Davis Square

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Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts

Davis Square is a square in Somerville, Massachusetts, located around the intersection of Holland Street, Dover Street, Day Street, Elm Street, Highland Avenue, and College Avenue, but is often more broadly used to refer to the neighbourhood which centres on the square. It is located within walking distance of Tufts University and Harvard University. The Davis Square station is one of the stops on the Red Line of the MBTA. The Somerville Community Path runs right through the middle of the square on a former rail line, leading to the popular Minuteman Bikeway. The cobblestone square now attracts families in the summer who congregate outside the ice-cream parlor, J.P. Licks. The Somerville Arts Council's popular ArtBeat festival takes place here every year on the third weekend of July.

Davis Square was in 1997 listed in the Utne Reader as one of the fifteen "hippest places to live" in the United States. The 1984 extension of the Red Line to Alewife Station via Davis, already a college-oriented neighborhood, brought on a series of rapid changes that are still resented by many longtime Somerville residents. In 2005, The Boston Globe reported the first million dollar condo sale in Davis Square, which represented a major psychological change for a neighborhood known for being budget friendly.

Today, Davis Square is a mix of the old and the new. Restaurants, coffee shops, and stores catering to students and young urban professionals coexist with working class diners and tailors that predate Davis Square's trendy period.^{[citation needed]}

The Public Radio International show, Living on Earth is recorded in its studios in Davis Square.