Time & Again

Wednesday, October 3, 1951

Councillor's Protest Fails To Stir Drive on Parking

By GEORGE S. ABRAMS

City Councillor Edward A. Sullivan yesterday demanded action on what he termed “the deplorable parking situation around Harvard.” Meanwhile Acting Chief Patrick J. McCarthy last night ended rumors of an immediate police crackdown on overnight parking.

Sullivan’s ire was aroused Saturday night when he ran into a bottle-neck on a side street and had to back out. “Students’ cars were double parked in streets around the Harvard Square area. What if fire breaks out some night in those dormitories? A fire truck could never get to it,” he stated.

Mayor Edward A. Crane ’35 appointed Sullivan chairman of a special committee to confer with University officials on student parking. This followed a lengthy discussion of the situation in last Monday’s City Council meeting.

Captain McCarthy, when informed of Sullivan’s action, stated that he will stick by his two week parking grant to University students. He clarified his statement, however, by saying that his men will tag overnight parkers in boarding house and residential areas. “The moratorium applies only to the immediate dormitory and House vicinity and not to places like Trowbridge Street. There will be no police get-tough policy without the student body being adequately warned through the Crimson,” the Captain added.

Common Parking

Just what action Councillor Sullivan plans to take is as yet unknown. He did say that he will confer with Cambridge and University police “very soon.” “I believe it’s squarely up to Harvard officials to provide space. The University’s Western Avenue parking lot behind the Business School is far too distant for student use. Maybe we can make some use of the parking facilities around Cambridge Common by opening this area to students from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m.,” he concluded.

Sullivan said that many of the double-parked cars were from out-of-state. “I’ve heard,” he stated, “that many of these students tear up their parking tickets.”

University officials, meanwhile, disclosed plans to conduct their own get-tough drive on all University property after the registration deadline on Friday is passed. The Administrative Vice-President’s office said yesterday that all non-registered cars on University property would get University tags after Friday.

Monday, May 13, 2002

Students To Retain City Parking Permits

By SAMUEL A. S. CLARK

Residents of Cambridge’s Riverside neighborhood, which lies adjacent to Harvard’s southernmost river Houses, asked the Cambridge City Council early last month to no longer grant residential parking permits to Harvard students living in the Houses.

But such a move would be illegal since Harvard students are also Cambridge residents, found a report made to the council its April 29 meeting.

Compiled by the city’s Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department (TPTD), the report also found that only 37 students of the estimated 3,300 in the river Houses had applied for residential permits this year.

The Riverside Neighborhood Study Committee says the neighborhood suffers from a lack of parking. Massachusetts zoning bylaws require one off-street parking space per unit, but the committee says there is a shortfall of 1,900 spaces, not including Harvard units.

As for on-street parking, the committee says there are only 1,500 spaces available in the area, 800 short of the 2,300 spaces required by the bylaws.

In total, the city would need to provide around 3,000 more parking spaces to meet zoning bylaws.

The parking crunch is worsened by the use of Riverside’s parking spaces by non-neighborhood residents, the city has noted.

Still, area residents said they are concerned about the parking shortage and think that denying Harvard students parking permits will help alleviate it.

They say they hope the University will assist in this effort even if the city is powerless to do so.

“If the city cannot discriminate between students and residents, our hope is that Harvard will remedy the situation,” said local resident Susan Smith.

But it’s unlikely that Harvard can do much to improve the situation.

“People who are frustrated wish that Harvard would solve all of their problems,” Clippinger said. “If you’re living in an urban area, chances are parking is going to be tight.”

Ted D. Malliaris ’03, who has a residential parking permit, said he found the Riverside residents’ request unfair.

“I spend nine months of the year here. I’m an adult and I pay taxes in Massachusetts. I should be allowed to park here,” he said.

Residents first approached City Councillor Henrietta Davis about the permit issue, and she ordered at the April 8 city council meeting a report investigating the situation.

In order to qualify for a residential parking permit, a car must be registered with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles and its owner must be able to prove residency by presenting a current gas, electric, telephone or cable bill.

Harvard students who are able to meet these qualifications cannot be denied a parking permit.

Billings & Stover: 'First, Last, and Always a Drugstore'

Wednesday, April 21, 1948

Circling the Square

More than 40 years ago, when Eleonora Duse was making her long faces and Weber and Fields their happy ones, a different sort of team was approaching its half-century mark with a very untheatrical announcement. “If you don’t know Billings and Stover,” said the notice, “this will introduce them.” But there was no need to be theatrical for this partnership was as familiar to Harvard students as the pump in the Yard and the new lecture hall across the way. Too familiar, perhaps, for countless men would pull the bell out front to see if there really was a nightman ready to fill prescriptions. The nightman has since left, but little else about the store has changed.

