Harvard Square Café Closes After 45 Years

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Harvard Square's Café Algiers closed Sunday after 45 years in business, according to a post by the coffeehouse on Facebook.

"He worked very hard to keep Algiers going and we are so sorry that the time has come for it to close," she said by email. "We wish Emil the very best and thank him for creating a truly unique and long-lasting Harvard Square icon. The Algiers Coffee House will be sorely missed."

The news was greeted by nothing short of heartbreak by customers, many of whom said they'd been visiting the Brattle Street landmark for decades.

The cafe, which opened in 1971, was a staple of Cambridge's Bohemian scene that started as a smoky, basement hookah den. In recent years, the coffeehouse and cafe has served as a standby for students and professors, serving coffee, mint tea and Mediterranean food.

In 2012, a reviewer paying tribute to the cafe wrote:

"... it’s no easy feat to keep a restaurant alive and thriving in high-rent Harvard Square, where eateries come and go, sometimes within months. But students, professors, tourists and lovers have been meeting steadily at the café’s unsteady octagonal tables over chicken kebab sandwiches and Arabic coffee—finely ground coffee flecked with cardamom and served with sugar in long-handled metal pitchers—for over 40 years."

Algiers' closure was announced abruptly via Facebook late Friday evening, taking customers and even its waitstaff by surprise, according to Cambridge Day.

It is survived on Harvard Square by Café Pamplona, another staple of the cafe's 1970s Harvard Square heyday.

Image via Google Maps