Brattle Square

The recent readjustment of Cambridge's traffic jam patterns inspired the city to install two large and several small traffic islands in the middle of Brattle Square. These, surfaced first with mud puddles and then iced with macadam, are now dead space. They offer no visual interest and serve no social function, except to prevent cars from doing U-turns from one one-way street to another.

But all space, especially valuable mid-city space, should be active, taking on shapes, not just lie dead beneath pedestrians. Cambridge must fight to be more than the sum of its traffic patterns, and more than just the city that surrounds Harvard, and for a start Brattle Square must be turned into the vital informal civic center and outdoor room that it can be.

Towards an end, covering the traffic islands with Kentucky bluegrass would be worse than useless. Squares and plazas are for people to move through and pavement is therefore necessary. But as Elizabeth Kassler wrote in Modern Gardens and the Landscape, it can be "pavement of such color, texture and pattern that it serves as antidote to the asphalt rather than continuation." Therefore the traffic islands ought to be paved with one of the many available materials which are at once visually interesting, less heat retentive than macadam and as or more functional and durable. Alternations of smooth and rough concrete, granite, cobblestones, bricks and fieldstone offer endless possibilities for pleasing surfaces and patterns.

Three dimensional objects could add further visual interest and provide a mental respite from workday affairs.

It is feasible to transplant this territorial identity even to a traffic island. For example, a massive black cube sculpture rests on a tiny traffic island at the juncture of Fourth Avenue and Astor Place, where Manhattan's Bowery slum, hippieland, an industrial zone and a growing clump of theatres all converge. No one, from hippie to day laborer, fails to turn his head as he walks by, an some stop to stare. The work has become an image in my mind which is always positively associated with the area. This one sculpture gave the Astor Place neighborhood a coherent image which symbolize and summerizes its disparate parts.

Considering Cambridge's large number of practicing artists, the one sculpture or one arrangement of sculptures could be amended for Brattle Square to an ever-changing exhibit of the works of local artists. Certainly this would make Brattle Square more of a total environment. The attention and viewers attracted to the works would complement the commercial interests and cultural activities of the surroundings.

Seating space can expand the use of three dimensional objects with sittable stones and attractive benches. This would benefit merchants by allowing matrons to rest their aching legs and extend their shopping trips. Seating would further create convenient sports for conversations and meetings and facilitate people watching, an especially enjoyable sport in Cambridge.

Finally, plantings serve to accent city monochromes, with greens and pinks. Although plants are harder to care for than macadam, the flower bed on the traffic island just North of the Common testifies that plants are feasible and refreshing mid-city and even mid-traffic. Limited areas of ground cover like pachysandra, evergreens like taxus, juniper, euonymus and holly, attractive, spare trees like birch, dogwood and Japanese cherry, and protable planters with shurbs and annuals make up a rich vocabulary a landscape architect could choose from to transform Brattle Square.

And perhaps even a spreading chestnut tree....