Bartley's Burger Cottage Celebrates 40 Years in the Square

It's lunch hour Tuesday afternoon and Joe Bartley is manning the door.

With a stack of bright yellow menus in hand, he stands just outside Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage--where the telltale smell of hamburgers and fries meets the sidewalk.

Bartley gracefully juggles the steady stream of customers--pausing to chat with old friends and answer questions from harried waitstaff.

From time to time, he steps into the restaurant.

Over the bustle of the lunch-time crowd and background sound of sizzling on the grill, he directs customers to the long wooden tables inside the crowded restaurant.

It's a routine Bartley has known for 40 years.

The Way It Was

In a lull between customers, Bartley stands next to a sign advertising his restaurant's 40th anniversary and surveys the Square.

The view has changed since he started serving burgers on Feb. 6, 1961.

When he moved from Long Island to Cambridge at age 30--"I even had red hair then," the now white-haired Bartley says--he borrowed $10,000 to buy a grocery store at the Harvard-owned property and convert it into a restaurant.

He had always been interested in the restaurant business, Bartley says, and found a need in the Square that needed to be filled.

"When I first came here, I realized that no one had a good hamburger," Bartley says. "And that's what I wanted to give them."

Bartley has been serving burgers to the Square ever since.

"And my mother told me I wasn't steady," he jokes.

Forty years later, he says he never dreamed his restaurant would become so successful.

Bartley credits some of his restaurant's popularity to a story that ran in The Harvard Crimson in 1961.

The story--written by The New Yorker's Anthony Hiss '63--credits Bartley's, then called the Harvard Spa Luncheonette, with alleviating "The Great Hamburg Blight" that had previously plagued the Square.

Hiss notes Bartley's 48-cent "full quarter-pound, ground-chuck" hamburgers.

"Unquestionably, Bartley's burgers are the best buy this side of Montauk Point," Hiss writes.

And The Crimson was not the only one to pick up on Bartley's success.

Today, a plethora of awards from local and national magazines are cut out and taped simply to the front door.

Bartley still seems in awe of his own unexpected success as he reads over the awards.

"I never thought any of this would happen," Bartley says.

Bartley says he is particularly proud of Boston Magazine's recent "Best of Boston" vote for his frappes and burgers.

"We're doing pretty good," he says, smiling at the understatement.

Funny Man

Bartley credit much of his success to the humor that he finds in everything--even in the simple task of naming a burger.

He named one of his trademark burgers "The Ted Kennedy."

The Ted Kennedy is "a plump, liberal amount of burger," the menu reads.

Bartley says his creative burger names and descriptions often spark casual conversation with customers.

He laughs as he reads over the menu, remembering a particularly humorous incident.

Bartley had named one of his chicken burgers--added to the menu alongside turkey and veggie burgers as a concession to the increasing health consciousness of his customers--after Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr.

When Gates had hip replacement surgery a few years ago, Bartley says, he was surprised to receive a call from Gates's hospital room.

Gates had decided he did not want to be a chicken burger any more, Bartley says.

"He told me, 'I want to be a beef burger,'" Bartley says. "So I promised him that as soon as he got out of the hospital, he would be."

Bartley was true to his word.

"The Professor Skip Gates" is "New and Hip, with teriyaki sauce, a slice of pineapple, cole slaw and onion rings."

Reading his "hip" pun, Bartley laughs.

"People really get a kick out of this stuff," he says.

Bartley's unique sense of humor and personal touch are not limited to the menu.

Even the restaurant's eclectic decor reflects his irreverent personality.

Brightly colored bumper stickers decorate the narrow entryway. One of the favorites with the customers, he says, is the sticker that reads "Grow your own dope: plant a man."

He calls the back corner of the restaurant--filled with momentos he has been collecting for at least 15 years--his "Elvis corner."

A sign saying "I love Elvis" adorns the frappe menu.

Much of the decor--like the poster advertising a 1966 Jim Morrison and The Doors concert--has been a part of the restaurant for years.

"It's cozy here," Bartley says. "Customers say it's sort of like home."

It's this coziness and constancy that long-time customers say keeps them returning to Bartley's.

Paul E. Doherty '58 has been coming to Bartley's since he was an undergraduate at the time of the restaurant's opening.

And over the past four decades, he has struck up a casual relationship with Bartley.

"We were talking the other day," Doherty says, smiling, "And we figured that I've eaten at least a ton of beef here."

Yesterday, Doherty drove in from Medford, where he now works, for lunch.

"I just needed my Bartley's burger," he says.

Bartley's resistance to change is a mixed blessing, Doherty jokes--he always orders the same item.

Bartley laughs and jumps in.

"Cheddar burger," he says, reciting the order from memory. "With chips--and a Coke."

Doherty says the restaurant is particularly valuable, since so many long-time Square establishments have been forced under recently by rising rents.

"This is one of the last of these places left," Doherty says, gesturing around him.

And Bartley says that despite the recent move from mom-and-pop establishments to chain stores, he plans to stay in the Square for a long time to come.

He is now semi-retired and his son runs the restaurant. But Bartley still comes in most days during the week to help out.

"I need the action," he says. "And I like to keep an eye on this place. It's my baby."

--Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.