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Memorial Hall (Harvard University)

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Boylston Hall is a Harvard University classroom and academic office building lecture hall near the southwest corner of Harvard Yard , Cambridge, Massachusetts .

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32-768: Memorial Hall , immediately north of Harvard Yard on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts , is a High Victorian Gothic building honoring Harvard University alumni's sacrifices in defending the Union during the American Civil War ‍—‌"a symbol of Boston 's commitment to the Unionist cause and the abolitionist movement in America". Built on a former playing field known as

64-470: A 1905 guidebook described as "an enormous [four-faced clock which] detonates the hours in a manner which is by no means conducive to the sleep of the just and the rest of the weary", and which Kenneth John Conant termed "railroad Gothic". In 1932, the clock's driving works, and the associated 155-pound (70   kg) bell-clapper, were somehow lowered 115 feet (35   m) to the ground without attracting attention; visiting Yale students were suspected but

96-539: A bequest to Harvard for the building in 1828. It was built in 1858 to designs in Rundbogenstil by Paul Schulze of Schulze and Schoen. It was clad in stone, as specified by the donor, specifically Rockport granite, and had a hip roof . In 1871, Peabody and Stearns replaced the roof with a mansarded third floor. It has been speculated that it stands on the homesite of the Rev. Thomas Hooker , first minister to

128-601: A hymn for the occasion. In May 1878, the Committee of Fifty notified the President and Fellows that the project was complete and the premises ready for formal transfer to the university. On July   8 the President and Fellows unanimously voted to "accept with profound gratitude this splendid and precious gift". The building's High Victorian Gothic design, by Harvard alumni William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt ,

160-593: A month's meals). In 1893, Harvard Graduates Magazine described "the throngs of men who, at one o'clock, are to be seen racing across the yard from Harvard , Boylston , and Sever [Halls], striving to reach [Memorial] Hall ahead of slower competitors for vacant seats at the overtaxed tables". But "as the center of University life moved south toward the Charles , [the dining commons] became less popular and closed in 1925"  ( see Harvard College § House system ), after which Alumni Hall saw mostly light use, typically as

192-400: A student pub, music practice spaces, and other facilities. Twenty-two stained-glass windows, installed between 1879 and 1902, include several by John La Farge , Louis Comfort Tiffany Studios, Donald MacDonald , Sarah Wyman Whitman , and Charles Mills . The central tower was nearly complete by 1876, but criticism convinced Van Brunt and Ware to revise it in 1877. In 1897, added was what

224-646: A venue for dances, banquets, examinations, and the like. In 1934, The New York Times reported that Harvard officials had "at last found a use for Memorial Hall" by siting a rifle range in the basement. During World War II , the Crimson reported that "the Great Hall" was being used "in winter-time for the 6 o'clock in the morning calisthenics of the [military] Chaplain's School" (though without explaining why Harvard Divinity students had been singled out for this treatment) and intimated that Stevens Laboratory, in

256-405: Is a wide grassy area bounded by Widener Library , Memorial Church , University Hall , and Sever Hall . Tercentenary Theatre is the site of annual commencement exercises and other convocations . The western third of Harvard Yard, which opens onto Peabody Street (often mistaken for nearby Massachusetts Avenue) at Johnston Gate and abuts the center of Harvard Square to the south, is known as

288-704: Is in great demand for lectures, concerts, ceremonies and conferences. Winston Churchill , Theodore Roosevelt , Martin Luther King Jr. , and Mikhail Gorbachev have spoken there. Sanders features John La Farge 's stained-glass window Athena Tying a Mourning Fillet ; statues of James Otis (by Thomas Crawford ) and Josiah Quincy III (by William Wetmore Story ) flank the stage. The exterior gables display busts of great orators: Demosthenes , Cicero , John Chrysostom , Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet , William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham , Edmund Burke , and Daniel Webster . Sanders Theatre contributed in an unusual way to

320-403: Is located near Widener. The freshman dormitories of Harvard Yard include the upper levels of Massachusetts Hall , and Wigglesworth Hall , Weld Hall , Grays Hall , Matthews Hall , Straus Hall , Mower Hall , Hollis Hall , Stoughton Hall , Lionel Hall , Holworthy Hall , Canaday Hall , and Thayer Hall . Nestled among Mower, Hollis, Lionel, and Stoughton Halls is Holden Chapel , home of

