Jill Brown-Rhone Park

This is a park? Really? Would we really call this a park?
I live a block away and walk through this «park» every day on my way to work. Who knew that every day I walked through a park! There are benches here, yes. There’s garbage cans! There’s open space! Wow, it’s definitely a park. We don’t really need trees though, that’s just too much.
On a hot summer night you could get toscaninis and sit here? Watching the streetlights change and cars go by would be real romantic. Maybe even improvise a game of chess or checkers with wrappers or rocks picked up off the sidewalk!

Fun outdoor area with lots of activity. On last Thursday of each month in summer, a local church has a community event with free food, free health screenings and music! It’s a nice park to hang out.

Know what this park has? Benches. You want a place to sit down? You got it. There are some chess boards on a few of the tables, which come in handy if you’re walking around Central Square with white and black chess pieces and no board.
Trees are not this park’s strong suit. Let the Arboretum deal with the trees.
You can also dispose of things here, like trash. Although you could toss it anywhere, this park comes equipped with a trash can! You can also dispose of mail across the street in the mailbox but that’s not in the park so I can’t review it here. You can also dispose of babies at the fire station across Mass Ave, but again, not part of the park (no joke, you can drop unwanted babies off at any staffed fire station, though they insist that the kid is actually yours to give away in the first place).
Quite possibly the best park in Cambridge.

What’s better than impervious Y-​intersection in the middle of Central Square? Why, that would be an impervious Y-​park in the middle of Central Square!
It was a crappy driving intersection, anyway, much better suited for park/​people use and great for businesses on the stretch, namely Café Luna and that Indian place. There is a wide expanse for walking 5 people across, for public displays of affection, public speaking, and a line of bike posts (the vertical kind with the circle, not so much a bike rack). They’ve even provided some lovely built-​in tables/​benches (I am fond of the bench built-​ins in the granite planters.

During it’s planning and construction stages, I cursed the city for changing traffic patterns, adding lights and eliminating parking spaces on this already tight intersection of Main and Mass. I grew up two blocks away from here, and generally speaking fear change. I was not excited.
I have to say though, I was here in the spring and summer, eating take out from Cinderella’s or ice cream from t\Toscannini’s and it was packed with people out doing the same, enjoying the weather and local businesses. I have to say I’m impressed. Very little that the city does impresses me, so this came as a bit of a shock to me. There weren’t parks like this when I was growing up, but it is nice to see families out here eating dinner together. It is like how Cambridge used to be. More of a neighborhood. I like it a lot.

OK, OK, come on you guys.
I too have been woken up by the jackhammers, moved my car at 7 in the morning because they put a sign up five minutes earlier telling us they would be paving another two feet of the endlessly changing road, and lugged my kids across the piles of mud and loose stones.
But I think we need to give this little park a chance!
And this is why:
When I was a kid the majority of Brattle Street, leaving Harvard Square, was lined with lilac bushes, and around May day of every year the whole street would stink of lilac, and my mom would sneak out and cut lilac branches and bring them home and the whole house smelled like Brattle Street.
But in the past couple of decades the fashions have changed, and my dad and I have noticed that the more modern gardens on Brattle Street have removed their ancient lilac bushes, in favor of things like alliums and Japanese Maples.
I love this funny, too-​hot-​in-​the-​bright-​sun, where-is-the-art-?-Oh,-there-it-is,-that-teeny-tiny-mosaic-over-there, technology-​meets-​community-​what-​? park because someone made the decision to plant lilac bushes all over it, and that is what Cambridge means to me!

Oh this is what they’ve spent months building in front of my apartment? I don’t know if it was worth all those mornings of me waking up to the sounds of a jackhammer.
If this is a park, every sidewalk with a tree on it should also be called a park.
(Although, to prove Ligaya’s point, I recently ate at Desi Dhaba because we were able to eat outside.)

Wait, this is a park? Coulda had me fooled. The granite to plant ratio is altogether disappointing. Aren’t parks supposed to have grass and trees and the like? The upside is of course there’s lots of wall seating for munching on a to-​go snack/​meal and no guards yet (hear me, skaters?!).
Also fantastic that its sidewalks tripled the al freso dining options in the Central/​Lafayette Square area; Desi Dhaba and La Luna must be thanking their lucky stars. Now after a wicked hangover we’ve got a place for savoring an espresso and cig.
What’s this business about technology meeting community though? There’s nothing innovative about the space at all. Give us some newfangled outdoor toys or interesting art, PLEASE!

In the many many months of construction it took to make this lame but chilled stone and concrete park at Main and Mass, I once bumped into fellow Central Squarian, Kabir H just by the mess. We wondered about this park…
Would it just be another bum-​magnet attracting more Cambridge lunatics?
Would it be the new hang-​out for the Middle East crew over the road?
or
Would it just be where we keep bumping into Annie P?
2 days after it opened…
«Hi Annie!»
OH SNAP.

FINALLY, the construction and mess that has been Lafayette Square for the past couple of years is done, and the new park complete. It’s dedicated to Cambridge police officer Jill Brown-​Rhone, and claims to be «where community and technology meet.» I’m not so sure where the technology comes in other than the considerable amount of MIT students likely to wander through.
It’s a pretty basic little triangle of a square though, paved with brick and spotted with plantings surrounded by thick walls that make for good seating. Nice place to hang out and enjoy a summer evening. The layout seems a bit off though, with a wide, empty section in the middle. It seems to be wanting something there – a fountain, more plantings, musicians playing or vendors or such. I suppose we’ll see what they do with it. As it currently is, it’s oddly blank space.