Tag Archives: History

Winding down with old friends at Tampopo

12 Jun

Since the announcement of the closure, people have been flocking by in droves for one last donburi bowl and to wish its owner, Yasumasa Ito, the best.

When 2025 became 2026, Yasumasa Ito decided 34 years was long enough and it was time to shut down Tampopo, the venerable Japanese noodle and donburi bowl bodega in the Lesley Building in Porter Square. Cambridge Day posted an appreciation piece highlighting our favorite dishes, and lauding Ito for maintaining high quality over the years. 

That story led to this story: around Memorial Day, the Day received an email from Kotaro Moria, who lives in Kanazawa — also known as “Little Kyoto” — in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture. Moria told us he appreciated our story, and it was a reason why he was coming to Boston to help Ito through the last 30 days of Tampopo’s existence.

Moria studied at Fisher College 16 years ago and worked for Ito while he was here. He now runs an IT and web design firm in Japan.

“I knew Tampopo was closing,” Morita said. “Another staff member asked me to make a website so customers could send messages to Ito-san. While I was working on it, I saw a recent photo of him. He looked thinner than I remembered, and I thought that this was hard on him, and I felt like I should go help. A few days later he took me up on it.”

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Reviews of “The Breadwinner,” “Pressure” and the Netflix documentary, “The Crash”

6 Jun

Exploring war (D-Day), gender, and true crime on film

“Pressure”

Who knew that the timing of D-Day was much ado about dueling meteorologists? Obviously, David Haig, whose play about this little-known chapter of the war gets the big-screen treatment in the capable hands of Anthony Maras (the deft thriller, “Hotel Mumbai”) — and Haig, who co-wrote the screenplay. The setting is the Southwick House — a sprawling mansion in England — some 72 hours before the planned invasion that would change the course of history. General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) tries to hone the fine details of the landing with the other commanders, including British general Bernard Montgomery and his U.S. counterpart, Omar Bradley. The big question is the weather.

Churchill recommends his chief weather guy, Scottish meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott, stoic and complex), who gets posted above Ike’s weather guy, Irving Krick (Chris Messina, Michael Jordan’s brash agent in “Air”) — and that’s where the rub comes. Krick, who notched great success in the North Africa campaigns, lives by almanacs and historical trends, while Stagg works from real-time data and tracks the current conditions. Two different methods, two different calls drive Ike and the command team bonkers with just two days until the launch. Stagg predicts 10-foot waves that would blow the landing force off course.

History books chronicle how it all plays out, but Maras and the inspired ensemble reenact it to a deeply compelling effect. Scott and Fraser, a long way from “Mummy” (1999)— anchor the film, with Damian Lewis stealing scenes as Montgomery, both anxious and devilishly cheeky. Kerry Condon makes Kay Summersby, Ike’s indispensable aide, feel essential, her warmth and resolve a counterweight to the chaos around her. Backstories about a failed earlier attempt, led by Ike, that got a lot of young men killed, and the bombing of the hospital where Stagg’s pregnant wife is convalescing, lend human depth. Some of the best insights of “Pressure” are the stark contrast between the British stiff upper lip and American maverick arrogance. The title is a play on weather pressure, the decision to go or not, and the weight of the world. Towards the end, the film shows some ancillary staging of the landing (the 82nd anniversary is nigh), but nothing that will end up in conversations with “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) or “The Longest Day” (1962).

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Unburied bricks in the Old Burying Ground

9 Apr

Harvard students from Hasty Pudding hold a different kind of social event, exposing a long-buried walkway.

Now that the snow has melted and spring is (tentatively) here, visitors can once again stroll the Old Burying Ground behind First Church, adjacent to Garden Street — on long-buried brick walkways that had been forgotten for decades.

The cemetery, one of the oldest in the country, is the resting place for an octet of Harvard presidents including the first, Henry Dunster, his successor Charles Chauncy, John Leverett and Edward Holyoke, as well as Neptune Frost, an enslaved man believed to have served in the Revolutionary War. But for years, there were no paths, only graves and open green space.

Last summer, Denise Jillson, the Harvard Square Business Association’s executive director, noticed what seemed to brick walkways, buried beneath sod. It turned out that the pathways were installed in the 1930s, with help from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), city officials said. Jillson, who has lived in Cambridge and Somerville most of her life, said she can’t remember ever seeing the brickwork.