352-438: Is the oldest and among the most prominent parts of the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts . The yard has a historic center and modern crossroads and contains most of the freshman dormitories , Harvard's most important libraries, Memorial Church , several classroom and departmental buildings, and the offices of senior university officials, including the President of Harvard University . The Yard grew over

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384-413: The sabin , is very close to the absorption provided by one Sanders Theatre cushion. The Memorial Transept [2,600 square feet (240 m)] serves as a vestibule for Sanders Theatre. It consists of a 60-foot-high (18 m) gothic vault above a marble floor, with black walnut paneling and stenciled walls, a large stained glass window over each of two exterior doors, and twenty-eight white tablets listing

416-657: The Holden Choirs . Nearby is Phillips Brooks House, dedicated to student service to the community . Administrative buildings in the Yard include the aforementioned University Hall and Massachusetts Hall; Loeb House, on the east side of the Yard; and Wadsworth House, on the south side. Loeb House is the home of Harvard's governing bodies: the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers . Wadsworth House houses

448-547: The Science Center , so that the Delta no longer exists as an isolated city block. Not with the anguish of hearts that are breaking / Come we as mourners to weep for our dead; Grief in our breasts has grown weary with aching, / Green is the turf where our tears we have shed. While o'er their marbles the mosses are creeping / Stealing each name and its record away. Give their proud story to memory's keeping, / Shrined in

480-500: The Union  ... the great bristling brick Valhalla of the early "seventies," that house of honor and of hos­pi­tal­ity which [dispenses] laurels to the dead and dinners to the living. A huge Victorian Gothic barn. Between 1865 and 1868, an alumni "Committee of Fifty" raised $ 370,000 (equal to one-twelfth of Harvard's entire endowment at the time) toward a new building in memory of Harvard men who had fought for

512-525: The first church in Cambridge , but this is not well established. It originally served as a chemistry building, with a laboratory and classrooms, and later housed the anatomical museum of Jeffries Wyman , Professor of Comparative Anatomy, who in 1866 became the first curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology , as well as a mineralogical collection. In the 20th century, it became

544-547: The 136 Harvard men who died fighting for the Union: Down the lofty and impressive main corridor there are tablets to one after another of the many who thus died‍—‌a thrilling list. One sees such old New England names as Peabody , Wadsworth , and Bowditch ; one sees the name of Fletcher Webster ; one sees that an Edward Revere died at Antietam and a Paul Revere at Gettysburg . Confederate deaths are not represented. Beneath Annenberg Hall, Loker Commons offers

576-526: The College, whether literary or festive", a vision was formed of a single building containing a large theater as well as a large open hall, and thus meeting both goals. A site was found on the "Delta", the triangle bounded by Cambridge, Kirkland, and Quincy Streets. The project was formally named Memorial Hall in September 1870, and on October 6 the cornerstone was laid, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. composing

608-539: The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Dean of Harvard College . Libraries in the Yard are Widener Library , its connected Pusey Library annex, Houghton Library for rare books and manuscripts, and Lamont Library , the main undergraduate library. Classroom and departmental buildings include Emerson Hall, Sever Hall , Robinson Hall, and Boylston Hall. The Harvard Bixi , a Chinese stele with inscribed text,

640-424: The Delta, it is an imposing structure intended to be imposing. It was described by Henry James as having three main divisions: one of them a theater, for academic ceremonies; another a vast refectory , covered with a timbered roof, hung about with portraits and lighted by stained windows, like the halls of the colleges of Oxford; and the third, the most interesting, a chamber high, dim and severe, consecrated to

672-610: The Harvard University Librarian and the Office of the University Marshal , among others. Lehman Hall , at the southwestern corner of the Yard, provides administrative services for students who live off-campus. 42°22′28″N 71°07′02″W  /  42.37447°N 71.11719°W  / 42.37447; -71.11719 Boylston Hall (Harvard University) Ward Nicholas Boylston had left

