Boston Globe, MA
Nov 18 2004
Arts center donors are honored
By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent
As a group of Harvard bigwigs, Boston philanthropic organizations,
and town officials celebrated groundbreaking for the Arsenal Center
for the Arts last week, it was clear that the center’s roots are
firmly planted in Watertown’s rich Armenian heritage.
John Airasian, owner of Eastern Clothing of Watertown, and Charles
Mosesian, retired owner of the former Euphrates Bakery, have played
key roles in getting the arts center, an ambitious $7.5 million
project scheduled to open in May, off the ground. Both are successful
businessmen who set up shop in the Coolidge Square area long ago and
never left. They were honored for their contributions at the
groundbreaking ceremony.
Few have their finger on the town’s pulse like Airasian, known
locally as ”Mr. Watertown.”
”The town would not have been celebrating the groundbreaking of the
arts center without John,” said Town Manager Michael Driscoll. ”He
walks and talks and thinks all about Watertown.”
As chairman of the Arsenal reuse committee in the 1980s, Airasian,
61, ”played an integral role” in securing $100 million in federal
and state funds to clean up the Arsenal property, Driscoll said. The
37-acre site, used as a munitions factory by the Army for 174 years,
had long been contaminated by radioactive and chemical waste and once
housed a nuclear reactor. In 1989, Airasian headed up the Watertown
Arsenal Development Corp., a nonprofit entity charged by the town to
find a suitable developer to convert the land to commercial and
cultural uses.
”It’s incredible, the amount of time he’s put in for the community,”
said John Portz, a town councilor who served on both the reuse
committee and the development corporation.
Over the last few years, Airasian has served as cochairman of the
center’s capital campaign. He’s been a relentless fund-raiser,
hitting up deep-pocketed friends and local business leaders for the
$7.5 million needed to build the arts center.
”We’re as far as we are because John put his shoulder to the wheel,”
said Roberta Miller, the capital campaign’s cochairwoman.
As construction cost estimates rose and fund-raising stalled after
9/11, Airasian acknowledged that he had ”a lot of sleepless nights”
along the way and uttered more than a few prayers.
”It’s an awful feeling when you take money from people and you’re
not sure if you’re going to make it,” Airasian said. ”I thought,
‘What if we don’t get there? What am I going to say to these people?’
”
Armenian natives both, Airasian’s father, Peter, and his uncle, John,
started a company in the early 1930s, making men’s clothing for
department stores like Sears, Roebuck and Co., and military uniforms
during World War II.
Airasian took over the business in the late 1960s, eventually
refocusing Eastern Clothing of Watertown as a retailer of high-end
men’s suits, best known for athletic-cut suits worn by many Boston
sports stars over the last 30 years.
Airasian’s father was close friends with Mosesian, back when East
Watertown was a hot spot for Middle Eastern food and Armenian
businesses in the 1940s and ’50s.
”When you drove into Coolidge Square, you could smell the lamejun
from Aintab, the bread from Euphrates, and hear the Armenian music
from Armen Vahe’s record shop,” Airasian said. ”Those were good
days, days that never leave you. Charlie represents all of that. He’s
done a lot of good without a lot of fanfare.”
Mosesian, who is 92, arrived in Watertown in 1930 at age 17, escaping
Armenian genocide in Turkey. His mother’s two brothers had already
settled in town and said it was a good place, Mosesian said in an
interview last week.
After working briefly in a Rhode Island pencil factory for 13 cents
an hour, Mosesian opened a small bakery in Coolidge Square that
specialized in Armenian sesame crackers.
Euphrates Bakery crackers were so popular, Mosesian eventually sold
them to a large food manufacturer and began focusing his efforts on a
1950s novelty food — frozen pizza. Mosesian developed a method of
assembling and freezing the pizzas so that vendors such as ballparks
and racetracks could finish baking them on site. He later went on to
start a local bank and develop condominiums in town.
In 2000, Mosesian gave $1 million — the center’s single largest gift
— at a time when the project was still years away from fruition. The
center’s 380-seat theater, where Newton’s New Repertory Theater will
take up residence next spring, is to be named in Mosesian’s honor.
”It was selling an idea and selling a possibility,” Miller said.
”Charlie gave us a tremendous lift.” His donation ”was a huge piece
of our success.”
Mosesian’s family eagerly awaits the theater’s opening next spring.
”We’re extremely pleased,” said Charleen Onanian, his granddaughter.
”It’s a wonderful thing that my grandfather’s name will be carried
on and that building will be there long after we’re all gone.”