Category Archives: Harvard

Long Boats and Underground Vaults by the River Charles

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By Alex Marshall
For The Powhatan Review
November 1999

Crewing is the ultimate wasp sport. It requires patience, diligence and years of work at the simple task of pulling oars through water, as you park your butt in the bottom of a tiny slivered almond of a boat. Crew is not flashy. There is no crew equivalent of passing the ball behind your back on your way to a slam dunk over the head of a surprised defender. No, crew is all about steady effort for the sake of some future reward that may never come.

To the uninitiated, crew is that sport where teams of two, four, six or eight people sit in skinny boats and haul themselves through the water like ancient teams of galley slaves. The boats are tiny, just a foot or so across, and bizarre looking. It is mostly practiced at or near elite colleges, I suspect, with Harvard being the epi-center.

The sport and its spectators were on display recently on a fall weekend on the Charles River here at Harvard in Cambridge. It was the annual Head of the Charles’ regatta, a crew tradition which involves hundreds of teams coming from all over the world. They came to race along the river and glide under the Parisian-style stone bridges, a classic moment in the sport, like playing tennis at Wimbledon. According to the newspapers, some two hundred thousand of us stood on the banks and the bridges watched the thin boats and their denizens.

In their motion, these boats in motion looked like water bugs jetting over the surface of the water. Their teams pulled themselves across in smooth yet jerky movements. They also reminded me of air hockey pucks, from that game you’d play for quarters where jets of air kept a thin plastic puck floating on top of a table as you whacked it about. The boats appeared to rest on top of the water, not in it.

But to the guys and gals hauling the boats, it probably did not feel so effortless. They were hauling themselves through the water with their thighs, backs and arms. The men were muscular but in a lean, mean way.

The women varied more physically. I watched their backs float underneath me, and noticed with pleasure rounded shoulders and lean arms jutting out of shapely T-shirts, with a pig- or pony-tail usually hanging somewhere. But some women had bulky, linebacker style bodies, with big butts and broad backs. I wonder if they made up for their weight with their strength, or whether their bulk slowed the ship down. I wonder if the other girls ever thought, Jeez, I’m tired of dragging Cheryl’s flab through the water.

Crewing is one of the classic Harvard traditions — one of the few I have bumped across. I arrived here for my year sabbatical expecting to be submerged in tweedy accents and various obscure customs. But although it’s a pretty place, the people and customs are more average looking and acting than in my imagination.

The students look like students elsewhere. Among the undergraduates at Harvard College, there are the standard cliques. The jocks, who walk around the campus in groups and have buzz haircuts on their bullet heads. The artsy students, with interesting haircuts and fashionable clothes. Then the mass of students, who wear conventional clothes on conventional bodies and look pretty non-descript. I suspect most of the undergraduates have been so busying studying in order to get here, that they have not had time to craft the elaborate personal identities as say a slacker, or a rapper, or one of the many other sub-cults of American youth.

Partly though, the student’s casual attire reflects the changing norm of personal dress. The 60s have made us all more casual. Even in the pampered, ultra-elite world of Harvard Business School, which lies across the Charles river on its own carefully maintained campus, the students, who are generally in their 20s and 30s, look like students everywhere. These men and women, who will become CEO’s of major corporations some day, wear jeans and casual shirts. They do not look corporate at all.

You can still find some classic Harvard sights and roles, however. One of my favorite things to do has been to dine at the Harvard Faculty Club. Because I am a fellow, I am rated on the same level as a faculty member and thus automatically a member of this club. This feels like a bit of a charade, but one I fully enjoy and exploit.

The Harvard Faculty club looks as you would expect. Its building is a conservative brick house. The rooms are furnished in dark wood with heavy carpeting and serious paintings on the wall. In the main drawing room, you can lounge on big leather sofas while a nearby fire crackles, helping yourself to one of the many newspapers and magazines placed there daily. The men’s bathroom has a supply of colognes out for use.

On the upstairs walls of the faculty club, there were hung framed photos of the interiors of Harvard dormitories in the 1880s. I saw rooms stuffed with furniture, paintings and knick-knacks. The students wore coats and ties, sat in deep leather chairs and puffed on pipes, probably with nearby servants ready to refill their tea cups. Evidently, class and privilege used to be much more obvious here.

Within the faculty club dining room there is an air of gentle care and attentiveness. The male waiters take my orders without fuss. There is no tipping. The head waiter, Pierre, remembers my name. The only unpleasantness intruding on my comfort is the irrational fear that someone will recognize me as an imposter and throw me out. So far, that hasn’t happened.

