Davis Square
Davis Square is a square in Somerville, Massachusetts, located around the intersection of Holland Street, Dover Street, Day Street, Elm Street, Highland Avenue, and College Avenue.
Location
The name is often more broadly used to refer to the neighborhood which centers on this square, encompassing parts of both Somerville and Cambridge. The Davis Square T station is one of the stops on the Red Line of the MBTA. It is located within walking distance of Tufts University, Ball Square, Porter Square, Powder House Square, and Teele Square. The Somerville Community Path runs right through the middle of the square on a former rail line, leading to the popular Minuteman Bikeway.
The intersection of seven narrow, heavily-trafficked roads (four of which are one-way), many bicycles, thousands of pedestrians, and disorientatingly similar architecture around its circumference makes Davis Square infamously difficult to navigate, despite the Somerville City Council's significant safety improvements. The square is known by some area residents as 'the octopus,' referring to it's octopus-like appearance on maps.
Scene
Today, Davis Square is a mix of the old and the new. Restaurants, coffee shops, and stores catering to students and young urban professionals coexist with working class diners and tailors that predate Davis Square's trendy period.[citation needed] A growing LGBT presence is evidenced by a smattering of rainbow flags on neighborhood churches and homes.[citation needed]
The brick-paved square attracts families to the ice cream parlor JP Licks in the summer to listen to musicians and people-watch. Among many other popular venues, the Davis Square Redbones restaurant and bar draws the greater Boston hipster bicycling scene, the Diesel coffee shop and pool hall attracts the edgy young lesbian crowd, and The Burren is a mainstay in the Irish pub culture of Boston. The mix of these and other local communities ensures that Davis Square is an unusual and vibrant neighborhood.
In 1997, Davis Square was listed by the Utne Reader as one of the fifteen "hippest places to live" in the United States.[1]
In 2005, The Boston Globe reported the first million dollar condo sale in Davis Square, which represented a major psychological change for a neighborhood known for being budget friendly.[2]
Arts
Davis Square itself is decorated with tiles made by local schoolchildren, sculptures of prominent local figures, figurative smiling people with strangely darkened faces, a flying cow and ship, and more.
The Square also hosts many popular arts institutions and events. The Somerville Arts Council's popular ArtBeat festival takes place here every year on the third weekend of July, while the HONK! Festival of activist brass bands occurs here every October, on Columbus Day weekend. The Public Radio International show, Living on Earth is recorded in its studios in Davis Square. For five years, the Jimmy Tingle Off-Broadway Theater boasted a variety of nationally and regionally known acts, both comedic and musical, including Jimmy Tingle himself, but closed at the end of October 2007.[3]
History
Davis Square gets its name from Person Davis (1819-1894), whose 10-acre (40,000 m2) estate contained the present-day Davis Square.[4]
References
- ^ Jay Walljasper and Daniel Kraker, "Hip Hot Spots: The 15 Hippest Places to Live". Utne Reader. 1997.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "New neighborhoods gaining $1m cachet". The Boston Globe. 2005. p. 2. Retrieved 2007-05-05.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ It's curtains for Tingle's theater - The Boston Globe
- ^ "Rebekah Gewirtz E-Newsletter: December 2006". 2006. Retrieved 2007-05-04.
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