Leavitt & Peirce is without doubt the oldest store this column will ever write up. It’s been in business in the same Harvard Square location since 1883, and you get a sense of that when entering. Aside from the clothes the staff and customers wear, it’s not hard to imagine it might actually be 1883. Portraits of the founders, Fred Leavitt and Waldo Pierce, hang on the wall with lots of Harvard and tobacconist memorabilia – photographs, posters, signs, rowing equipment and a long row of footballs from past significant Harvard games. It’s both very much a going concern and a shrine to its past, a museum of itself.

Paul MacDonald, the owner, took the store over in 1983 from his father, who had bought it in the early 1970s. He told me the wooden lady who graces the front door is well over 100 years old. She presides over painted signs advertising “Gifts, Tobacco and Games.” “Is that a hot dog in her hand?” I asked. No, I was told, she holds a couple of cigars. We’re not here to review the tobacco-related products, but let’s just make clear: The store has everything a smoker might need or want, and a few handsome flasks if you want a quick drink with your smoke.

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The majority of the games and gifts the store sells could have been part of its offerings from the beginning. Chess sets of all sizes and shapes, including Japanese and Chinese versions Shogie and Xiangqi, checkers, Scrabble (including some very nice travel sets), mancala and backgammon. Some are vintage and some are new. There’s tarot cards, playing cards, tiddlywinks, jigsaw puzzles, dominos, pick-up sticks, gyroscopes and, though I didn’t spot yo-yos, I imagine there are those too. A plastic “Toothpick Bird” might be the most modern offering, first patented in 1947. (Scrabble would be runner-up, invented in 193l.) Marbles and dice, tiny to quite large, are available by the piece; the store carries beautiful handcrafted marbles by Fritz Glass on Cape Cod. I noticed some porcelain rabbits, cats and owls that turned out to be incense holders and some funny “Lucky Lottery Scratchers,” pennies with mermaid, dolphin or other animal handles. 

Much of the store’s other offerings lean more toward the practical: umbrellas, soaps, shaving supplies, the classic Mason Pearson hairbrush line, cufflinks and canes. Is perfume practical? Leavitt & Peirce sells that too. I spied a nice bundle of multicolored pipe-cleaners that would be excellent for art projects, and you’ll find postcards, gum and the charming little French Anis de Flavigny oval tins of violet, lemon and orange flavored “pastilles.” This fall, the North Cambridge “Confections and Savory Delights” shop Spindler’s opened a small satellite branch in a side room of Leavitt & Peirce, so along with board games and toys you can purchase chocolate witches, bats, turkeys, jams, tinned fish, cleverly packaged “Good Hair Day” pasta, even a bottle of margarita mix that contains edible (drinkable?) glitter. A free chocolate sample was a nice treat.

Back in the main store, I enjoyed looking at the great variety of pipes on offer, from a humble corncob to beautifully carved rosewood specimens. And I have to admit it was fun to open the big glass jars and smell some of the tobacco varieties – Pound Cake, Whiskey Cavendish, Turkish Bold and more. They smelled wonderful, and almost made me wish I smoked. Almost. Happily, there’s no need to be a smoker to enjoy a visit to Leavitt & Peirce. 

Leavitt & Peirce, 1316 Massachusetts Ave., Harvard Square, Cambridge (Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sundays noon to 6 p.m.)