Harvard is one of the intellectual capitals of the world, so as well as crewing and leather chairs, you might expect more intellectual treasures and vistas to be found here. They are here, but they are also elusive. No one has yet ushered me into a room and said, Here, you have admittance to the secrets of the universe. There are a lot of smart people here, but I am struck that the professors here are often dealing with the same questions I am, even if they do so with perhaps more facts and skills at their disposal. This can be liberating.

One past fellow in my program said attending Harvard gave him the confidence to try new things in his job, because he realized that even Harvard professors were still trying to figure things out. Final answers are elusive. In all but the hard sciences, (and possibly not even there), accuracy or truth is more a matter of percentages, getting either the practice or a theory right enough to work in some situations some of the time, before events and time wear a model out and exhaust its utility.

Many of the tangible, physical secrets at Harvard are buried, literally, within their many libraries. The dozen libraries here are a vast, intimidating vault packed with records of human striving. Widener Library, the imposing, Greek-style main library with massive columns, has more floors below ground than above it. And these tunnels lead to subterranean chambers of adjacent libraries. I have only briefly explored these dark depths. And when I do so, I find myself quickly clamoring back up into the light, to get away from so many words packed into narrow corridors in low-ceilinged rooms. These subterranean chambers seem like some vast hidden machinery laboring away, below the genteel public face of Harvard’s green lawns and classic brick buildings.

I hope during my time here at Harvard, I discover a few of its secrets. I will try to bring them back, when I resume my more ordinary life in Norfolk.

A New City Rises From Berlin’s No-Man’s Land

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By Alex Marshall and Sally Young
Globe Correspondents
11/5/2000

BERLIN – The guard tower and wooden sign over the street warning ”You Are Now Leaving The American Sector!” were still there, as was the narrow bridge over a ravine, where prisoners, dissidents, and spies were exchanged. But beyond these carefully preserved memorials to another time and era, it was difficult to distinguish the famous Checkpoint Charlie from any other intersection in this bustling city. Now, what was once a bleak no-man’s land has been recarved into streets and blocks. And on these streets, new buildings have risen up, many of them designed by the best, or at least the most famous, architects on the planet. Within a two-block radius of Checkpoint Charlie, Aldo Rossi, Philip Johnson, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman have all tried their hand. Widen that circle further, and you encounter buildings by Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Rafael Moneo, and Richard Rogers. We had traveled to the new Berlin to see this new city being remade, the choices its leaders faced, the ones they made correctly, the ones that might be regretted in future years. We were the Loeb Fellowship, all 13 of us, from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

For a week we examined this city from the inside out, often with personal tours by top planners and architects. We saw a new city coming out of the ground, spurred on by the torrents of money, both public and private, rushing in to fill the blank spaces now that the dikes of communism and the Cold War have been broken and breached. For a traveler, Berlin is a great place to spend a weekend or a week, particularly if you like contemporary architecture. But it’s also a great place to eat spicy German sausage from street vendors, drink great beer, shop for high fashion, and people watch.

What’s more, with the dollar at an all-time high, it’s surprisingly affordable. Eating at a nice restaurant, staying in a hotel, is much less expensive than in Boston or New York. How to get across the reality of the New Berlin? It’s as if 50 blocks of mid-town Manhattan had been forcibly cleared, and left vacant for 50 years. Then one day, development rushed back in. Signs still remain of this city’s remarkably violent past. Walk in almost any older section of the city, past the domed Reichstag or on the elegant Friedrichstrasse, for example, and you’ll see pockmarks, dents, and chips, left over from the bullets and shrapnel that shattered this city.

They are evidence of when a mustachioed-man in this city started, and then lost, a war that consumed more lives than any other in history. It left this city destroyed, and divided. It is finally reuniting, physically, culturally, politically, and socially. Even so, divisions remain. A local architect told us that few West Berliners would go to a restaurant in East Berlin, and vice versa. West Germans, raised under a capitalist democracy, say East Germans are lazy. East Germans, raised under communism and now suffering high unemployment, say they are treated like second-class citizens. But these divisions should blur as this city takes on its new role not only as the political capital of a united Germany, but as one of the commercial and cultural capitals of the European Union.

