Sounds
There is the small, dainty bell ringing as the door opens to a bookstore.
There are also church bells, not in the distance, but at close proximity.
A recording of Vivaldi drifts outside from a small shop.
There is a chorus of footsteps from people walking on brick, with pauses as they peer into shops.
There is the generalized din of traffic on Massachusetts Avenue, and the occasional isolated rumble of the Number One bus careening around the curve of Bow street.
Inside a bustling creperie, the chef with my order calls out "Daahveeed!"

The creperie is a fitting introduction to the Bow Street / Arrow Street neighborhood, since it is the place in the vicinity I visit most often. On a springlike winter day, the amusing chef was calling out names a la Francais, even though the crepes are far closer to San Francisco than Paris. I discovered it while walking back from the Cambridge Architectural Bookstore, and whenever I return the young Polish woman who makes fantastic crepes recognizes me and remembers my name. On this part of Arrow Street, a collage of curiously angled shops tucked around the corner and down an incline from the vehicular density of Massachusetts Avenue, there is a personal character and specificity that makes it highly memorable and recognizable, both aurally and visually.

Further down Arrow street, beyond the towering Catholic church, the path of the Number One bus takes it in a curiously circuitous path down the narrow Bow Street before turning onto Mount Auburn. This is the other way I became acquainted with the area, while waiting for the bus back from Harvard Square to MIT, yet this area is visually and spatially distinct from Harvard Square proper. There is far more direct contrast in materials and topographical shape to this neighborhood, and it emphasizes linear paths rather than the centralized open space of Harvard Square. Furthermore, even though it is in close proximity to Harvard and several streets link the two areas directly, the pedestrian in the midst of this neighborhood does not have a clear visual orientation or connection to Harvard Square.

The Bow Street / Arrow Street neighborhood is situated between Mount Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue, from Sert/Jackson's Holyoke Center to the intersection of Mount Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue at Michael Sullivan Square. At both ends of the neighborhood on Mount Auburn Street, more explicitly contemporary concrete and glass buildings frame a highly varied amalgamation of mostly older brick and wood buildings punctuated by recent additions and renovations. Inside these busier and noisy main streets, the smaller Bow and Arrow streets negotiate the sloping topography in a quieter manner.

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Silence
There is also silence, from both the buildings as a whole and from the street signs. For example, why does the curving Bow Street meet the narrow Arrow Street at this point? Which came first? Why were they named Bow and Arrow; does the relation to archery run deeper than a resemblance in plan? Their shape on a map is legible, but experientially their space and confluence emphasizes the delightfully quirky three-way intersection rather than a coherent shape. A few of the buildings have cornerstones or plaques that give clues to the time of their origin, but many of the buildings have visages that hint at alterations but refrain from revealing their histories so plaintly.

In the silence, there is a subtle dialogue of individuals and institutions. Within the neighborhood are private homes, multifamily housing, and private shops. There are older diners and newer trendy places that serve wraps and crepes. There are industrial business buildings like the Reversible Collar Company Building, while a clay-making shop resides next to the Center for Advanced Research. Amidst the individual establishments, there is also the more monumental institutional scale of the Catholic church, the Harvard Catholic Students' Center, and other buildings relating to Harvard University. Why does Bow Street seem to enclose the university-owned buildings from areas of private and religious ownership? Is the silence a tension between such wide variances in scale, or is this a comfortable relationship? I can't quite tell, and part of the reason is because of the strong presence of what is missing.

Stories
There is a large vacant lot between Arrow and Mount Auburn Streets; there is a large height difference resolved partially by the exposed vertical concrete fragments, but most of it is a gravel surface. Cars inhabit some parts, but there are signs everywhere prohibiting trespassers from parking. It is a fabulously visible site on the way to Harvard Square, and it also has a beautiful view northward of churches and older brick buildings. On one side are several residences, and opposite is the Reversible Collar Company Building, now converted to offices and art or architecture studios. How could such a prime piece of real estate remain vacant? I wondered this and snapped a few pictures last year, and curiosity regarding the unresolved question of this place's layered history is one of my major motivations for investigating this particular location.

As an architecture student, it is always tempting to remain passive and interact with the buildings through a camera lens, but as a tour guide I know the importance of talking with people that give these spaces character. The Polish crepe creator knew the lot had been vacant for as long as she had been in the United States, but knew that many customers' cars had been towed. The local postal carrier had the vague recollection of a grocery store, but emphasized that it has been vacant for many years. Someone else seemed to think the land's owner wanted to build on it, but was not being allowed to. The woman who is an antique dealer next door told the story that offered further intrigue; she recalls a round art deco bicycle and motorcycle store that was "quite charming." She also said the salmon-colored house used to be on the vacant site but was moved next door to the current location. Why was the house moved? What exactly was demolished? There are relatively few Art Deco structures remaining in Harvard Square (or Cambridge in general), but was the disappearance of the building due to economics or stylistic concerns? What is the relationship of this whole parcel of land to the industrial building next door? Was it always this triangular shape?

Slivers
My overall impression of this area after many quick visits and several in-depth visits for research and photography is that it is characterized by fragmentation. The narrow streets leave sharply angled slivers of land between them; some buildings even have double addresses because they are the entire width of the block (12 Arrow / 25 Mount Auburn). There are also buildings and built spaces, particularly along Mount Auburn Street, that capitalize on their site's triangular site and make their sliver-like angles into defining characteristics visible from afar. Besides the slivers of the built environment, there are slivers of space between. As the buildings meet at slight angles, there are dozens of vertical fragments of space that give tightly framed views of the buildings behind. Some of these slivers are well-kept niches of landscape, others are dirty corners with splintering wood pieces and trash stuck in them.

These visual breaks emphasize the fragmentation and variation of forms and spaces in the neighborhood, and serve as a contrast to the neater party-wall arrangement elsewhere in the Harvard Square vicinity. The presence of the vacant lot is so strong that it fragments the two parts of the neighborhood from one another. Many of these slivers' shapes seem strangely unmotivated; it is not immediately apparent what, if anything, these streets pointed towards or led to. Are they paths that happened to lie at close angles, or are the streets' origin better explained as incisions in an existing urban fabric? I have raised many questions I hope to answer regarding this fascinating little neighborhood and its varied nooks and crannies. Its stories dates back to the founding of this part of Cambridge, and the next step is to sort through the historical layers and maps.

All images (c) 2001-2002 David M. Foxe, unless otherwise notated. All Rights Reserved.