No Toilets in Harvard Square

Major Tourist Attraction Lacks Public Toilets

Mar 15, 2008 D. Yvette Wohn

Harvard Square draws millions of visitors every year, but Cambridge laws prevent installation of public toilets.

Harvard Square draws millions of visitors every year, but Cambridge laws prevent installation of public toilets.

One drizzly afternoon at Harvard University’s Science Center, eight elderly Chinese ladies filed through the revolving doors and followed their tour guide downstairs to the restroom. Giggling shyly and chatting amongst themselves, the women waited in line to attend to their needs, avoiding eye contact with female students, some of whom cast puzzled looks in their direction.

Waiting outside the door of the lavatory, tour guide Anna Hsu explained that the Science Center is the only building close to Harvard Square that has more than three stalls. “We warn tourist groups that there are no public restrooms in this area but with elderly tourists, you can’t tell them to wait. We have to find the best alternative, and it’s not like there is a McDonald’s in Harvard Square,” she said.

Most restaurants on the square do not allow non-patrons to use their lavatories. Starbucks on Church Street has a handwritten sign on its restroom reading “Customers only.” The letters are highlighted in yellow and underlined twice.

Hsu noted that many Asian tourists have trouble understanding the absence of public toilets in a country they thought would be more advanced in public infrastructure. Beijing, for instance, has about 7,700 toilets, many of them built half a century ago. The city is renovating 3,700 of them before the Olympics this summer, according to the Beijing Daily.The lack of public toilets is not just an issue in Harvard Square. Other areas such as Central Square also face the same dilemma—a strong stench of urine that permanently lingers over the sidewalks.

“I don’t even want to walk my dog on some of the streets,” one seven-year resident of Cambridge said. “And I’m not blaming the homeless because not every city with homeless people smells this bad.”

The Cambridge city government is aware of the problem, yet refuses to create public toilets.

Henrietta Davis, a member of the Boston City Council who supports the idea of public restrooms, said that the city seriously discussed the installation of public toilets four years ago. "We were looking into automatic flush toilets, which would be paid through advertising, but they take up eight square foot of space and couldn't fit into most places. The idea was not practical and we reached a dead end," she said in a telephone interview. The technical matters, however, were not so much of an issue as the financial ones. "The cost [for toilets] isn't what the city manager wants to support,” Davis said.

That doesn’t mean Cambridge is poor, nor is it oblivious of the fact that Harvard Square receives about eight million tourists a year. The city has an $82.7 million dollar budget this year for community maintenance and development, which includes projects such as the Healthy Harvard Square Initiative. Apparently “health” does not include going to the bathroom.

To avoid costs of installing public toilets, the city engaged in under-the-table talks with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which is funded by the state. Earlier this month, a single stall co-ed restroom opened at the Harvard Square Station. Unlike other subway station developments, which are posted on the MBTA’s web site, this event took place so quietly that even the Information Booth, located at the mouth of one of the subway’s exits, did not know it existed.

One public official who wished to be unnamed said that it was a “good way to get a public toilet without having to pay for it.”

While the American Restroom Association notes that the United States is underdeveloped in terms of restroom access, absence of public toilets is not at all an American custom. Major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco have public toilets. Boston currently has six pay public toilets located in the busiest areas of the city such as the New England Aquarium. New York City, which underwent more than a decade of lawsuits and administrative debates on the operation and location of public toilets, installed more than a dozen late last year.

In the meantime, those visiting or working in Harvard Square have to deal with their own natural desires. Paul Lyle, an official of the public works department, said that there was no talk of building public toilets as far as he knew.

For those who do not have the energy to walk all the way to the Science Center, a few places offer toilets free of charge. They are not, however, the best places for “emergencies”: the Coop’s one-room bathroom, for instance, is located on the top of three winding flights of stairs. There are also a few stalls in the Holyoke Center, which is owned by Harvard.

The copyright of the article No Toilets in Harvard Square in NE U.S. Travel is owned by D. Yvette Wohn. Permission to republish No Toilets in Harvard Square in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Harvard Square

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