As a teenager in the 1950s, Louisa Solano learned to tell time backwards at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. She read a clock reflected in the mirror of a barber shop across the street.

“It was a symbol of the time,” says Solano, now the owner of the poetry shop on Plympton St. “Everything ran backwards rather than forwards. It was a sign of preservation. Society was preserving itself.”

People familiar with the Square then and now attest to the metamorphosis that the area has undergone.

The square’s retail stores have shifted their focus from the working class demographic to students and visitors with greater disposable income.

“In the 1950s there were five and dime stores that catered to people without much money. It was great,” Solano says, remembering that a wedding band could be purchased for $24.

Of the stores and restaurants that the class of 1954 patronized, many have been replaced with more expensive establishments; only a handful of the originals remain, and two of them—Brine’s Sporting Goods and Grolier Poetry Book Shop—announced that they were closing this year.

Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, says that the character of the Square has been transformed.

“It’s unrecognizable except that we’ve preserved the buildings,” he says. “It’s a completely different community here than when I came down on week-ends from Dartmouth...If you live in Cambridge now, most people...don’t go to the Square for every-day things.”

Paul Corcoran ’54, whose family owned Corcoran’s Department Store where Urban Outfitters is now located, says that the Harvard Square of the 1950s was cozier.

“Central Square was where it was at. [Harvard Square] was like a little village: small, intimate and not a lot of traffic,” he says. “Central Square had much more to offer than Harvard Square.”

Sullivan attributed the changes to the demolition of the subway yards in the late 1970s, where the School of Government now stands, and the closing of the University Press Printing Plant in 1969.

“There was a lot more of a working class presence because of the subway yards...and the printing plant [nearby],” he says.

GREASY SPOONS

Not only was there more of a working class presence, but Sullivan says that in the 1950s students had less disposable income because many of them were veterans.

Most of the stores and restaurants were inexpensive.