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Boylston Hall (Harvard University)

Harvard SquareHarvard University buildingsSchool buildings completed in 1858

Boylston Hall is a Harvard University classroom and academic office building lecture hall near the southwest corner of Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ward Nicholas Boylston had left a bequest to Harvard for the building in 1828. It was built in 1858 to designs 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 is on the homesite of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, first minister to 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 the first home of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.Boylston Hall was gut renovated in 1959 by the architectural firm of Benjamin Thompson and Associates, and is considered an early example of the reuse of sound old buildings ("adaptive reconstruction"), "juxtaposing glass and steel with historic details". It functioned as the university language center. It houses the offices of the Harvard Classics Department. Its Fong Lecture Hall seats 144.

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Boylston Hall (Harvard University)
Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

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02138 Cambridge
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Widener Library
Widener Library

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, housing some 3.5 million books in its "vast and cavernous"  stacks, is the center­piece of the Harvard College Libraries (the libraries of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences) and, more broadly, of the entire Harvard Library system. It honors 1907 Harvard College graduate and book collector Harry Elkins Widener, and was built by his mother Eleanor Elkins Widener after his death in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The library's holdings, which include works in more than one hundred languages, comprise "one of the world's most comprehen­sive research collec­tions in the humanities and social sciences."  Its 57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels, comprise a "labyrinth" which one student "could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle." At the building's heart are the Widener Memorial Rooms, displaying papers and mementos recalling the life and death of Harry Widener, as well as the Harry Elkins Widener Collec­tion, "the precious group of rare and wonder­fully interesting books brought together by Mr. Widener", to which was later added one of the few perfect Gutenberg Bibles‍—‌the object of a 1969 burglary attempt conjectured by Harvard's police chief to have been inspired by the 1964 heist film Topkapi. Campus legends holding that Harry Widener's fate led to the institu­tion of an undergrad­uate swimming-proficiency requirement, and that an additional donation from his mother subsidizes ice cream at Harvard meals, are without foundation.

University Hall (Harvard University)
University Hall (Harvard University)

University Hall is a white granite building designed by the great early American architect Charles Bulfinch and built by the noted early engineer Loammi Baldwin, Jr. It is located in Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970 for its architectural significance.The hall was designed by Bulfinch, class of 1781, and built between 1813–1815 of white Chelmsford granite, probably using rock cut to size at the Charlestown Prison. It consists of a partial basement story, plus three full stories raised above ground as well as an additional story set within the roofline. The long east and west facades are very similar, and symmetrically arranged with two entrances per facade, each flanked by pilasters; smaller north and south facades present rows of windows. Total construction cost was $65,000 of which $53,000 was paid by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. University Hall's first floor contained the College Commons (dining room) until 1849. The building also contained a library and philosophical (scientific) apparatus, as well as a chapel within the second and third floors. A massive portico with stone pillars was added to the western facade soon after completion, but removed in 1842. In 1849 the first floor was partitioned into classrooms; in 1867 the chapel was partitioned as well. In 1896 the chapel was restored and used for meetings of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 1924 Daniel Chester French's bronze statue of John Harvard was moved to the western façade from its original location near Memorial Hall.