The one-of-a-kind Leavitt & Peirce shop in Harvard Square is a throwback to simpler times, and owner Paul MacDonald likes to keep it that way. — Photos by Patrick McDonagh

By Patrick McDonagh

Somerville resident Paul MacDonald is the self-proclaimed dinosaur of Harvard Square retail business. MacDonald’s ten dollar flip phone is left off, on the passenger seat of an 88 Ford Bronco while he is at work, logging business transactions and mailing checks by hand long after closing.

“I believe in being on street level, keeping my finger on the pulse.” MacDonald says, seated at Leavitt & Peirce’s loft style chess parlor. Dim bar lights hang from the store’s hundred-year-old original tin ceiling, illuminating a telling smirk on MacDonald’s face. “I’m on the floor a lot,” he says. “It can make some workers nervous but that is a good thing.”

Maintaining a “finger on the pulse” for MacDonald means daily customer interaction, inventorying product, and record keeping in a cinderblock-like 24 column ledger book. Transition from quill and ink ledgering to a Bic Full Color pen is arguably the most significant technological leap the store has seen in its 133 years of business, and inventory is simply eyeballed with uncanny accuracy. MacDonald shares the tobacco shop’s lineage, history, and insights into the archaic business’ longevity.

“The store was founded as a tobacco shop. You can tell we are still holding true to our roots,” MacDonald says, walking through double glass doors of the humidor room, a climate controlled tobacco storage in the shop’s rear. The consistent 70-75% humidity maintained is a necessity for fresh tobacco. “If you walk through the store it is not just tobacco any more. There are different worlds to the store. We pick and choose items that fit in with a shop like ours.”

MacDonald describes what fits the theme of an old-school shop like Leavitt & Peirce. “Classic, timeless traditional; that is what this store is about.” He says. Pewter flasks, small pocket knives, card cases hand crafted in Germany, cufflinks, jewelry, bar ware, weighted pens, French triple milled soaps, traditional wooden board games, all make the cut of items outside the realm of the shop’s original product. Scents of cologne and pipe tobacco linger long after a walkthrough of the shop. Some find the potent smell abrasive to the senses as fresh jars of tobacco unseal, others walk through the store in ecstasy savoring the aroma. “I wish I could still smell the store,” MacDonald laments as he reacts to customer commentary on Leavitt & Peirce’s signature scent. “I’ve become so used to it. I haven’t lost my sense of smell but the store I just can’t smell anymore. Customers walk in and say ‘If only you could bottle this.’ What is it? It is probably 133 years of fermentation. On a warm day they say you can smell it from the side walk.” The grooming section is a flannel clad bearded hipster’s dream.

MacDonald shares the business incentives for carrying early 1900’s shaving equipment. “There is a return back to what we call wet shaving: shave brush, soap, and safety razors. Now the barbers by law have to use the strait razors that have an insert. In the old days it would be just a single piece of steel and they would sharpen them on straw. There is definitely a return to that style of shaving.” The advantage: a tight clean shave while impressing fellow facial hair enthusiasts.

MacDonald has a hand in every aspect of his business, an inherited paternal trait that attributes to Leavitt & Peirce’s longevity selling pipe tobacco in the same location since 1883. Paul MacDonald took over business from his father in 1985 after a management purge. Employee theft had mired business. MacDonald rehired and has been intimately involved as store owner ever since. Proximity to Ivy League Harvard means a mix of shoppers and academic celebrity. “Oh, the cross section of customers is amazing. It is unbelievable,” MacDonald says. “You could be dealing with a Nobel Prize winner at one moment, a street person the next. Harvard students, construction workers, it is a mishmash but we don’t get star struck. Our kind of famous people are like a Nobel Prize winning professor, not a rock and roll star. We probably get some of those too, but it is a different famous here. I can remember Barney Frank before he got all polished. He used to be chewing on a cigar when he came in. Former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill. But if they are fourth in line they get treated fourth in line.”

Leavitt & Peirce is as much a thriving independent retail business as it is preserver of the Square’s century long relationship with Harvard.

MacDonald recalls Hamilton Fish, the prominent Ivy League football player, walking through his shop with an entourage of Harvard students. Black and white portraits of the 1908 Harvard football team complement the calligraphed footballs, organized chronologically on the store shelves they are examples of how aero dynamics of the game changed. Faded balls from early 1900’s are rounded while later versions share more similarity with modern footballs. Each ball proudly displays the Harvard winning score of the Ivy League championship, Harvard vs. Yale game.

Oars donated to Leavitt & Peirce with similar engraving rest mounted in the chess parlor loft. At a time before email, students would crowd the shop window to check rowing schedules on the Charles River. Train tickets to New Haven and Harvard vs. Yale game tickets would sell fast, a tradition 15 years since past much to owner MacDonald’s chagrin, “Another reason for me to hate technology.”

While he remains virtually unreachable by any modern means, other than snail mail and possibly carrier pigeon, this only makes owning Leavitt & Peirce a more fitting profession.

Leavitt & Peirce, Inc.
1316 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Telephone: 617-547-0576
www.leavitt-peirce.com