With 76 Nobel laureates and alumni like Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a very well known and innovative community. MIT’s campus occupies nearly an entire Cambridge neighborhood (Area 2 officially), where its main academic, research, and residential buildings are located.
MIT’s green lawns are filled with buildings from the institute’s early-20th century beginnings. For instance, William Welles Bosworth’s Pantheon-esque work, the Great Dome provides an impressive background for graduations on Killian Court. Several well known scientists’ and philosophers’ names are etched into the surrounding buildings as well. Also on the campus are post-war modern, and sometimes unusual, contemporary works. Frank Gehry’s Stata Center displays wild, crooked angles that appear to be collapsing, and Steven Holl’s Simmons Hall, resembles a giant sponge.
MIT neighborhood residents are primarily undergraduate and graduate students and fraternity members. Broadway and Main Street border to the north, the Charles River on the south and east, and the Boston & Albany Railroad line to the west. Downtown Boston is accessible via Massachusetts Avenue/Route 2 across The Harvard Bridge and The Longfellow Bridge, which carries Route 3 and the MBTA’s Red Line.
Kendall Square is MIT’s downtown, with assorted restaurants, sidewalk cafes, shops, a cinema, a pool hall and an outdoor ice skating rink. The square is also the headquarters of The MIT Press, the university’s affiliated publisher; The MIT Museum, exhibiting impressive holograms and robots; and the Museum of Science. With its heavy concentration of biomedical and information technology firms, including Genzyme, Draper Laboratory and Microsoft, Kendall Square also caters to MIT interns and graduates.
Closer to home, residents can attend public lectures by some of the world’s top minds, or view the younger generation’s achievements at the High School State Fair. MIT’s monthly yard sale, with its bevy of high-tech electronics to choose from, is also quite popular.
For recreational activities, The Charles River Reservation has bike and running paths, rowing and sailing from MIT’s Sailing Pavilion, and grassy areas to play Frisbee or have a picnic.