On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 11:34:27AM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: > But then, it's not even always assimilation. People all over the world > know that Harvard Square is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it isn't, as > far as I know, a formal geographic boundary in any useful sense -- it's > just a district in that part of Cambridge. But then maybe I'm revealing > some ignorance here, as I've lived in the Boston area since I was a kid > and yet I still don't actually know what "square" is really meant by the > trm "Harvard Square" -- I've always assumed that it's centered on the T > station, but that's not actually on Harvard's campus, hence the ambiguity.
It's not really meant to be a political entity, just a name given to an area. Boston's full of squares that nobody's even heard of too. They have little signs up above the street sign that say "John 'Did Something Cool For The Community' Doe Memorial Square" and it's just some back road intersection. It's really over done the number of squares we have. The naming doesn't imply an affiliation with Harvard, which is why it's not on campus. Harvard Square, Harvard Bridge, Harvard Station, Harvard Ave, Harvard St, etc. are not on campus either; they just share a namesake. The extent to which these squares are political entities is typically street addresses (if anything.) Where I live in Davis Square, Somerville, the five incoming roads change their name to "Davis Sq." for convenience as soon as they get close enough to the intersection that identifying which road you're on becomes ambiguous. -mike p.s. Boston's namespace conflicts with regards to streets is whole other story ;) Good luck finding something Washington Street. _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