Now advertising itself as “a drugstore, first, last and always,” Billings and Stover started in 1854 to roll pills and three wars have not stood in its way. Over 1000 prescriptions were filled that first year—the same number are packaged now in a week. An all-around pharmacy from the first, the store initially provided “foreign leeches of recent importation” to take care of black eyes in the days when John Harvard had no green bag to swing. Swelling eyelids didn’t keep pace with the swelling business, however, and that exotic item was dropped.

Yet the past is very much a part of Billings and Stover. One wall is lined with duplicates of every prescription filled since 1854, and pictures of the namesakes are over the door. The past also saw a prosperous soda business, and barrels of coke syrup were stored in the basement, alongside other essential philtres. A new fountain was installed in 1908, the first soda shop in the Square. But the owners made little concession to the straw-sucking customers, for no stools stood in front of the fountain, and soda and candy were primarily a sideline. Two years ago, the prescription business was so overwhelming that the fountain was forfeited. Billings and Stover became apothecaries in the strict sense of the word.

The vanishing fountain is only one indication of how great the drug line has become. Almost a million prescriptions have been ordered and mailed to Roosevelts, Longfellows, and such in the States; to less well-known patrons in Siberia, Greenland, and even Tibet. Techniques of compounding potions have changed little since the customers wore string ties and bustles, but the products are somewhat different. Patent medicines are less in demand now, and if there are any home remedies in stock, they are dwarfed by a modern refrigerator that holds biological serums and penicillin. Business is strictly ethical, and though students may use the store telephone to schedule a rendez-vous, they know better than to ask for benzedrine.

Tradition is piled heavily on the back counters and pulls in more customers than would any flashy window display.

Friday, February 15, 2002

After 140 Years, Sad Farewells

By EUGENIA B. SCHRAA

Phyllis E. Madanian stands behind a glass case filled with fudge.

There’s green peppermint fudge, cappuccino fudge that’s foamy white with cinnamon brown sprinkled on top, fudge with giant malted milk balls popping out of the top. There’s a brand new flavor, a creamy brown Milky Way fudge.

Madanian spends her days making and selling fudge. She goes through 150 pounds a week at Billings & Stover Apothecary, the gritty, old-fashioned Brattle Street soda fountain she owns and operates.

For the past 140 years, Billings & Stover has been a drug store that filled prescriptions at the back counter and sold cosmetics, exotic perfumes and ice cream in the front.

Until recently. When business slowed two years ago, Madanian stopped selling drugs and turned the prescription counter into a kitchen. She added a bakery, expanded the cosmetics counter and kept going.

But now the woman who struggled to keep Billings & Stover alive in recent years has announced the store will close its doors forever Feb. 28.

Madanian’s father, a Boston pharmacist, bought the store in 1975 and it’s been a part of her life ever since. Indeed, she practically grew up in pharmacies—her earliest memory is of spinning on the fountain stools in her father’s Boston shop. But after a life in the business, she decided last month she couldn’t afford to keep going on her own.

“Maybe it’s old school of me, but [my father] raised me believing that if you put enough elbow grease into it, you’re going to stay afloat,” she says. “This is a true independent. I’m the sole proprietor. I couldn’t have somebody telling me what to do, after being independent for so long.”

“I don’t even take home a pay check anymore,” she adds. “At one point, I just realized I can’t afford to work here anymore. Isn’t that ridiculous? Not being able to afford to work?”

Billings & Stover isn’t a typical drug store.

In the middle of the store sits a cardboard box filled with oversize, bug-eyed sunglasses, straight from the ’70s. On shelves lining the walls are arrayed Marilyn Monroe lunchboxes and statuettes of Elvis Presley standing next to a Harley Davidson motorbike. Behind the counter, a shelf holds fancy hairbrushes, combs and perfumes that can usually be found only in Europe.

“I do all the ordering,” Madanian says. “I like to order things that are practical but will also bring a smile to people’s faces.”

According to Madanian, these are the kinds of unusual products people come to Billings & Stover just to buy.

“We don’t sell anything here you could buy at CVS,” she says. “We don’t sell Ivory soap. We could be giving it away, nobody would take it here.”

Billings & Stover has a devoted following among locals, Madanian says. And lately client after client has come in offering her their sympathy over the store’s closing.

“It’s been like a funeral in here,” she says.

