Cambridge, Mass.

If Cambridge were a mall, Harvard would be the anchor tenant. Harvard occupies a huge chunk of real estate on both sides of the Charles River with the Harvard Business School and the athletic complex sitting on the Boston bank. On halfway decent days skulls are run down wide ramps into the river and students, faculty and alums row for exercise alone or in crews. There are several boat houses dotting the riverside. Harvard consists of a trillion red bricks stacked and mortared into various types of architecture.
The oldest part of the college is surrounded by a wall, brick pilasters and ornate brick and stone gates linked with wrought iron fencing. It is an imposing place of stone, brick and granite, oblique walkways, towers, trees and statues. The wide bank of granite steps that sweep across the entire front of the library are still in winter mode. Signs warn one away from the potentially slippery slope and onto a temporary set of stairs up the center where they have overlain boards with nonskid tape on the steps and installed handrails. Tourist standing at the top of these stairs can take a nice photo of the white steepled chapel across the quad. Harvard is one of those places that is part of the national consciousness and, like New York City, we have some sense of the place even if we have never been there.
It’s spring break and gawkers and walkers roam the campus. Just outside the front gate is Harvard Square, not square at all, just a series of curves with the T Station plopped down in the middle and the Harvard Coop across the street. It’s busy and it’s retail. Polite, articulate, but loud panhandlers lurk near the entrance to the station. A short distance down the street is a  cab stand. All the drivers are African and they carry on a wild conversation that sounds like, “Jambu laloo gora bomboo.” Very musical. Lots of vowels and soft consonants. Other languages add to the sound mix as well as sirens, honking horns and truck engines. The pedestrians are young, multiethnic, purposeful and confident. They are of Harvard where tuition and fees have reached the astronomical sum of $45,000. They seem unconcerned that it will cost nearly two hundred grand to see them graduate. Near Harvard Square are the headquarters of Frick and Frack—Tom and Ray of Public Radio’s Car Talk. On a side street is the odd little characture of a building that houses The Harvard Lampoon. It sits on a island in the middle of a busy street with a smirking face of doors and windows designed into the facade. Tall pointed steeples accent the skyline including the unusual stone faced steeple of the First Baptist Church. The entire aspect of the Harvard section of Cambridge has an English air, no doubt by design. A few blocks down Massachusetts Avenue towards Center Square I discovered the  Greater Boston Buddhist Cultural Center
which has a quiet dining room offering a vegetarian lunch for $5.95. A nice hideout in the cityscape.
Cambridge heads towards Boston on several main thoroughfares: Cambridge Street, Washington and Massachusetts Avenue. It’s about two miles from Cambridge to downtown Boston, a nice walk. The Mass Ave. route will lead you to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge’s other claim to fame. MIT does not have the same New England ambiance of Harvard. It’s newer, less affected, sprawling, utilitarian. There is some wild architecture.
Frank Gehry’s Data Center stopped us in our tracks. Between Harvard and MIT and away from the main retail arterials are single family neighborhoods of nice frame houses, little pocket parks and distinguished looking apartment buildings. Along the retail corridors there are lots of Indian buffet lunches, odd shops and coffee bars. Cambridge has a nice feel from one end to the other. Real estate is dear. Parking places are rare and often require a permit. The people are polite and not unfriendly. Bus drivers will actually answer your questions without any attitude. If one had to be stuck in the northeast and could afford it, Cambridge wouldn’t be too bad.