A wonderful place to begin a tour is a gentle cruise down the river that bisects the city. You can take in the highlights of the city in just an hour or two. Do it on the first day you arrive, while you are still jet-lagged. It’s a nice, undemanding activity. There are several boat companies and itineraries. A good one leaves from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), conveniently located in the city’s central park, the Tiergarten, on John Foster Dulles Alle 10. The Number 100 bus stops there. This Number 100 bus, a double-decker, is another easy way to see the city. A regular city bus, it winds through the Tiergarten, around the Brandenburg Gate, and down to Alexanderplatz in the heart of East Berlin. Alexanderplatz, a stark modernist plaza reminiscent of Boston’s City Hall plaza, once had banners draped from its surrounding tall apartment towers proclaiming the triumph of socialism. Now, neon signs for Sony and other multinationals adorn them.

At Alexanderplatz, you can take an elevator to the top of the ornate radio tower, the Berliner Fernsehturnc, visible throughout the city. It gives you a 360-degree view of Berlin and its environs. After you take in the view, buy the brochure, Berlin: A Panoraminc View, at the Ferneshturm gift shop. It is a great guide to what to see when you are back on the ground.

In general when traveling throughout the city, be sure to use the great public transport system. It is a four-part system: the S-Bahn (Bahn means train) or aboveground trains are great for sightseeing, the U-Bahn or underground trains, the yellow local trams that are only in the former East Berlin, and the buses. You can buy passes good for a day, several days, or a week. The system is extensive.

Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for The New York Times, recently observed that the nation’s largest city lacks much ambitious contemporary architecture. The same holds true for every American city, including Boston. It’s hard to realize how true this is, until one sees the shapes, colors, and materials used in Berlin. And they are used not just for fancy museums, as is the case here, but for offices, apartments, embassies, public buildings, and department stores. Pretty much any place is a good place to start. Directly across from our hotel, the Savoy, for example, was the Ludwig-Erhard-Haus, the home of the Berlin Stock Exchange. This dramatic building, designed by British architect Nicholas Grimshaw, has floors that are not erected, but suspended from two giant steel arches. But there are some architectural must-sees, including the areas around Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and Potzdamer Platz. All three are places of enormous new construction. The Brandenburg Gate is the giant ceremonial arch, similar to Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris. During the Cold War, it stood naked, stripped of its urban context. With the reunification, the city has reconstructed the elegant Pariser Platz that fronts on the Gate. Being rebuilt on and around this classic public square are the American Embassy, the Hotel Adlon, the Academy of Arts and other buildings. To accommodate the American Embassy’s security concerns, the city had to alter its setback rules.

Frank Gehry, currently the country’s, and perhaps the world’s, most famous architect, designed the DG Bank on the square. From the outside, it meets the city’s design guidelines that new buildings have stone facades, rows of exterior windows, and height and massing similar to the historic buildings that once occupied the square. But inside, Gehry has stuffed the building with an amoeba-like auditorium, that is vaguely like a fish, covered with steel and glass. It is a definitively weird structure. It’s as if a glass and chrome tumor erupted in the middle of a bank’s grand lobby. A beautiful tumor.

The Potzdamer Platz, until destroyed in World War II, was a Parisian-style meeting of six major boulevards in a star-shaped intersection. After the war, it stood vacant for 45 years, a monument to cold-war tensions. Today, it is being built anew. Mostly finished now are the huge agglomerations built by Sony and DaimlerChrysler. Architecturally, these complexes are stunning. The Sony complex by Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn features a double glass wall building that merges into a huge plaza under a high-tech canopy. The Daimler complex includes a brick-clad skyscraper, a shopping mall, the Daimler headquarters, apartments, general offices, an IMAX cinema, a Broadway-style theater, a hotel and other functions. In all, the Daimler complex, whose master plan was by Renzo Piano, takes up 19 blocks, with buildings by Piano, Rafael Moneo, and Sir Richard Rogers. The diversity of the materials and shapes is stunning. But the overall feel is corporate, bland and controlled.

The two corporations own and maintain many of the ostensibly public streets and spaces. At the Sony Center’s central plaza, we asked our guide what would happen if one of us passed out political leaflets for, say, a local city council race. We would carry you out, came the quick reply from a security guard at the guide’s elbow. This somewhat Orwellian interchange indicated the degree of control exercised over these public spaces. One public architect associated with the projects called them a high level of failure.

As part of the Potsdamer Platz reconstruction, the state is building a new regional railway station at the Platz, all underground, where three types of rail service, basically local, regional, and national and international, will meet on three levels. Its gleaming structures, which we saw under construction, were a testimony to German planning and design.

