There's meeting tonight — 5/11/17 — at Cambridge City Hall in which a petition will be presented to the city council pushing for landmark
designation for the Harvard Square Kiosk.
I won't be at that meeting. To put it bluntly, long-term
Cambridge resident that I am, I don't much care what happens to the kiosk. Some
years back, Out of Town News, which has been housed in the kiosk, was an
essential stopping point for getting periodicals from all over the world, on
all sorts of topics. These days, that function is superseded by the Internet.
Seriously? Who cares.
Last year the chess scene that had grown up around Holyoke
Center, not many feet from the kiosk, was demolished nearly over night by
Harvard University, with a minimum of public notice or participation in the
process. The stone chess tables, the chess scene, the tourists and natives who
gathered there in warm weather, and the musicians who played for that crowd made
it a lively public space, the last I know of in Cambridge, once celebrated for
its street life.
I don't care what happens the kiosk that time forgot —
unless it is replaced by provisions for a street scene, chess tables included,
that brings some real life back to the area. Barring that unlikely outcome, I
don't care about the kiosk. Granting it landmark status, keeping it around to warm
the hearts of tourists, will do nothing to save Cambridge from sterility.
Ugh. It takes a lot of work to sterilize that at least formerly vital scene. Are you sure it's not the lens? Has the scene moved elsewhere?
ReplyDelete>It takes a lot of work to sterilize that at least formerly vital scene.
ReplyDeleteCambridge was once famous for street musicians and performers. It took awhile to eradicate that. The final move came when Harvard tore up and demolished the storied chess scene in Holyoke Center, Cambridge's version of New York's Washington Square Park, which, as I wrote, served as a center of remaining street culture.
>Are you sure it's not the lens?
Thanks much for asking. See the above.
>Has the scene moved elsewhere?
Not in our fair city.