Harvard University student volunteers worked to restore the path in the Old Burying Ground. Credit: Harvard Square Business Association

The paths were restored — improving accessibility for visitors — by Harvard students in the Hasty Pudding Club. They had asked Jillson about volunteer opportunities to fulfill community service requirements. Jillson said the students went “above and beyond” in their effort and commitment.

One lingering issue remains: ongoing maintenance of the pathways. Responsibility technically falls to the City of Cambridge, while Harvard oversees a small enclosed section. Jillson said she plans to work with the Department of Public Works (DPW) and use HSBA resources — including staff and interns — to maintain the paths.

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Unmended wall in Harvard Square needs a few good neighbors

2 Apr

Historic wall in Harvard Square has become “a prairie dog village … but with rats.” And there isn’t money to repair it.

A historic wall in Harvard Square may be up against it, as business owners and city officials are banging their heads against the problem of how to fix it.

The stone wall was built more than 200 years ago, mostly hidden behind Charlie’s Beer Garden, was erected in the late 1700s and early 1800s to channel the spring-fed Town Creek to the Charles River. The project made Winthrop Square — then a knoll and the heart of Harvard Square — a more stable and level gathering spot by protecting it from a creek winding toward the Charles River.

The wall might also have been intended for a more ambitious project: a wharf on Eliot Street, said Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission. Like the West End in Boston, some parts of Cambridge near the Charles River were previously underwater and later filled in.

The wall partially collapsed in 2020 and was never repaired. Scarce funding and complicated jurisdiction left it crumbling, and rats — lots of rats — moved in. Last year, Denise Jillson, the Harvard Square Business Association’s executive director, asked public health experts in Cambridge and at Harvard University for help analyzing the problem.

“That site is akin to a prairie dog village … but with rats,” said Richard J. Pollack, Harvard’s senior environmental public health officer.

In March, Jillson issued a release calling on the community and stakeholders to “together to find a solution to the complex challenge of preserving this historical relic that sits on private property.” The release included an illustrated comic about the wall and its history created by Caro Taylor, a Cambridge resident and a junior at the Commonwealth School in Boston who was an intern at the HSBA last summer.

The “Old Stone Wall” runs from Winthrop Street, through Charlie’s Beer Garden, and out to Eliot Street. The better-preserved section, which divides Charlie’s and the former Red House restaurant (soon to be relaunched as the Cox Hicks Club), is an impressive 8- to 10-foot high structure, still intact. The collapsed section of the wall — adjacent to Eliot Street, tucked behind the IHOP — is not publicly visible except through a small alley. Here the wall is 4 or 5 feet tall.

A combination of factors likely contributed to its deterioration, according to the city and the Harvard Square Business Association: age, erosion, weather, ongoing disturbances from area construction, and rats.

A relatively intact section of a historic wall in the Harvard Square alleyway between the former Red House and Charlie’s Kitchen. 

The wall was built with large fieldstones laid in a battered profile that lean inward — a technique used in early retaining walls to release pressure. The rocks were dry-laid to allow water to pass through the wall rather than build up behind it. The stones are local: Roxbury Puddingstone from that neighborhood’s Parker Hill and granite from quarries on the Boston Harbor Islands.

“It’s not the only stone wall in Harvard Square, but it is by far the largest and most significant,” Sullivan said.

The wall is located within the Harvard Square Conservation District, which means work requiring a building permit generally requires review by the historical commission. However, the commission’s jurisdiction applies only to features visible from a public way. Portions of the wall are located behind buildings on private property and cannot be seen from the street, limiting the commission’s authority over those sections.

Given the wall’s historic value, the city appropriated $200,000 in Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds in 2021 to shore up the Eliot Street section of the wall. The estimated cost was about $400,000, however, and since it is on private property Sullivan  asked commercial property owners to contribute the additional $200,000.

Of the property owners, only Paul Overgaag, who owns 98 Winthrop Street (previously home to The Red House) and also Charlie’s Kitchen at 10 Eliot Street, agreed to contribute. Raj Dhanda, owner of the Crimson Galeria building and the property at 96 Winthrop Street (formerly the House of Blues, now The Boiling Crab), expressed concerns about the scope of the project and the financial burden. The project stalled, and in 2024, the city reallocated the CPA funds.

