Square Change

Every generation laments the demise of its favorite neighborhood hangouts. But when two fixtures of Harvard Square life--The Book Case and Reading International--announced their closures last month after decades of business, we felt more than the usual neighborhood growing pains. Their departure is a sign that the worst may still be to come.

It isn't as though we haven't lost favorite Square landmarks before--last year, J.F. Olsen's & Co. closed after a century of service, having braved the Depression and two world wars.

But bookstores have always been the cornerstones of Harvard Square life. The legend is true--there are more bookstores per square foot here than in any other neighborhood in America. We have the nation's biggest poetry bookstore (Grolier's) and the largest foreign bookstore (Schoenhof's). We also have a few chain bookstores that can be found in any suburban mall.

The Book Case and Reading International were different. They weren't specialty shops. They didn't stock their shelves according to some corporate plan. They were bookstores for the common people.

Sure, Reading International couldn't offer 10 percent off all of its books the way bigger stores could. But its owners made special efforts to promote local authors, and they subscribed to small, funky journals that weren't available anywhere else.

The Book Case was one of the world's few perfect bookshops. Customers descended into a cozy maze of stacks and squeezed past the piles of books that cluttered the floor. The owners were friendly and the selection unbelievable. Generations of students fought Coop hegemony by buying their books at The Book Case. It was tough to spend less than an hour crawling around the subterranean stacks and impossible to leave without making at least one great, dirt-cheap find.

With the departure of these bookstores, an essential piece of Harvard Square life is gone.

What's left of the Harvard Square experience? The Gap, HMV, the Body Shop and the Limited are doing well, but they always do well. Even when individual stores suffer, they are supported by an entire chain of stores. HMV and Tower may be battling away, but beneath those giants struggle a dozen used-record shops trying to make ends meet.

Small mom and pop operations are feeling the squeeze for only one reason--high rents. Landowners know that if Bartley's can't pay its bills, Uno's will. And the biggest scrooge of them all is none other than Harvard, which owns most of the land in the Square.

The temporary bottom line aside, Harvard and other property owners must remember that soon there will be little reason for shoppers to come to Harvard Square at all. Why take the subway when there is a Gap in your own neighborhood? Why brave the streets of Cambridge when Tower Records looms on every suburban street corner?

Family-owned, independent shops have always operated on a low profit margin in the Square. There were very high rents throughout the 1980s. But the recession has claimed several victims in the last year, and the only shops that can afford to replace them in these tough times are national chains that can absorb a couple bad years and ride out the recession.

People don't come to Harvard Square for the national chains. They come for the stores that have always been there. In short, they come to the Square because it's different. If Harvard and the Square's few property managers let the recession permanently change the Square, then Harvard Square may as well change its name to the Harvard Strip Mall.

Asking Harvard to keep the character of the Square in mind is probably a futile plea. But the Square is largely the University's responsibility, and Harvard should act to ensure that places like The Book Case and Reading International don't suffer under its miserly demands for money. Otherwise, Harvard Square's transition from funky hangout to yuppie hell will leave us with nothing more than one giant franchise. Shoppers will stop making the trek to the Square and all area establishments will suffer.

We'll miss these bookstores. But unless Harvard and other property owners start valuing the historic character of the Square as well its potential for profit, things will only get worse.