City May Lose Bar, Gain Hamburger Shop

After a year and a half hiatus, the Ha' Penny pub reopened last Friday with the same low-ceiling, dim lights, stained-glass windows and assorted regulars that the pub has drawn since 1968.

Financial woes left the fate of the Ha' Penny in the hands of bankrupcy court until Vincent P. Fraumeni bought the bar last spring and refurbished it in two and a half months.

"The Ha' Penny is probably the oldest pub in the area," says the new owner. Fraumeni, who lives in Arlington but is originally from Cambridge, has served drinks at the Ha' Penny since his college days.

"This is a place to come after work to talk," says manager and occasional bartender Paul Leader. "It's one of the more regular bars in Cambridge. It's the kind of a bar where you develop a relationship with the bartenders."

"It's something that's been missing," says Alan R. Matson '85-6. Matson took time off from Harvard when the old Ha' Penny closed down, but declined to say if that's why he left.

Fraumeni also purchased the area upstairs from his bar which housed Ferdinand's before that restaurant went out of business. The bar owner plans to start a new restaurant in mid-November under the name--what else--Vincent's.

"I've had people come up to me and say that they've waited a year and a half for the place to open," says Leader. "When we opened last Friday, it was as if we had never closed."