aesthetically-pleasing menu options. Its Harvard Square location will be the chain’s second store in Massachusetts.
Jimmy Chen, a co-founder of Taiyaki NYC, wrote in an email that the Harvard location will open at 6 Church St. — the former home of the clothing store Mint Julep, which has since moved to 43 Battle St. — in mid- to late July. The ice cream store will later be joined by the Dough Club, a sibling Japanese mochi doughnut store.
Taiyaki NYC will compete with the ice cream options currently available in the Square, which include Ben & Jerry’s, J.P. Licks, Milk Bar, Berryline, Lizzy’s, and Amorino Gelato.
Even before its official opening, some Harvard students said they will choose to frequent Taiyaki NYC over its other ice cream competitors.
Abiba Imam Dyuti ’24 said the store’s iconic waffle cone will be the deciding factor for her.
“The Taiyaki cone — I love it,” Dyuti said. “The Taiyaki cone itself is in this fish shape, but they also have this bear shape which is also cute.”
“It tastes really good,” she added.
Taiyaki NYC’s cones are an adaptation of an eponymous traditional Japanese treat. By Miles J. Herszenhorn
Taiyaki NYC’s emblematic cones are an adaptation of a traditional Japanese treat. Filled with red bean paste, taiyaki — which translates to “baked fish” — are fish-shaped cakes served as street food. The ice cream shop also offers traditional Japanese teas like matcha and hōjicha as soft serve flavors.
Nicole J. Bugliosi ’24 said she likes Taiyaki NYC because of its unique ice cream.
“You can’t really get it anywhere else,” Bugliosi said. “It just makes it really fun.”
While Taiyaki NYC offers six soft serve flavors, Bugliosi said she does not plan on being adventurous.
“I’m kind of boring, so I always get vanilla,” she said. “But if you want to try more interesting flavors, they have them.”
Julian F. Schmitt ’22-’23 said if Taiyaki NYC is similarly priced to other ice cream spots around campus, he expects it to be “on the expensive side.” (Ice cream served in the fish-shaped waffle cone costs eight dollars at Taiyaki NYC’s Boston Seaport location.)
“I guess what you’re paying for [is] the experience as opposed to necessarily the ice cream,” Schmitt said.
Schmitt added “the price is a deterrent” for him from frequenting Taiyaki NYC, but he did not rule out visiting once.
“I would be excited to go in and look around and see what’s there,” he said.
While Cambridge faces freezing winters for a large part of the school year, students said that snow, rain, or shine, they will not be stopped from getting ice cream in the Square throughout the year.
“Ice cream is best when it’s cold,” Dyuti said. “It doesn’t matter what season it is and what temperature it is.”
ON A HOT June afternoon, the Harvard Square Pit was quiet. In the submerged hangout spot beside the entrance to the MBTA’s Red Line station, pigeons outnumbered people even as commuters whizzed to and from work. Soon, these passersby will be staring at fences: in early July, the city of Cambridge will begin demolishing the Pit, a famous eighties and nineties enclave for free spirits, misfits, castaways, and those craving some spontaneous companionship.
The scene was a stark contrast to the “Pit-A-Palooza” festivities held a few days earlier on June 25. At the Saturday evening celebration of the popular counterculture locale, hosted (perhaps surprisingly) by the city of Cambridge and Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA), guests moshed to punk music, smoked marijuana, and reminisced about a spot that had served such a big part of their lives.
Cambridge City Councilor Marc McGovern, who helped organize the event, remembered hanging out in the Pit in 1983 as a 14-year-old “pseudo punk rocker” who donned spike hair, a leather jacket, and combat boots. “And so I gravitated to that scene,” he says in an interview. “I spent a lot of hours in that pit.” The “Pit kids” or “Pit rats” he encountered varied widely in background. Some were homeless or estranged from their families. Others were dropped off by parents in BMWs and searched for a sense of community they couldn’t find at school. “Everybody sort of came together there,” he recalls, “which is what made it so interesting.” Author Jen Deaderick, another co-host of the event, often visited the Pit from her childhood home in Brookline. She stressed how important the spot was for teenagers at a time with no cell phones. “If you wanted to find your friends, you would just go to a place where your friends already hung out,” she says. “And so that was what the Pit was.”