In a recent phone interview, Dhanda said he believed the city should have paid more of the project’s cost. He also disputed the $400,000 price tag. At the time, his own contractor estimated that the work would cost less than $200,000.

Rat traps line a dilapidated segment of a historic wall in the Harvard Square alleyway between the former Red House and the IHOP, parallel to Eliot Street. 

One of the primary concerns has been the growing rat population in the alley near the wall. As the wall continues to deteriorate, it might create even more hiding and nesting pockets for rats, Jillson said. The imminent public health risks from rats — and their recent surge in Cambridge — have been well documented. At a public meeting last year, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang said, “These rodents are, as I understand it, reproducing faster than we can possibly catch up.”

Jillson also fears that the burrowing rats might also be destabilizing the soil and thus contributing to the wall’s deterioration. “That wall is basically infested with rodents, and it’s compromising the integrity of the soil,” she said.

The alleyway behind the Too Hot Sichuan restaurant and IHOP is a hotbed of rat activity in the square, Pollack said. Had the restoration moved ahead, it would have included implementing a cement backing to the wall. That would have helped secure the stones and abate erosion. It would also have effectively blocked the rats from burrowing. 

Jillson hopes her press release spurs action. The economic climate, however, is significantly different.

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The Renty daguerreotypes find a home, but Harvard’s legal fight lingers

17 Mar

After six long years, the Harvard-Renty controversy came to a close last week when 15 daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor, his daughter Delia and five other enslaved people were transferred to the International African American Museum in South Carolina. The court case – Lanier vs. President & Fellows of Harvard College – had Renty’s great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Lanier, suing Harvard for possession of the 176-year-old depictions, which were commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz in 1850 as evidence for his racist polygenic theory that whites were intellectually superior to Blacks. Its conclusion in May came after many turns and twists. (Harvard has said it cannot confirm that Lanier is related to Renty.)

What stands out is that just after Lanier initiated the case in 2019, Harvard launched the Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery. That committee’s 2022 report showed that Harvard had enslaved 70 or more people and benefited financially and otherwise from their enslavement. It prompted Harvard to create a $100 million initiative to support descendant communities and educational initiatives tied to that legacy.

Yet it was during that time that Harvard fought Lanier’s claim, citing she lacked property rights – seeming antithetical to a mission to document and atone. To observers the question became: Was Harvard operating out of different ideological silos, or simply talking out of both sides of its mouth?

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Harvard Square sees the light again

5 Dec

By Tom Meek

Friday, December 5, 2025

The restored lighting at the Christian Science Reading Room on Church Street in Cambridge’s Harvard Square.

A burst of brightness came to a gloomy stretch of Church Street last month as the Christian Science Reading Room restored soft white art deco lighting absent from the building’s facade for decades.
The lights returned to Church Street, across from the long-dormant AMC Loews Harvard Square, at a Nov. 7 unveiling. Pictures of the alluring illumination have become a slow-trending wave on local social media.

“Now when you see it, it catches your eye,” said Jason Fredette of Poyant Signs, the New Bedford company that restored the lighting over nine months. “The building looks totally different.”
The first structure at the site was a blacksmith shop in the late 1800s, later a veterinary practice. That became mixed retail at the turn of the century as Harvard Square became more thickly settled and the subway arrived in 1912, said Cambridge Historical Commission executive director Charles Sullivan. The 23 Church St. structure was razed in favor of the current one-story 1936 art deco design by architect William Laurence Galvin as a new, upscale home for Cambridge Gas and Electric Light Co.

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Danehy Park at 35: a dump that became a glowing urban emerald

15 Sep

Cambridge’s Danehy Park is a green destination born from a dump.

Hard to believe Danehy Park turns 35 on Monday.

This 50-acre North Cambridge destination for lounging and recreation, picnicking, sports and events big and small hosts the annual Family Day on Saturday; a jazz festival in July; and Shakespeare troupes and the Oldtime Baseball Game, with guests of Red Sox royalty such as Lou Merloni, Oil Can Boyd, Jonathan Papelbon and Pedro Martinez suiting up at St. Peter’s Field.