For any architecture lover in Berlin, an indispensable guide book is ”Berlin: Open City, The City as an Exhibit,” available in English and German in most bookstores and news kiosks. Its skinny, blue covers are stuffed with information, including maps and architectural details on every major building.

Of course, one can look at architecture while strolling, shopping, and eating, all of which can be done aplenty in Berlin. You can check out the fancy shops on the grand boulevard Friedrichstrasse, the gardens and fancy shops around Savignyplatz in West Berlin, or the Soho-like charm, galleries, and fancy shops of Hackescher Market.

Savignyplatz is a small park through which pass many of the central streets of West Berlin’s downtown. Some of the fanciest shops in the city are here. Eating is good too. The Paris Bar (on Kanstrasse between Fasanenstrasse and Uhlandstrasse) is a famous Berlin institution that has been in existence for about 40 years. The owner is a serious art collector and the place is filled with art, much of it from the regular patrons. This is a good place for people watching.

Be sure to check out Depot at Bleibtreustrasse 48 for cosmopolitan European home and garden furnishings. Mechtild Stange, the proprietor, has a well-trained eye for good design, and the prices are affordable. Also check out Art and Industry, at Bleibtreustrasse 40, which specializes in furnishings, jewelry, and pottery from the ’50s.

Another favored haunt is Literaturcafe on Fasanenstrasse just off Kurfurstendam next door to the Kathe Kollwitz Museum. The spacious garden is a perfect spot to spend an afternoon reading or sketching. There is a good bookstore below the cafe, and there are frequent book and poetry readings in the cafe.

Under communism, the Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin was a shadow of its former self as the premier shopping street of the city. Now, rundown buildings are being renovated and new ones built. The new ones include an almost block-long Galeries Lafayette, the French Department store. This grand center is worth seeing as much for its architecture as its superior shopping. It features a hollow-glass core, shaped like two ice-cream cones placed mouth to mouth, around which one can stand and peer into the building’s multiple floors.

Hachescher Markt, just over the river from the Friedrichstrasse, has more old stone buildings that have yet to be renovated. This district of narrow streets and crumbling buildings has a Soho-like flavor, with its mixture of galleries, shops, and restaurants.

A bit further out is the Kathe Kollwitz Platz in Prenzlauerberg, a classic European square with mixed low-rise residential buildings, restaurants and bistros with outdoor cafes, galleries, and antique shops. Fewer tourists have discovered this area, so you can feel smug about having done so. This is an in place for students, and is on the S-Bahn.

Although strolling is nice, pedaling is great too. Bicycling is a wonderful way to see Berlin, and the inhabitants do it a lot. You can rent bikes behind the Zoogarten Station at the entrance to the Tiergarten and bike around this lovely central park with a stop at the biergarten at the Neuer See (Lichtensteinalle).

Eating is perhaps the purest expression of German culture, and one of the most intimidating to outsiders. At lunch one day, we watched as one of the more adventuresome of our group was served an enormous pink football of what appeared to be pure fat. But she sliced into it, peeled back the inch-thick layer of fat – and revealed a glistening center of moist roast pork. Ahhh, German food at its best. Course, meaty, and intimidating. This dish was called Schinken-Eisben. It was the butt of a pig, shrouded in its own fat, and cooked with sauerkraut and potatoes. It was being eaten at the Wirthaus Moorlake (Moorlakeweg 1, tel. 805-58-09), a lovely old timber-framed lodge overlooking a peaceful lagoon. It is a few miles outside Berlin, in a major public park well off the tourist track, but actually accessible by bus.

If you aren’t ready for Schinken-Eisben, eat some wurst at the glorified hotdog stands that abound on the street. The vendors serve their sausages not on a roll, but cut up with toothpicks on a paper plate, with just a smidgen of bread on the side.

If one is not into German food, though, you can do as Germans do, and eat Italian, Asian, or French food. There is plenty of it. Germany is more like America, in this regard, in that many natives disdain their own cuisine and reach for those of other countries.

What else can be said about this lovely city? That it’s still inventing itself. In another decade, the giant cranes that fill much of the skyline will be gone. The residents will settle into using their new train lines, parks, and buildings. And the world will see in what fashion this city resumes its place as one of Europe’s great capital cities.

Alex Marshall is a freelance journalist and author of ”How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken.” Sally Young is the coordinator of Harvard’s Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design. This story ran on page M1 of the Boston Globe on 11/5/2000. Copyright 2000

The above is a story that ran on the front of the Travel Section in today’s (Sunday) Boston Globe. My friend Sally and I wrote it, based around our trip there last May.