Preserving the Harvard Square Kiosk

To the editor:

What makes a building an icon? There are many factors: design, history, placement, or numerous and diverse people interacting with it on a regular basis. The Harvard Square Kiosk — home to Out-of-Town News — is one such icon. Today the Kiosk is facing a sizable threat to its distinctive historic features through renovation efforts to revitalize Harvard Square. The structure, completed in 1928, once served as Harvard Square’s main subway entrance. The Kiosk’s exuberant outward-curving wing-like copper roof evokes ideas of travel while sheltering waiting travelers. When a new subway entrance was built in the early 1980s, the Kiosk was relocated to its current site and became a highly sought-out locale for newspaper and magazine sales. Cell phones now carry much of this information and Out-of-Town News will close shortly.

What will become of the Kiosk? Hopefully we can add our voices to the decision-making process. For now, safeguarding its historic form is critical and rests largely with the preservation wording in its vendor’s lease. There is real concern that planned renovations will destroy core features, including much of the historic brickwork and iron detailing (designed to complement the nearby Harvard Gate by the famed architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White). Also envisaged is the replacement of the current windows with LED back-lit ground-to-roof plate glass. Designed originally as a visual bridge between the nearby historic brick campus buildings and the bustling movement of people and goods in the commercial district across the street, the Kiosk may lose much of its distinctive detail and character.

While it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978, granting the Kiosk official Landmark status will protect it, so that future generations of Harvard students, Cantabrigians, and visitors can experience its iconic and historic form. Some proposed changes seem minor, but the iconic is found in the details. It may be hard to appreciate this in familiar buildings like the Kiosk, but when such details are eradicated, future generations will mourn their loss and wonder why preservation wasn’t self-evident.

Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and American Studies

Kathleen M. Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics

Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures

Joseph Koerner, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture

Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Core Faculty and Director, Culture Change & Social Justice Initiatives Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology