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Students, perhaps future Nobel Prize winners among them, regularly take to Killian Court's grassy area at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for rounds of ultimate Frisbee. A student-led tour covers some of the campus highlights. (CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS, LOS ANGELES TIMES / February 20, 2007) |
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -
Hanging around in Cambridge has its drawbacks. You may feel undereducated, maybe even IQ-impaired. But spend the time anyway.
This country's first college town is full of far more American history, smart shops, cool museums, inviting restaurants and all-around entertainment than your average city of 95,000.
Harvard University sprawls on about 380 acres at one edge of Cambridge. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology sits on 168 acres at another edge. The Charles River bends around both campuses, and the tree-lined streets should be exploding now with red and gold leaves.
Welcome to Cambridge 101.
1. Everyone has an opinion in Harvard Square, and everyone has an opinion on Harvard Square. Old-timers bemoan the real estate boom that banished much of the neighborhood's Bohemian feel, but newcomers love bumping into big shots who were just on CNN.
2. If you can't get out on the Charles, you should at least get over it. At the least hint of decent weather, the rowers and sailors of Cambridge take to the water. You can rent a vessel (Charles River Canoe & Kayak, paddleboston.com) and join them. Or walk or run or bike along the water's edge. Or stand above the water on the Harvard-adjacent Weeks Foot Bridge and watch the world go by.
3. No matter how much fun it is to say, it's unwise to pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd. Leave your vehicle far away, and dodge the congestion around Harvard Square by exploring Cambridge by foot, bike, bus or subway train. Also, don't say Massachusetts Avenue. (The shorthand is Mass Ave.)
4. You can do Harvard for free, with or without snark. Founded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S. The sticker price for undergrads is about $49,000 a year for tuition, room, board and incidentals, and the alumni list includes seven presidents. You will hear more along these lines on the official student-led Harvard tour. It's free and lasts about an hour.
Since 2006, Unofficial Tours has been offering "Hahvahd" tours, also led by students, who dish out more attitude. Nominally free, but a tip of $10 per person is suggested.
5. Even if all the other tourists are touching the John Harvard statue's toe, you shouldn't. The 19th century statue sits in the Old Yard, and generations of freshmen have made a tradition of mistreating the sculpture, often in, shall we say, the wee hours.
6. You never know what you're going to find inside those brick and stone buildings. That strange shrunken castle in the middle of Bow Street with the odd purple-and-yellow door and the leftover can of Pabst Blue Ribbon by the threshold? Headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon.
And that massive Victorian Gothic building on Quincy Street, the one with the stone walls, marble floors, walnut paneling, stained-glass windows, Volkswagen-size chandelier and 60-foot vaulted ceiling? That's Harvard's freshman dining hall.
7. As for museums, the Harvard Museum of Natural History is chock-full of stuffed mammals, centipedes in jars, butterflies under glass and 3,000 uncannily convincing glass flowers.
The other mandatory stop is the Harvard Art Museum's Sackler building. Because the campus Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums will be under renovation for the next few years, curators have chosen favorite pieces from those collections in a greatest-hits art exhibit called Re-View.
8. If you must revisit the Cambridge Police Department's globally famous arrest and release of professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in July, don't go looking for his house. Instead, look for Gates, a regular customer, in the crowd at Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers (aka Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, 1246 Massachusetts Ave.), a Mass Ave fixture since Bob Dylan and Joan Baez chowed down there in the 1960s.
9. Look both ways. The streets are teeming with New England drivers (not known for their congeniality) and Cambridge pedestrians, which is just a fancy way of saying jaywalkers. Maybe the locals will think you're a dweeb, waiting for a green light. But sometimes dweebs live longer.
10. And speaking of MIT, it's worth a visit. The Cambridge campus, just a mile and a half southeast of Harvard on Mass Ave, dates to 1916. The MIT campus and neighboring Kendall Square are full of big, bold and often cold modern buildings.
Most are known by numbers instead of names, even the grand entrance, aka Building 7.
MIT (undergrad sticker price: $50,000 yearly) alumni include moon-landing astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
11. If you have an extra 45 minutes, check out the MIT Museum. It's no match for the art and natural history collections at Harvard, but it has a batch of clever devices (robots, holograms) and explains how pranks pervade student culture.
In 1994, the kids put a police car on the roof of the campus' Great Dome. In 1982, an MIT frat crew inflated and harmlessly exploded a balloon on the 46-yard line of a Harvard-Yale football game. In 1998, the university's home page was replaced by an announcement that Walt Disney Co. had purchased MIT for $6.9 billion. Who says MIT isn't a million laughs?
csreynolds@tribune.com
If you go: College tours During Harvard's fall and spring academic sessions, students usually offer free official tours at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday. Tours shut down during winter break. In summer, the schedule typically expands to four tours a day Monday through Saturday. 617-495-1573, news.harvard.edu/guide/to_do
In September, October, March, April and May, Unofficial Tours offers its irreverent, pay-what-you-like Harvard tours at 10:45 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Friday through Monday. In summer, it offers six tours daily, usually lasting about 70 minutes. 617-674-7788, harvardtour.com
MIT's free student tours, usually 75 to 90 minutes, are offered at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, except during winter break (typically Dec. 15-Jan. 4) and federal holidays. 617-253-4795, web.mit.edu/infocenter/campustours.html
Also visit the Cambridge Office for Tourism site at cambridge-usa.org
This country's first college town is full of far more American history, smart shops, cool museums, inviting restaurants and all-around entertainment than your average city of 95,000.