Often, the Pit community provided support to those who really needed it. When a group tried to jump McGovern in Harvard Square, some of the older “Pit kids” told the group to leave him alone. “I ended up becoming friends with them over the years—and still am friends with them,” he says. “And so, that was something that always stuck out for me—feeling like, ‘Okay, I do kind of belong here.’” Many resonate with that feeling of belonging. A Facebook page dedicated to the Harvard Pit has grown to more than 2,000 members since its creation in 2020; in the last month alone, members have shared hundreds of stories, photos, and videos of a place that held great importance for them.
While the Pit was a supportive place for many, a joint statement from the HSBA and the City of Cambridge reminded readers that the Pit was not always a safe place. “Some of the [Pit] rats were victims of violence and sexual assault,” the statement reads, “and their experiences are the dark side of this otherwise positive experience.” In 2001, gang members sexually assaulted and murdered 22-year-old Io Nachtwey, a homeless woman from Hawaii, and tried to recruit Pit kids into an organized crime ring. “It’s important to acknowledge that it wasn’t all good,” McGovern says. “There were a lot of people who had really traumatic experiences there.”
Now, the sunken hangout spot will be replaced with a more level plaza with ample seating that will bring the area into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Denise Jillson, executive director of the HSBA, says the idea has been in the works since 2011, when her organization asked a landscape architect to help restore the famous Harvard Square Kiosk (which is protected by its listing on the National Register of Historic Places) and the surrounding area. They approached the Cambridge City Council in 2012 with more of a vision than a precise plan. Nearly a decade later, in 2021, with $8.3 million in funding from the city, work on the kiosk began. (It is no longer home to Out of Town News, and is in fact being converted into a visitor center—to the regret of newsstand patrons.) She says construction on the Pit will begin within the first two weeks of July—not long after the Pit-A-Palooza event.
As a result, the plaza will be out of commission for a while; she predicts between 18 and 24 months. (The City estimates a completion date in November 2022 for the kiosk and 2023 for the plaza.) McGovern looks forward to the changes. “I hope that [the construction] gets the area back to being a place where people gather,” he says. “It really hasn’t been that for a long time.”
Leah Samura’s mission is to sell cannabis to your friends, parents and grandparents. Photo courtesy of Leah Samura
Harvard Square’s first cannabis dispensary — and its first Black-woman-owned business — is on track to open in September, CEO Leah Samura tells Axios.
Driving the news: Yamba Boutique is undergoing architectural review as Samura prepares for its opening.
It would be the city’s second dispensary. Central Square’s Yamba Market — owned by Samura’s husband, Sieh, and their business partner, Sean Hope — was the first.
Why it matters: The state’s fast-growing cannabis industry remains predominantly white and male, with Black and brown entrepreneurs mostly shut out of financing and commercial real estate opportunities.
The state has an application process for license holders who were disproportionately affected by the war on drugs, or who live in communities affected by it.
The crowd Saturday at Pit-A-Palooza in Harvard Square. (Photo: Victoria Rein)
A farewell party to Harvard Square’s “Pit” on Saturday – officially, Pit-A-Palooza – sparked nostalgia in several ways.
“There’s the cheap weed I remember,” a man in the crowd could be heard saying as community members lit up joints.
The event brought hundreds to the famed Pit, the area directly surrounding the Harvard Square subway station headhouse that’s due to be removed in a redesign of the brick plaza because of noncompliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Pit, a sunken area built in 1982 for public gatherings, was adopted by the Boston punk scene and other outcasts and unhoused youth as a place to gather and hang out without judgment.
Author Jen Deaderick, one of the event’s organizers with city councillor Marc McGovern, summarized the spirit of The Pit during a short speech: “We’re all freaks and weirdos.”
