After years of complaints about the presence of banks in Harvard Square, a bank is giving up some of the square’s most prominent real estate: Eastern Bank is letting go of 3,000 square feet of space facing the plaza in front of Harvard’s Smith Campus Center. It is being marketed to retailers.
The bank is letting go of another 7,000 square feet belowground, keeping only about half of its current space – halving its frontage on Massachusetts Avenue to the section away from the plaza and extending down Holyoke Street, according to a leasing brochure from the firm Graffito.
“It’s just a huge space, and they don’t need all that space,” said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, reached Tuesday by phone. “This is a branch office, and it used to be the office – the only office – for Cambridge Trust, where the president and all the leadership would be.”
The release of square footage at 1336 Massachusetts Ave. was expected, though the timing was unknown, Jillson said.
Graffito is also leasing the historic former Clover fast food space at 1326 Massachusetts Ave. on the other side of Holyoke, meaning there is empty space on each side of the bank branch.
At the former bank branch, Graffito said it is looking for a long-term leaser in 10,000 square feet that, after decades off the market, is “well-suited for flagship retail.” The space can be subdivided to hold multiple businesses, it said.
“It would be great to have something in there that’s much more active and robust,” Jillson said.
The bank use was grandfathered into the Harvard Square Overlay District, which has evolved since 1979 to limit how much street-level frontage financial institutions can have to 25 linear feet.
Cambridge Trust and Eastern Bank merged in July 2024, after a $122 merger of Cambridge Trust with Wellesley Bank in 2019. Three Cambridge Trust branches closed and eight at Eastern Bank where the institutions had branches within two miles of each other, The U.S. Sun reported at the time. The bank, founded in 1890, lives on as Cambridge Trust Wealth Management, with $8.4 billion in assets under management.
In June of last year, Eastern Bank merged with a bank called HarborOne and now has more than 125 branches in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island and $31.1 billion in assets overseen from offices in Boston’s Financial District.
