"It was a kind of seedy, plain ugly food, though reputedly nourishing, plastic tabletop and wobbly steel-frame chair kind of a place with a long cafeteria serving counter and punched orange meal tickets," Rogers says.

The Square After Dark

For nightlife, graduates recall the University Theatre as one of the most important parts of the Square.

The theater was located on Mass. Ave. on the site currently occupied by CVS and the complex next door to it.

From Sunday through Tuesday, the theater would show a double feature, and then on Wednesdays would have a "review day" on which the theater would show a lot of old movies.

For night owls, the late-night Wursthaus was a central spot.

One of the most popular places in the Square, the Wursthaus was open until 1 a.m., while the rest of the Square bars closed at quarter to midnight.

"You could go there until 1 o'clock and get a hot pastrami sandwich on a roll. It was a classic. It was something that you did. I still recall it vividly," O'Connell says.

All the graduates recall football games as a big part of the weekend social life. Snook says that aside from football, many people went on dates to the Brattle Theater for movies and student Shakespeare productions.

Most coeducational socializing went on off campus because, as Robert Wechsler '49 remembers, the rules about having women in your room were strict.

"In those days," he says, "women all lived in the Radcliffe Quad, and you would be expelled with no hope of return if a female was found in your room after 10 p.m."

Town-Gown Relations

Harvard Football was not only the central social activity, but also one of the primary unifying factors within the Square and the University.

"One Friday night, a local lady stopped me and asked me whom we were playing the next day. When I told her, she immediately says, 'I hope they beat the tar outta you,' turned on her heel, and strode away. I think that summed up the town/gown relationships of that era," says Robert Wechsler '49.

Many alumni of the class of '49 recall better relations between students and Cantabrigians just after the war, saying that the war helped to bring the community together in a new way.