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704-572: The Old Yard. Most of the freshman dormitories cluster around the Old Yard, including Massachusetts Hall (1720), Harvard's oldest building and the second-oldest academic building in the United States. Massachusetts Hall also houses the offices of the President of Harvard University. The original Harvard Hall in the Old Yard housed the College library, including the books donated by John Harvard —​all but one of which were destroyed when

736-428: The Union in the American Civil War , particularly the 136 dead‍—‌a "Hall of Alumni in which students and graduates might be inspired by the pictured and sculpted presence of her founders, benefactors, faculty, presidents, and most distinguished sons". When, about the same time, a $ 40,000 bequest was received from Charles Sanders (class of 1802) for "a hall or theatre to be used on [any] public occasion connected with

768-575: The basement, "is doing secret work in acoustics". After extensive renovations, in 1996 the space was renamed Annenberg Hall and supplanted, as the freshmen dining hall, the Harvard Union , which had performed that function during most of the intervening time. Sanders Theatre, substantially completed in 1875 and first used for Harvard's 1876 commencement, was inspired by Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theatre . Renowned for its acoustics, and with 1000 seats one of Harvard's largest classrooms, Sanders

800-468: The building burned in 1764. Rebuilt in 1766, the current Harvard Hall now houses classrooms. Across the Old Yard from Johnston Gate is University Hall (1815), whose white-granite facade was the first to challenge the red-brick Georgian style until then ascendant; between its twin west staircases stands the John Harvard statue . University Hall contains major administrative offices, including those of

832-416: The centuries around Harvard College's first parcel of land, purchased in 1637. Today it is a grassy area of 22.4 acres (9.1 ha) bounded principally by Massachusetts Avenue , Cambridge Street, Broadway, and Quincy Street. Its perimeter fencing – principally iron, with some stretches of brick – has twenty-seven gates. The center of the Yard, known as Tercentenary Theatre ,

864-404: The clapper was never found. Three years later the disappearance of the replacement clapper, under similar circumstances, was rumored to be Yale University 's revenge for the theft of its mascot, Handsome Dan . The upper half of the tower was destroyed by fire in 1956 and rebuilt, to its 1877–1897 appearance, in 1996. In the 1960s Kirkland Street was truncated in conjunction with construction of

896-566: The early work of Wallace Sabine , considered the founder of architectural acoustics. In 1895, tasked with improving the dismal acoustical performance of the Fogg Museum's lecture hall, Sabine carried out a series of nocturnal experiments there, using hundreds of seat cushions borrowed from nearby Sanders as sound-absorbent material; his work each night was limited by the requirement that the cushions be returned to Sanders in time for morning lectures there. The scientific unit of sound absorption,

928-637: The sons of the university who fell in the long Civil War. James's "three divisions" are Sanders Theatre, Annenberg Hall (formerly Alumni Hall or the Great Hall), and Memorial Transept. Beneath Annenberg Hall, Loker Commons offers a number of student facilities. Memorial Hall is, in the opinion of the President and Fellows , the most valuable gift the Uni­;ver­si­ty has ever received, with respect alike to cost, daily usefulness, and moral significance. This happy commemorative creation of

960-449: The temple we hallow today. Hushed are their battlefields, ended their marches. / Deaf are their ears to the drumbeat of morn-- Rise from the sod ye far columns and arches! / Tell their bright deeds to the ages unborn. Emblem and legend may fade from the portal, / Keystone may crumble and portal may fall; They were the builders whose work is immortal, / Crowned with the dome that is over us all. Harvard Yard Harvard Yard

992-420: Was carried out between 1987 and 1996. What was originally known as Alumni Hall—nine thousand square feet shaped by massive wooden trusses, walnut paneling, and a blue, stenciled ceiling—was dedicated in 1874. Originally intended for formal occasions such as alumni dinners, it was almost immediately converted to a dining commons, and was for fifty years the college's main dining hall (charging, in 1884, $ 3.97 for

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1024-407: Was selected in a blind competition. A 1907 publication gives dimensions of 305 by 113 feet, with a height of 190 feet at the tower; a 2012 source gave a height of 195 feet, making it the ninth-tallest building in Cambridge at that time. Its 1970 National Historic Landmark designation recognized it one of the nation's most dramatic examples of High Victorian Gothic architecture. A general restoration

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