Treeland: The High-Rises Harvard Never Built

In the 1970s, the University was primed to build an immense graduate student housing complex in the Riverside neighborhood — until grassroots resistance led it to scrap the project altogether. It was the last time Harvard tried to expand into Cambridge.

Riverside today

Riverside scrut 4

Peabody Terrace, built in 1964, features multiple high-rise towers and holds about 500 graduate student apartments.

Riverside scrut 3

A property is for sale in Cambridge's Riverside neighorhood. Even after Harvard stopped developing in the area, the neighborhood continued to gentrify.

Thick Blood

"I thought that my throat was closing up every morning. That my heart would suddenly stop. That I might choke on my dinner and require an emergency tracheotomy. "

The Muddy Pond: How the Arnold Arboretum’s Refuse Drowned Five Children

The Arboretum’s underbelly, the South Street tract, became its dumping ground — an area decidedly part of the Arboretum but distinct in purpose: it was the park for poor kids, filled with the refuse of the rich. When that refuse was all they had to play with, it turned deadly — decade after decade — while the institution seemed to close its eyes.

Muddy Pond Archdale Housing

The Return of the Woolly Mammoth

According to the team at Revive & Restore, a Bay Area nonprofit focused on the intersection between biotechnology and conservation, in partnership with Professor George M. Church of Harvard Medical School, a genetically-engineered woolly mammoth could be coming back soon to a tundra near you.

The 1976 Harvard Murder That None of Us Remember

Puopolo’s stabbing reverberated both at the University level and nationwide — yet eventually, his story stopped being told. Most current undergraduates would not know the Combat Zone existed, let alone that a Harvard student met his tragic end there.

When the Richest University Shortchanges its Workers

Harvard is the richest it has ever been, yet continues to deny custodial staff the contract extension they are asking for in the midst of a pandemic, leveraging this crisis as an opportunity to improve the University’s bottom line.