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Talk returns of bridge for bikes and pedestrians behind museum, a $302M proposal from 2023

1 Sep

A rendering of a proposed “Riverwalk” for bicyclist and pedestrians across the Charles River. The Museum of Science refused use of the image without the watermark labeling it “conceptual.”

A bike lane and footpath bridge across the Charles River past the Museum of Science is being discussed again by state Department of Transportation officials as being in early stages of planning.

The “Riverwalk” path along the back of the Museum of Science would connect Lechmere Canal Park and the CambridgeSide mall with the Teddy Ebersol Field section of Boston’s Esplanade without having to navigate the bustle of the McGrath-O’Brien Highway in Cambridge and Somerville or Leverett Circle across the river.

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‘Hold,’ an installation suggesting enslavers’ ship, offers place for reflection in idyllic Radcliffe Yard

7 Jun

“Hold,” by Curry J. Hackett and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar, is installed in Radcliffe Yard near Harvard Square.

Idyllic Radcliffe Yard on Brattle Street in Harvard Square hosts rotating art exhibits in the cozy, verdant nook known as the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Garden. You know, those perfectly formed mounds of sand and gravel, the stately, tiered wooden walkway or perhaps the picturesque, grassy green knolls with wispy reeds reaching skyward. The Harvard Radcliffe Institute has held a biennial competition within the Harvard community since 2012 to produce and deliver these public installations.

This year’s winner, “Hold,” by Graduate School of Design students Curry J. Hackett and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar debuted before commencement ceremonies: an abstract rendering of a slave ship’s cargo hold. It may just be the institute’s most provocative installation to date, as it stirs the painful legacy of slavery in America and, more pointedly, at Harvard.

The 30-foot, U-shaped structure of wood and translucent plexiglass represents the nave or “hold” of a ship where those forcefully abducted from their native land, put in chains and separated from their families existed for long stretches under inhumane conditions – relative darkness and little food or water – as they were harried across the ocean and into the shackles of plantation enslavement. The rising wall on the Garden Street side of the installation is an evocation of the ship’s sail that caught the wind and drove the vessel.

The open, interactive design invites visitors to step inside the “Hold” and interact with history and the ripples of injustice across decades and centuries. “Sometimes when I go there I see a ruin. Other times I go there and I see a common,” Hackett said over coffee, reflecting on his own interactions with the piece.

Curry J. Hackett, left, and Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar at the May 15 opening event for “Hold.”  

Hackett and Soomar didn’t come together so much because of a Harvard connection, but because Soomar’s mentor at the University of Miami knew of Hackett, who had taught design at Howard University and the University of Tennessee. The inspiration for “Hold,” Soomar said, came as the two sought to create “an inviting safe place for Black and brown people and others marginalized who might not otherwise have such a space at Harvard.”

“We wanted to bring forth narratives and histories and create a conversation,” Soomar said.

A key conceptual bonding point for the two and the design were the writings of professor Katherine McKittrick, a prominent feminist and activist at Canada’s Queen’s University. Most specifically, her essay on “Plantation Futures” and the notion of enclosure and the walling off of Black peoples. The walls that enclose here go beyond the hull of the ship, as there are other barriers that sequester and separate, be they redlining, disproportionate incarceration or inequity in educational opportunity – the list is long. Additionally, the Radcliffe Institute, an interdisciplinary academic research center with a focus on issues of race and gender, invited applicants to propose topics and themes that might be related to “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery” report released in 2022 during the tenure of president Lawrence Bacow.

“Hold” is a multimedia experience. An audio component that enriches the sense of immersion is slated to change over the exhibit’s two-year tenure but now plays “A Baptism Story” – a bit of “personal oral history” as Hackett describes it. If you plug in your earbuds and scan the barcode on the plaque, you hear a soundscape Hackett recorded around Boston and the banks of the Charles River – the repetitive clanging of a pile driver at a construction site, the rustle of reeds and pronounced splashing of water – mixed with a looped phone conversation between Hackett and his mother recalling her baptism in rural Virginia and singing a few bars of a hymn.

The recording is meant to evoke spirituality and sensation, Hackett said, though much of the conversation is obfuscated by other sounds to protect the privacy between mother and son while conveying the essence of their relationship and bond. If you go at sunset, there are weatherproof speakers embedded in the ground around “Hold” that play the nearly 15-minute track. “It’s like you’re in the middle of a conversation,” Hackett said. The site-projected audio is far more affecting and immersive than the streamable alternative. Like a good Dolby system, you hear sounds in the aural fore and some that are faraway; from the splashes, you can practically feel your feet in the water. There’s also a track of chimes that play at 11 a.m. Sunday, the time many Black churches schedule services.

