amhall

Garden Street ranks among the most boring overpriced places that one could choose to live.... Actually, there are probably more boring, miserable places to live somewhere in North Cambridge, but they're smaller and you're less likely to be duped into living there. Garden Street is pretty much emblematic of everything that is wrong with Harvard. First a great many ticky-tack apartment buildings line it and the surrounding streets. Although I doubt most of them were built before 1940, they all have pretentious names such as the Little-Lord-Fontleroy Residences or the Ivy-Covered, Pilgrim-Descended condos. Given their aforementioned ivy-covered-ness, they feel free to charge three times the price for these apartments to foolish, debt-ridden law students who could not bare to take the bus to their classes. Farther up Garden, you will find more Harvard residences with unlucky undergraduates banished to the Styx.

I lived here for two years. Compared to other places near Harvard, I would say Prescott Street offers a good value (especially compared to the neighboring streets that cannot access Harvard's free Wi-Fi) It's strangely cheaper than places in North Cambridge and in Harvard Square, and yet actually much more convenient and quieter, as freshman dormitories and the Faculty Club dominate most of it. Because Harvard so dominates the street, the landscaping is well-maintained and it has frequent police patrols. Unfortunately, from Fall 2009, there will be construction on the Harvard Art Museums which will probably ruin its peace and quiet.

Broadway is a very straight, flat street that well serves its function, shuttling the underpaid workers of Harvard to Harvard itself. However, Cambridge Street (the street just north) probably does a better job with more retail. It also ends in Inman Square which much nicer than the nondescript/miserable neighborhoods of East Cambridge. Broadway might be useful for coming to and from the airport, but usually traffic sucks. However, in some places, it does have a bike lane... so yeah, Broadway, for when you need to get to the cheaper parts of Cambridge.