The band Colin of Arabia performs Saturday at Pit-A-Palooza. (Photo: Victoria Rein)
Now 54, Dave Unger first stumbled on The Pit and its subculture when he was just 12 years old while visiting his aunt in Central Square on weekends.
“We used to come up here and I would see the punks in The Pit and I was like, ‘Wow, these people are fucking cool,’” said Dave Unger, a veteran of Pit culture. “We’d party in The Pit – we couldn’t go to bars, we weren’t 21 – so that’s what we used to do, hang out in The Pit, go see ‘Rocky Horror’ over at the Harvard movie theater.” (Midnight shows of the cult 1975 film were a staple at the 10 Church St. AMC Loews Harvard Square 5 from 1984 to the cinema’s closing in July 2012.)
The Pit and Harvard Square plaza in a quiet moment in March 2020, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo: Marc Levy)
Live music was common in The Pit over the years, an aspect honored with a concert by Boston-based metal band Colin of Arabia.
The air smelled of sweat and marijuana as energetic fans surrounded frontman Colin Campbell, jumping and dancing – a genuine-seeming enjoyment of a commemorative concert lived in the moment, true to the spirit of the original, self-proclaimed pit kids or pit rats.
Fyrestar, a member of the performance group Full Body Cast, which brought some “Rocky Horror Picture Show” performances to the Saturday event (and who preferred to be referred to by an alias), attended Northeastern in the ’90s and said The Pit is where she and her friends would hang out.
Among those at Pit-A-Palooza on Saturday was one person with a sign saying “Keep The Pit, Lose the Rats in City Hall & the HSBA,” or Harvard Square Business Association. (Photo: Victoria Rein)
“Everybody was welcome here, everybody got along. There would be people drawing, painting, it was great,” she said. “It’s the end of an era, really. I hope the spirit lives on in the new plaza. I hope it’s as welcoming and no-judgment as it’s always been.”
Though eventgoers seemed to understand the value of making the T stop ADA-compliant, many expressed sadness at the thought of The Pit’s destruction.
“I don’t know, it’s like the Boston Common – just a Boston thing that should always be here,” Unger said. “It’s a bummer, man. It’s a fucking shame.”
The celebration ran from 6 to 10 p.m. and included a beer garden, a fundraiser for the Bridge Over Troubled Waters medical van and Narcan opioid-overdose response training in addition to the entertainment to mark Pit Rat Day in Harvard Square.
Though renovations to the plaza mean “we will lose the physical appearance of The Pit, this area will continue to be a welcoming place for young people to gather,” McGovern said.
The organizers of Pit-A-Palooza are aware of the irony. They’re putting on an organized, permitted event to celebrate the impending demise of Harvard Square’s longtime home of anarchy, spontaneity and youth culture: the Pit.
The sunken area behind the entrance to the Harvard MBTA station was originally designed with the intent of showcasing street performers — and at times it did. But within months of being unveiled as part of the 1982 Red Line extension, the Pit became a gathering place for punks and outcasts. With renovations about to replace the Pit with a plaza, a group of self-described “Pit Rats” are gathering for a reunion and celebration called Pit-A-Palooza on June 25.
Now here is an event fit for more than a few former DigBoston contributors.
Long live the Pit! Here’s what the organizers are planning …
The City of Cambridge, City Councillor Marc McGovern, Cambridge resident and author, Jen Deaderick and the Harvard Square Business Association are excited to announce Pit-A-Palooza, a celebration of the notorious and revered Harvard Square “Pit” and those who called it home. The festivities kick off at 6pm in The Pit and adjacent Dunster Street. Relive the glory days of the 80s and 90s and dance, reminisce, sing and make some noise! Bring your old photos! Dress the part – drag out your fishnets, leather and studs! Show your kids how cool you were!
In conjunction with the honoring this much loved and storied gathering spot, the City of Cambridge has proclaimed June 25, 2022 to be “Pit Rat Day”.
