Square to Honor Late Journalist

Starting tomorrow, a triangular patch of Harvard Square will be renamed in honor of David L. Halberstam ’55, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former managing editor of The Crimson.

The area demarcated by Bow, Linden, and Mt. Auburn Streets will be designated Halberstam Square in a ceremony hosted by the City of Cambridge and The Crimson on Wednesday.

Frank H. Duehay ’55, a former Cambridge mayor and classmate of Halberstam, spearheaded the effort to name a spot in Cambridge after Halberstam after former Crimson editor Peter G. Palches ’55 suggested the idea.

“Many people think [Halberstam] was the greatest journalist of his generation, if not of several generations,” Duehay said.

Duehay initially suggested that Plympton Street be renamed in Halberstam’s honor, but upon complaints from current and former residents of Plympton—including Crimson editors, Adams and Quincy House residents, and business owners—he changed his proposal.

The Cambridge City Council approved the measure in December.

In his career as a newspaper reporter and an author of 20 books, most notably the acclaimed “The Best and the Brightest,” Halberstam garnered accolades for his writing on topics ranging from civil rights to professional sports to the Vietnam War.

He died in a car accident in 2007, on his way to an interview for the book he was writing at the time.

“He was incredibly hardworking,” remembered Duehay. “Once he started to take on a project, he would work on it relentlessly.”

Stanley N. Katz ’55, a close friend of Halberstam from the time they met on the first day of their freshman year in 1951, will be one of four speakers at Wednesday’s ceremony.

“He majored in The Crimson when he was an undergrad. He spent 12 hours a day in The Crimson,” Katz recalled of Halberstam, whose diploma indicated that he was a history concentrator. “There were other people in our group who were thought of as more elegant writers...I think it turned out David was the hardest worker in the group.”

The territory that will now be named in the devoted Crimson editor’s honor sits in front of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret social organization that occasionally publishes a so-called humor magazine and boasts a long-standing rivalry with The Crimson.

Though he acknowledged that some Lampoon staff members might be upset by the new name of their front yard, Lampoon writer W. Charlie Schaub ’11 said he was pleased that the area was receiving a name at all.

“It’ll be nice to be able to put a name to this place where a lot of people piss and barf on weekends,” Schaub said.

Wednesday’s ceremony will be followed by a panel discussion with several prominent journalists entitled “In the Spirit of David Halberstam: Investigative Reporting from the Front Lines,” sponsored by the Institute of Politics and Phillips Brooks House.

The Cambridge Public Library, the Harvard Coop, and the Harvard Book Store are displaying Halberstam’s books this week in honor of the event.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.