Like many of the customers, Bob Landers has made Billings & Stover part of his lifelong routine. For the last 60 years, Landers has come into the store almost every morning at 6:15 a.m. to open up. He used to work as a pharmacist, but ever since Billings & Stover stopped selling drugs, he “mostly putters around,” as he puts it. Every morning he cooks up chocolate chip cookies, makes the coffee and helps Madanian set up the fudge and baked goods.

The store opens at eight o’clock on time for its “coffee and newspaper regulars,” Madanian says.

“Not many people come in for the soda fountain in the morning,” Landers says.

Miss Harvard-Radcliffe: Students of Both Sexes Strut Their Stuff

Saturday, October 6, 1951

The Charms About Linda

Beauty has its rewards. The young lady pictured here won tributes from nine Square merchants after six discriminating Crimson editors tabbed her Miss Radcliffe 1955. The name: Linda Bartlett. The address: Bertram Hall. The phone number: EL 4-8374. Home state: California. Linda’s charms yesterday won her flowers from the University Florist, a meal ticket from the University Luncheonette, a Harvard scarf from J. August, stationare from Bob Slate’s, a book from Harvard Book Store, a record from Briggs and Briggs, tickets from Brattle Theatre, perfume from the Coop, and cigarettes from Philip Morris company.

Miss Bartlett was chosen from a field of five lovelies at a P.B.H. tea dance yesterday afternoon.

Monday, March 18, 2002

Man Wins Miss Harvard Title

By LAUREN R. DORGAN

Self-proclaimed “queen” William L. Adams ’04 won the Miss Harvard title—silver crown and crimson sash included—and along the way garnered several standing ovations, roses and even articles of clothing from a capacity crowd at Leverett House dining hall Friday night.

The audience raucously applauded the evening’s varied entertainment, which ranged from flamenco-inspired Spanish dance and a Tae Kwon Do combat scene to an interpretative painting with roller skates, among many other humorous and unusual segments.

The pageant took place beneath a rainbow-colored “Miss Harvard” banner decorated with “VANITAS” seals. After introducing themselves in a “First Impressions” segment, contestants strutted their stuff in the beachwear portion and faced off in a talent show. The three finalists also endured short interviews.

Four women and four men competed for two awards—the Miss Harvard title, which was judged by four University administrators, and a Miss Congeniality distinction that the contestants voted on themselves.

The men were clearly the winners of the evening.

They swept both awards, and only one of the three finalists for Miss Harvard was, in fact, a woman.

And the women might not get another chance. Adams, who competed under the pseudonym “Anita Mann,” could be the first and last holder of the Miss Harvard title.

The pageant’s sponsors, IMPACT—a group that raises funds for children in developing nations—say that the $970 profit they earned might not make up for the amount of work that went into making Miss Harvard happen.

“We tend to repeat successful events, but this was very taxing in terms of work for planning, much more so than say, our dance, which garnered more profits,” IMPACT President Laura P. Perry ’04 wrote in an e-mail. “It will depend on the feeling of the board next year.”

W. Lucien Smith ’03, a veteran of the Immediate Gratification Players improv troupe, emceed the pageant.

Although he said he is a novice to the beauty pageant scene, he won the crowd early with an uncanny impression of President Bill Clinton.

“Throughout my career, public and private, there have been two things I have had an unwavering commitment to,” the Mississippi native began in flawless Southern drawl, giving a Clinton-esque thumbs-up.

“One is underdeveloped nations,” he said. “The other is women in tight little dresses.”

Athletic Recruiting: The Ivies Scale Back

Monday, October 29, 1951

Presidents of Big 3 Outline Athletic Scholarship Policy

No individual should be exploited for the sake of athletic success and no athletic scholarships or special subsidies are given by the Big Three the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton said in a policy statement released this morning.

The rare joint announcement of admission and scholarship policy, the presidents said, is being made “in order to prevent misunderstanding and misrepresentation.”

In essence, the policy is “that athletes shall have the same opportunities for admission and financial assistance as other students...they shall be neither penalized nor favored for the sake of athletic success.

Athletics Purpose Is Experiences

“A student takes part in college athletics because of the value of the experience for him, and he has the same obligation as other students to assume responsibility for solving his financial and educational problems. Any other view seems to us a distortion of educational and moral values.”

Any student, the statement asserted, who accepts financial support from any source other than his college, or an organization approved by the college will suffer ineligibility.”

7 Points of Report

Specifically, the presidents set the following criteria for scholarships grants;

1. All candidates for admission are required to take the College Board examinations.

2. The three colleges agree on a common “acceptance date.”

3. The scholarship committees of the Big Three will continue to exchange information about joint scholarship candidates in order to clarify each applicant’s need and to preclude “competitive bidding.”

4. Only men who clearly need financial help will get it.

5. Besides need, scholarship awards will be based on academic record, and evidence of character and leadership. Above minimum standard grades are necessary.

6. Scholarships are awarded on an annual basis and subject to annual review.

7. Athletes are eligible for other forms of financial aid such as loans, part time jobs, and assignment to inexpensive rooms on exactly the same terms as other students.

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Ivy League Debates Recruiting Reduction

By WILLIAM M. RASMUSSEN and RAHUL ROHATGI

This weekend in the mountains of Vermont, athletic directors from across the Ivy League will meet to make recommendations on an issue which could change the nature of athletics at all Ivy League schools.

The immediate issue at hand is reducing the number of recruited football players from 35 to 25—which some Harvard football players estimate could knock the team to Division III quality within five years.

Ivy League policy makers, however, may not stop at football. Also under consideration, as ordered by Ivy League presidents, is an across-the-board reduction in the number of athletic recruits.

Attempting to limit the population of recruited athletes, however, is nothing new—the Ivy League was actually founded as a football conference designed to set league-wide recruiting policies and academic standards—but the issue has recently been brought to national attention by a book, The Game of Life, which suggests that a radical overhaul of collegiate athletics is needed.

This book, according to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, is a major factor in driving the current discussion.

But Lewis also said presidents and administrators at many Ivy League schools have noticed a disturbing professionalization of collegiate athletics.

“The seasons are too long, there are too many contests, there are too many travel dates, the offseason is too formal and there’s too much training and practicing,” Lewis says of the overall Harvard athletic program. “All of the time and effort that intercollegiate athletes have to spend on their sports result in too often students having to make compromises between their athletic experience and their overall Harvard experience.”

The Problem

At first glance, Lewis’ spacious University Hall office might seem like that of an athletic director—not a dean of the College. Adorning his walls are pictures of Harvard Stadium, the 1989 NCAA champion men’s varsity ice hockey team and the 1998 women’s basketball team, which defeated perennial power Stanford in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

But sitting on a small shelf next to his desk rests a more portentous omen for big-time collegiate athletics—the groundbreaking The Game of Life, co-authored by former Princeton President William G. Bowen and James L. Shulman, which criticizes collegiate sports for what the authors view as their professionalism and commercialization.

Center Stage: Undergraduates Search for Theater Space

Wednesday, October 17, 1951

College Places Theatre Higher on Priority List

University officials said yesterday that for the first time in recent years, the building of a theatre is high on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences priority list. At the same time, Warren Brody ’53, chairman of the Council’s Theatre Committee, announced that he had requested Walter Gropius, professor of Architecture, to draw up tentative plans for the theatre.

Initiative would have to come from outside before a theatre could be erected, President Conant indicated yesterday. The University has no free funds, he explained, by the faculty of Arts and Sciences has finished all its immediate building projects, and can appreciate the need for a theatre “now that places like the Brattle are not available to students.”

Conant noted that although the theatre project is high on the Arts and Sciences priority list, other University departments have more or equally pressing projects. He put the School of Education and School of Public Health in this category.

Previous Stand

The theatre project and plans for a big auditorium and overall arts center are two entirely different things, and should not be confused, President Conant warned. He pointed out that while he recognized the need for a theatre, he was less favorably disposed toward building a large auditorium.

In previous discussions about the theatre, the University administration had indicated that it would build a theatre only if it received money and substantial endowment expressly for a theatre. Both President Conant and Provost Buck indicated that they might earmark money for a theatre as soon as someone made substantial funds available for the building.

Brody said he had requested Gropius to have some members of his architecture class make models and drawings for a theatre. According to Brody, Gropius expressed interest in the project, but wanted further definite details before going ahead with the designing.

Student Council President Richard M. Sandler ’52 stated that he will meet with Provost Buck tomorrow to discuss the theatre project. Last spring, the Council approved a report requesting a Public Arts Center, which would include a theatre along with facilities for radio, music, drama, and movies.

Friday, January 19, 2001

Students Hope for a Bigger Role at Loeb Drama Center

By DANIELA J. LAMAS

The University’s search for a new director of the Loeb Drama Center is raising hopes among some campus arts aficionados that undergraduates will get expanded access to performance space in the Loeb in future years.

The departure this spring of Loeb Director Robert S. Brustein may give the University an opportunity to renegotiate its contract with the American Repertory Theatre (ART), the Loeb’s main tenant.

Brustein has overseen the Loeb and the ART during a time in which students have alleged they do not have sufficient access to the theater’s Mainstage.

The Loeb was originally built as a theater space for undergraduates. And in 1979, the ART re-located to the Loeb from New Haven—a move that Harvard thought would give students an opportunity to train with a professional theater company.

But the relationship between the ART and Harvard has been strained in recent years, with students clamoring for more access to the Mainstage and the ART eager to keep its own stage time.

Although the ART technically falls under the auspices of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Jeremy R. Knowles, Harvard has essentially given the company carte blanche to determine how it allocates performance space.

Officials at the ART have said they need to stage a certain number of shows a year to remain viable as a professional theatre company.

Last spring, six students calling themselves the “Steering Committee on Dance,” wrote a 70-page report with the help of College officials, which they submitted to Brustein, Robert J. Orchard, the managing director of the Loeb and ART, and other Harvard administrators. The report asked an additional slot on the Loeb Mainstage be allocated for an undergraduate dance show.

But the ART refused to grant the dancers an extra slot on the Mainstage. Undergraduates still stage just four shows a year in the largest dramatic theater space at Harvard.

Outgoing Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) President Jessica Shapiro ’01 says she hopes Brustein’s successor fosters a stronger relationship between undergraduates and the ART company.

Undergraduates actors could benefit, Shapiro says, from more direct contact with the professionals.

“I think that one great thing about the ART is that they have a tendency to be experimental,” Shapiro says. “I hope [we can] open lines of communication between ART and HRDC and foster them actively working together.”

The Search

President Neil L. Rudenstine is heading the nation-wide search to find Brustein’s successor before Brustein steps down this spring.

Rudenstine says that, working with Brustein and Elizabeth C. Huidekoper, the University’s vice-president of finance, he has formed a list of candidates that is roughly 80 names long. He says there are about 20 people at the top of the list, seven or eight of whom are women.

Harvard has combed both the academic and professional theater worlds for potential directors, including repertory theaters located in towns with major universities.

“These people are all over the country...we’re staying quite flexible,” Rudenstine said.

One for the Books: Renovating Harvard's Flagship Library

September 1951 Registration Issue

Faculty Shells Out for Widener Face-Lifting

Widener Library underwent $300,000 worth of internal improvement during the course of the summer. Fluorescent lighting will illuminate the dimness out of its dusky innards. Its classic staircase is now split by a railing and some sections are lined with treads. Its elevators have been modernized. All of the bills were paid for by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which each year shells out about $1,000,000 to keep the massive library in operation.

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Stacks' First Chapter Ends

By BLYTHE M. ADLER

As of Monday, all of Widener Library’s 3.5 million books resided in air-conditioned comfort.

Construction on Level 6 West of the stacks wrapped up Monday, completing the first phase of the Widener Stacks Renovation Project that began in June 1999, according to Beth Brainard, the library’s communications director.

The University initiated the renovation to preserve the library’s collection and upgrade ventilation, lighting, security and temperature control systems within the stacks.

Library officials said they also hoped to make the stacks easier to navigate.

“The myth was always that if you’re smart enough to make it into Harvard, you’re smart enough to find your way around in the library,” Brainard said. “Now, the trek through the stacks will be a lot easier.”

Work on the multi-million-dollar project involved erecting a 180-foot-tall crane with a 300-foot-long boom to lift equipment into the inner courtyard of the building. The crane was removed last year as the project wound down.

The former open-air areas in the center of the library were filled with mechanical rooms, staff work space and two new reading rooms.

There was also extensive behind-the-scenes work, such as the installation of more than 15,000 feet of sprinkler piping on the lower floors.

Brainard said that, throughout the project, managers attempted to minimize the impact on library users and employees.

For example, she said, workers placed chutes out the windows so debris could be discarded directly into dumpsters rather than carted through the library. New study carrels were loaded into the stacks through the windows. Within the building, workers put up temporary walls so that all work was done in enclosed areas.

The library remained open throughout the construction period, albeit with some changes to entrances and exits within the stacks.

Upgrades in the stacks include the cleaning of Widener’s 3.5 million books, a new paint job for the stack shelves involving 840 gallons of paint, motion sensitive lighting, new photocopiers and study carrels, secure storage lockers, well-lit stairs, new elevators and an increased number of computer terminals.

Some students said they were pleased with the library’s new look and feel.

“The renovated parts are much more pleasant and less dark and dreary,” said Jillian R. Shulman ’02.

“I really like Widener and I come here to study because it’s quiet,” said Amy Sitar, a graduate student at the Divinity School. “I haven’t been bothered by construction noises.”

Although construction in the stacks is finished, workers are still moving books back to their proper locations in the stacks.

The renovation now enters its second phase—an overall revitalization of the library, including renovation of the Loker Reading Room, the reference room, the periodicals room and the microtext center.

Phase 2 is slated for completion in spring 2004.