Archives: Media Room

The City Council is demanding answers from the owner of the vacant Harvard Square Theater on what he plans to do with the property.  The council voted unanimously to have the City Manager is notify the owners of the old Harvard Square Theater that they must respond in writing to the City Manager within 30 days with their long-terms plans are for the 10 Church St. property. The property has been vacant for nearly five years, and was purchased by Gerald Chan in 2015.

After 161 years of business, Schoenhof’s Foreign Books plans to permanently shutter its doors on March 25.  Schoenhof’s, the self-described “oldest and largest foreign language-only bookstore in the United States,” was originally founded in Boston in 1856. The store moved to Cambridge in the early 1900s and has been at its Mount Auburn St. location in Harvard Square since 1983.

Mid-morning on a steely grey Saturday, a long line begins to form in the middle of Brattle Square. Three young women in knit caps and nametags stand at the head of the line, protected by a folding card table piled high with plates. The line curves along Brattle Street into Massachusetts Ave. all the way down to C’est Bon. It circles around the Church Street T-entrance and then doubles up, heading back towards Brattle. Line-waiters fidget in the cold, adjusting their winter gear, shushing their kids, and checking the time.

The weekend, chocoholics will descend on Cambridge for the ninth annual Harvard Square Chocolate Festival.  The three-day event, hosted by the Harvard Square Business Association, kicks off on Friday with several Harvard Square restaurants featuring chocolate-themed menus and vendors offering limited-time items and deals.

With major developments looming on the horizon, Harvard Square is in peril of losing all that makes it lively and lovable – unless the city can pull together and plan for its future, according to residents and city councilors. 

Benedetto, an Italian restaurant that emphasizes local ingredients, opened its doors this week in the Charles Hotel.  The restaurant replaces Rialto, an award-winning restaurant that served Italian food for more than 20 years before closing this summer, and joins a roster of high-end restaurants, including Parsnip, Henrietta’s Table, and Harvest in Harvard Square.

Harvard Square’s Hong Kong Restaurant has served its time for its October 2016 drug violation — almost.

As the architect of the project cited in your article, I take exception to your characterization of it.  My aim wasn’t a transformation of Harvard Square into a ‘mini Times Square.”

Julia Child was a regular customer, scouring the Out of Town News kiosk here for German and Italian cooking magazines.  John Kenneth Galbraith came to the kiosk every day to buy Le Monde.  And in 1975, a young man named Paul Allen picked up a copy of Popular Electronics with a picture of a boxy personal computer on the cover; he shared it with his friend Bill Gates, and, well, the rest is history.

The reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated.  We’re talking about the Algiers Coffee House in Harvard Square.  The beloved café/restaurant on Brattle Street isn’t closing after all.  A few weeks after a Facebook post abruptly announced that it would cease operations  posthaste, there’s word that Algiers Coffee House is back in business, albeit under new management.