A look ’round the Square

Harvard University and a rainbow provide the backdrop for Harvard Square.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Jon Chase

Harvard Staff Photographer

September 30, 2022 3 min read

The seasons and the shops may change, but the spirit and streets are ever-exciting

How to describe Harvard Square? Busy and bustling with bikes and buses, cars and crowds, trucks and kick-scooters fighting for space on streets and crossways. Intimate with its hidden alleys and entryways, venerable (quirky tobacconist Leavitt and Peirce), modern (a fine wine shop, a cannabis boutique), upscale (Harvest Restaurant), and working-class (late-night standby Charlie’s Kitchen). Preppies in polo shirts and grunge punks in ragged jeans, coffee-table books and counter-culture comics, tweedy professors and four-year drop-ins and the drop-outs who never left … in short, the Square epitomizes all that’s eclectic, and that is precisely why we like it. With stylistic contrasts at every corner, the energy here is catching, challenging us to understand how the pieces all fit.

A man browses used books for sale on the brick terrace at the Harvard Square T Station. Harvard Square.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Christos Soillis, the owner of Felix Shoe Repair in Harvard Square since 1969. Personable and hard-working, Soillis stitches, mends, and dyes anything made of leather, including belts, handbags, saddlebags, jackets … and shoes, of course.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Harvard Square’s brick sidewalks are always filled with foot traffic.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

A street evangelist, one of many who pop up in the Square from time to time.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photogra

Calum Walter and his Vibe Check Band perform by the Harvard Coop on a cool but sunny weekday afternoon.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Harvard University

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photogra

A fan of Fauci — that’s director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci — dines on an unseasonably warm February day. A cut-steel street map of the Square, showing the footprints of buildings, marks the entrance to 25 JFK Street.

Photos by Rose Lincoln and Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographers

A scooter whizzes up Massachusetts Avenue.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Harvard University

Harvard University

Halloween 2021 makes a mark in the Square.

Photos by Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Halloween revelers walked up Mount Auburn Street during last year’s festivities.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Silhouetted late-night travelers enter and exit the Harvard T Station in the Square.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Pigeons (and a few sparrows) hang out along the ledges of the building housing CVS in the middle of Harvard Square. A photo of the uniquely designed Harvard Lampoon building is reflected in the window.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

“The Dutchman” plays his keyboard on Palmer Street on a summer evening. Dutch played and lectured at Harvard many years ago as part of a professor’s course on bringing the blues to a new generation. The Square has been a common venue for street performers for generations.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photogra

Harvard University

A jogger runs past an oversized, ivy-decorated “H” outside the Harvard Coop, long a fixture in the Square. Two green-legged men walk up Plympton Street past Leverett Hou

Photos by Jon Chase and Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photogra

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photogra

Holiday decorations in Harvard Square. A street musician wearing a Santa hat plays with his band in the run-up to the holidays

Photos by Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photograph

Students inside Peets Coffee can look up for a view of the Square in the snow.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer