We don't have nearly enough rathskellers anymore

This is Cambridge, Harvard Square

Too easy: Harvard Square

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x89e37742bc65ca79%3A0x59ca183286a6...

19...40s? Not sure when they discontinued the streetcar along Brattle

Looks like the same building where Click and Clack had offices.

Don’t drive like my brother!

Brighton Center?

Back in the day, you could pahk your cah in Hahvahd Square. And drive (or ride a trolley) east on Brattle Street.

The Cambridge Federal Savings Bank building in the background was built in 1937, and demolished in 1990. The Mobil gas station just behind it (to its left) was originally built in the 1920s, remodeled in 1941, and finally demolished about 1983. In this, photo, it looks to me like the 1941 remodeling.

[Source for the above: Cambridge Buildings and Architexta database, by Christopher Hall, ]

(The gas station site was used for parking until the 1 Brattle Square building was built in 1990. The Harvard Brattle subway station was on Eliot Street, around the corner, where the Harvard Kennedy School is today, its site not visible in this photo.)

The Coolidge Bank and Cool Cash ATMs were in another former gas station, diagonally across Mount Auburn Street from the Mobil station you see in this photo, on the site now occupied by Harvard University Employees Credit Union.

Cambridge Federal Savings -- later called Northeast Federal Savings -- was not the same as Cambridge Savings, which still stands on Mass. Ave. at Dunster Street.

Also according to the Buildings and Architects database, the recently-demolished building that had Urban Outfitters was apparently remodeled about 1948 for the Corcoran's store. So I would wager that this photo is pre-1948.

The streetcar is coming from the Bennett Street carhouse, on the site of today's Charles Hotel. It could be operating to Massachusetts station in the Back Bay (now Hynes station), via Mass. Ave.; that streetcar route was discontinued 9/12/1949 to allow for reconstruction of the Harvard Bridge. Or, the car could be a non-revenue move to Lechmere station, via Cambridge Street. Although the Harvard-Lechmere streetcar route was converted to trackless trolley on 4/11/1936, the tracks on Cambridge Street remained active for non-revenue trips. Until 5/6/1940, cars of the Commonwealth Ave. (Boston College, then called Lake Street) line were stored and serviced at Bennett Street carhouse in Cambridge, and had to operate empty between Bennett Street and Lechmere.

[Source for the above: "Streetcar Lines of the Hub: The 1940s, Heyday of Electric Transit in Boston", by Bradley H. Clarke]

Yes, JFK would have been called Jack, but John F. Kennedy Street was known as Boylston Street until Al Vellucci got mad at Harvard and had the city council rename it in 1982.

As for the Curious George store, the business was sold just before construction began on their building; the new owner promised to reopen it somewhere in Central Square but she never gave a specific address.

And wasn't there another famous student hangout, in Kenmore Square, that likewise was called a "RAThskeller"??

We were a little tricky with this mystery photo and ventured outside of Boston's boundaries ! This photo shows Brattle St in Harvard Square in the late 1940s/early'50s. We're not exactly sure why this photo is in our Public Works collection, but we suspect that the Public Works was interested in the transit situation in Harvard Square - perhaps because of some planned work in Boston.