Harvard University sprawls on about 380 acres at one edge of Cambridge. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology sits on 168 acres at another edge. The Charles River bends around both campuses, and the tree-lined streets should be exploding now with red and gold leaves.
Welcome to Cambridge 101.
1. Everyone has an opinion in Harvard Square, and everyone has an opinion on Harvard Square. Old-timers bemoan the real estate boom that banished much of the neighborhood's Bohemian feel, but newcomers love bumping into big shots who were just on CNN.
2. If you can't get out on the Charles, you should at least get over it. At the least hint of decent weather, the rowers and sailors of Cambridge take to the water. You can rent a vessel (Charles River Canoe & Kayak, paddleboston.com) and join them. Or walk or run or bike along the water's edge. Or stand above the water on the Harvard-adjacent Weeks Foot Bridge and watch the world go by.
3. No matter how much fun it is to say, it's unwise to pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd. Leave your vehicle far away, and dodge the congestion around Harvard Square by exploring Cambridge by foot, bike, bus or subway train. Also, don't say Massachusetts Avenue. (The shorthand is Mass Ave.)
4. You can do Harvard for free, with or without snark. Founded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S. The sticker price for undergrads is about $49,000 a year for tuition, room, board and incidentals, and the alumni list includes seven presidents. You will hear more along these lines on the official student-led Harvard tour. It's free and lasts about an hour.
Since 2006, Unofficial Tours has been offering "Hahvahd" tours, also led by students, who dish out more attitude. Nominally free, but a tip of $10 per person is suggested.
5. Even if all the other tourists are touching the John Harvard statue's toe, you shouldn't. The 19th century statue sits in the Old Yard, and generations of freshmen have made a tradition of mistreating the sculpture, often in, shall we say, the wee hours.
6. You never know what you're going to find inside those brick and stone buildings. That strange shrunken castle in the middle of Bow Street with the odd purple-and-yellow door and the leftover can of Pabst Blue Ribbon by the threshold? Headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon.
And that massive Victorian Gothic building on Quincy Street, the one with the stone walls, marble floors, walnut paneling, stained-glass windows, Volkswagen-size chandelier and 60-foot vaulted ceiling? That's Harvard's freshman dining hall.
7. As for museums, the Harvard Museum of Natural History is chock-full of stuffed mammals, centipedes in jars, butterflies under glass and 3,000 uncannily convincing glass flowers.
The other mandatory stop is the Harvard Art Museum's Sackler building. Because the campus Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums will be under renovation for the next few years, curators have chosen favorite pieces from those collections in a greatest-hits art exhibit called Re-View.
8. If you must revisit the Cambridge Police Department's globally famous arrest and release of professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in July, don't go looking for his house. Instead, look for Gates, a regular customer, in the crowd at Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers (aka Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, 1246 Massachusetts Ave.), a Mass Ave fixture since Bob Dylan and Joan Baez chowed down there in the 1960s.
9. Look both ways. The streets are teeming with New England drivers (not known for their congeniality) and Cambridge pedestrians, which is just a fancy way of saying jaywalkers. Maybe the locals will think you're a dweeb, waiting for a green light. But sometimes dweebs live longer.
10. And speaking of MIT, it's worth a visit. The Cambridge campus, just a mile and a half southeast of Harvard on Mass Ave, dates to 1916. The MIT campus and neighboring Kendall Square are full of big, bold and often cold modern buildings.
Most are known by numbers instead of names, even the grand entrance, aka Building 7.
MIT (undergrad sticker price: $50,000 yearly) alumni include moon-landing astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
11. If you have an extra 45 minutes, check out the MIT Museum. It's no match for the art and natural history collections at Harvard, but it has a batch of clever devices (robots, holograms) and explains how pranks pervade student culture.
In 1994, the kids put a police car on the roof of the campus' Great Dome. In 1982, an MIT frat crew inflated and harmlessly exploded a balloon on the 46-yard line of a Harvard-Yale football game. In 1998, the university's home page was replaced by an announcement that Walt Disney Co. had purchased MIT for $6.9 billion. Who says MIT isn't a million laughs?
csreynolds@tribune.com
If you go: College tours During Harvard's fall and spring academic sessions, students usually offer free official tours at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday. Tours shut down during winter break. In summer, the schedule typically expands to four tours a day Monday through Saturday. 617-495-1573, news.harvard.edu/guide/to_do
In September, October, March, April and May, Unofficial Tours offers its irreverent, pay-what-you-like Harvard tours at 10:45 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Friday through Monday. In summer, it offers six tours daily, usually lasting about 70 minutes. 617-674-7788, harvardtour.com
MIT's free student tours, usually 75 to 90 minutes, are offered at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, except during winter break (typically Dec. 15-Jan. 4) and federal holidays. 617-253-4795, web.mit.edu/infocenter/campustours.html
Also visit the Cambridge Office for Tourism site at cambridge-usa.org