The soundscape for “Hold” will play on holidays such as Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Independence Day.

A new soundscape is expected every three months. Next up, Soomar, who was born in Miami and raised in Trinidad and Florida, will bring a collage of celebratory sounds from diasporic carnivals in Trinidad, London, Boston and Nigeria. “It’ll be like going from one room to another with different music,” Soomar said. From there, Hackett and Soomar, graduates from the School of Design as of May, will curate additional soundscapes, working with Radcliffe staff to draw from the Harvard community.

The ongoing process also provides an opportunity for Hackett and Soomar to reconnect with their creation. The hope is to have other events – community gatherings and perhaps panel talks, Hackett said.

Hackett, who has a design consultancy, is looking to return to the classroom, though where is still to be decided. Soomar will teach this summer at the Arts for Learning program in Miami and will likely launch his own consultancy.

The Radcliffe selection process was something of a sojourn of endurance. Hackett and Soomar submitted their initial design sketches and concept overview early in 2023 and were told that March they were one of five shortlisted entries. They submitted a prototype of their design and in June 2023 found they’d won. It was “fulfilling and humbling,” Soomar said.

As a result of the “Legacy of Slavery” report, the Bacow administration pledged $100 million to redress the stain of slavery in the university’s past, including a public memorial acknowledging the use of enslaved people to build and operate the school. Last week the memorial committee heads, English professor Tracy K. Smith and Carpenter Center director Dan I. Byers, resigned, citing pressures to rush the project. The timeline for the memorial is still unknown, though 2027 was an early goal. In the interim there is “Hold.”

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The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then Bigfoot

10 Feb

‘The Man Who Killed Hitler, Then Bigfoot’: FBI has work for a senior with experience

 

By Tom Meek 
Image result for the man who killed hitler and then

As far as freaky, gonzo film titles go, it’s pretty tough to top “The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot.” The film lands on streaming platforms Friday and was shot in part locally – out in Turners Falls, where the emerging director behind this era-hopping fantasy hails from.

Does it live up to the audaciousness of the title?

Well, yes and no. Checkboxes are checked and the film is bolstered quite vividly by the gorgeous cinematography of Alex Vendler with visual effects help from Douglas Trumbull, whose credits include “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) and “Blade Runner” (1982). Of course, the big draw is current Academy Award nominee Sam Elliott (for “A Star Is Born”) as the legendary man of the title, Calvin Barr, who gets it done during WWII. When things kick off we’re somewhere in the late ’70s in a podunk town, with Barr driving a classic boxy Ford LTD or the like that a band of punks want to take from him. Good luck. They get the drop on Barr initially, but this grizzled old vet with can-do valor and battle-tested brawn isn’t quite over the hill. In teasers we flash back to the younger Barr (a handsome Aidan Turner) as a multilingual infiltrator dressed up as an SS officer crisscrossing Germany on a quest to take out der Führer. We go back and forth until midway in, in the ’70s now, an FBI agent (Ron Livingston from “Office Space”) comes a-begging for Barr to saddle up and take out Sasquatch. Steve Austin must have been tied up.

The why’s a wispy WTF, something about being infected with the mother of all plagues with the creature isolated in a 50-mile dead zone north of the border (no life left but plants, we’re told, even though we see a stag once in); Barr’s the only one immune to the virus, and the only hope to take down the mangy beast. 

I’m not sure which quest is the more improbable onscreen, but writer-director Robert D. Krzykowski embraces them wholeheartedly, splicing the timelines together in nearly cohesive fashion. This first-time film is clearly a passion project, and you can bet Krzykowski is a massive Sam fan. (But then again, who isn’t?) 

Elliot and Turner, good individually, don’t seem to be the same human – the connection between icy wartime assassin and affable backwoods gent just happy to spend time with his pooch is more than decades and worlds apart. No matter. “The Man Who Shot Hitler” is a high-quality spectacle though, if it weren’t such a mashup of history, myth and a revered, drawling thespian, it might not draw our eye. A definite curio for the curious.

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