Upstairs On the Square

Charlie's Kitchen ("The Double Cheeseburger King") is a restaurant serving American fare with New England specialties in the Harvard Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Charlie’s” houses bars on two separate floors; additionally, a front patio and backyard beer garden are open seasonally. The Boston Phoenix named it one of the best dive bars in Boston in 2009.

The Globe Corner Bookstore was one of the largest travel book and map retailers in North America. It was located at 90 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square. The store provided a full range of travel and outdoor recreation reference materials for a destination: guidebooks, maps, atlases, recreation guides, travel literature, nature guides, photography books, cookbooks, and language products. The company's original store, founded by Patrick Carrier, opened in 1982 in the historic Old Corner Bookstore building in downtown Boston, a continuation of the Old Corner Bookstore rebranded to focus on travel products. Reflecting the shifting dynamics of Boston's retail districts, the company opened its Harvard Square store in 1988 and a location in Boston's Back Bay in 1993. The store launched its web site in the winter of 1995, the first comprehensive travel book site on the web. In 2007, it had over 40,000 pages. The Globe Corner Bookstore's Adventure Travel Lecture Series hosted Jan Morris, Bradford Washburn, William Dalrymple, Bruce Chatwin, Eric Newby, Paul Theroux, Roger Tory Peterson, Rory Stewart, and David Allen Sibley, and others. A combination of high rents and the declining fortunes of downtown Boston retail prompted the company to close the downtown branch in March 1997. The company sold its lease at 500 Boylston Street in the Back Bay to Boston Private Bank in December 2000. In 2010, the store's owner put the remaining Cambridge store up for sale, citing personal health concerns—a diagnosis of a seizure disorder. After entertaining several bids, none were found to satisfactorily ensure continued operations of the store and its closing was announced.The Globe Corner Bookstores served its last bricks-and-mortar customer on July 4, 2011, having served over 2 million customers. The website and name were purchased by Brookline Booksmith of Brookline, Massachusetts in May 2012.

Brattle Hall is a historic building along Brattle Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was constructed in 1889 for the Cambridge Social Union – established in 1871 – when that organization moved into the adjacent William Brattle House that year. Brattle Hall was built to house the organization's library, and to provide a space for larger meetings and social functions. Brattle Hall was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, originally in the Dutch Colonial Revival style, but it acquired more of a Colonial Revival feel with the 1907 addition of brick ends, designed by Charles Cogswell.The building continues to serve as a social center today. It houses the Brattle Theatre, a repertory movie house operated by a local non-profit since 1953, a restaurant in its basement, and a coffee shop on its first level. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and included in an expansion of the Harvard Square Historic District in 1988.

The Brattle Theatre is a repertory movie theater located in Brattle Hall at 40 Brattle Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theatre is a small movie house with one screen. It is one of the few remaining movie theaters, if not the only one, to use a rear-projection system; the projector is located behind the screen rather than behind the audience. The Brattle Theatre mainly screens a mixture of foreign, independent, and classic films, and began showing repertory and foreign films in February 1953. Despite the rapid disappearance of American arthouse theaters, the Brattle has managed to maintain a loyal base of moviegoers while remaining independently operated.

The William Brattle House is an historic house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of the seven Colonial mansions described by historian Samuel Atkins Eliot as making up Tory Row. It remains in use by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

The Cambridge Center for Adult Education (CCAE), a non-profit corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been teaching adult education courses at 42 Brattle Street since taking over the building from the Cambridge Social Union in 1938.The CCAE is housed in two historic buildings, the William Brattle House (1727) at 42 Brattle Street and the Dexter Pratt House (1808) at 54 Brattle Street.

The Conductor's Building is a former Boston Elevated Railway (BERy) administrative building, located on Bennett Alley between Mount Auburn Street and Bennett Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1912 as the headquarters of BERy's 7th Division, it is the only original building surviving from the construction of the Cambridge subway. After being renovated from 2014 to 2017 as part of an adjacent hotel project, the building was used as a restaurant from April 2017 to August 2018. Under the name Boston Elevated R.Y. Offices, it is a contributing property to the Harvard Square Historic District.

The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the public policy school of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public administration, and international development, four doctoral degrees, and many executive education programs. It conducts research in subjects relating to politics, government, international affairs, and economics. As of 2021, HKS had an endowment of $1.7 billion. The School is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a global consortium of schools that seeks to train leaders in international affairs.The School's primary campus is located on John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge. The main buildings overlook the Charles River and are southwest of Harvard Yard and Harvard Square, on the site of a former MBTA Red Line trainyard. The School is adjacent to the public riverfront John F. Kennedy Memorial Park. The Kennedy School's alumni include 17 heads of state or government, the most of any graduate institution in the world. Alumni also include other public servants, including cabinet officials, military leaders, heads of central banks, and legislators.

Harvest is a Harvard Square restaurant originally owned in 1975 by Benjamin Thompson (architect) (he designed it as well) and his wife Jane. They closed in 1997 because of “growing competition and poor management” but reopened under new management (past managers R. Patrick Bowe and Jayne Bowe) and renovations by Elkus Manfredi. The current owner is Chris Hummel.Harvest offers “upscale, contemporary, seasonal New England cuisine.”The restaurant was known for its Marimekko prints in the front room and the neon Harvest sign and attracted customers such as Julia Child (it was rumored to be “her favorite place to dine”). They hosted Child's 90th birthday party in 2002.Alumni of their kitchen include Lydia Shire, Barbara Lynch (restaurateur), Bob Kinkead, Sara Moulton, Jasper White (chef), Chris Schlesinger and Frank McClelland.

The Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) is an institute of the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University that was created to serve as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, as well as to inspire Harvard undergraduates to consider careers in politics and public service. The IOP works to bring the academic world into contact with the world of politics and public affairs in a non-partisan way to promote public service. Undergraduates Menat Bahnasy and Kevin Ballen serve as President and Vice President of the Institute.

Club Passim is an American folk music club in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was opened by Joyce Kalina (now Chopra) and Paula Kelley in 1958, when it was known as Club 47 (based on its then address, 47 Mount Auburn Street, also in Cambridge; it moved to its present location on Palmer Street in 1963), and changed its name to simply Passim in 1969. The Donlins who ran the club during the 1970s pronounced the name PASSim. Bob Donlin said this pronunciation as he welcomed people to the shows with the always-out-of-adjustment mic stand microphone, but those who were unaware often said PassEEM. It adopted the present name in 1994; a combination of the earlier two names. At its inception, it was mainly a jazz and blues club, but soon branched out to include ethnic folk, then singer-songwriter folk.Artists who have performed there include Joan Baez, Shawn Colvin, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Buffett, John Mayer, Matt Nathanson, and Brian Webb. At times the Club was a place for blues musicians like Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop to play as well. In the 1960s, the club (when known as Club 47) played a role in the rise of folk-rock music, when it began to book folk-rock bands whose music was unrelated to traditional folk, such as the Lovin' Spoonful. The club's importance to the 1960s Cambridge folk scene is documented extensively in Eric Von Schmidt's Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years. Scott Alarik described Club 47 as being "the hangout of choice for the new folkies" during that time.Today there is a Passim School of Music program, which offers workshops and classes to teens and adults.

Kirkland House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University, located near the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was named after John Thornton Kirkland, president of Harvard University from 1810 to 1828.