Nourse-Farwell House

Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 25 miles west-northwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. It is mostly bounded by I-495 to the east and Route 2 to the north. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several non-traditional communities, such as Harvard Shaker Village and the utopian transcendentalist center Fruitlands. It is also home to St. Benedict Abbey, a traditional Catholic monastery, and for over seventy years was home to Harvard University's Oak Ridge Observatory, at one time the most extensively equipped observatory in the Eastern United States. It is now a rural and residential town noted for its public schools. The population was 6,851 at the 2020 census.

The Bromfield School is a public school located in Harvard, Massachusetts. Founded in 1878 by Margaret Bromfield Blanchard, the school's student population is approximately 750, in grades 6–12. There are 57 teachers, with a student/faculty ratio of about 1 to 13. Bromfield's academic program includes core courses in mathematics, English, social studies, and science, as well as music, world languages, physical education, and the arts. Students in grades 9–12 fulfill graduation requirements in these core courses and may also take advantage of Advanced Placement courses. The school has a 4-year graduation rate of 98%, sending nearly all graduates on to four-year higher-learning institutions. In 2011, U.S. News & World Report ranked Bromfield School as 87th High School in the nation. Most recently, in 2023, U.S. News & World Report High School rankings had it 154th in the nation, and third within Massachusetts.

The Harvard Center Historic District is a historic district encompassing the traditional village center of Harvard, Massachusetts, USA. The district is centered on the town common, a triangular grassy space bounded by Elm Street, Still River Road, and Ayer Road. The common is ringed by residences, civic and religious buildings, and a small commercial area. The common was laid out when the town was founded in 1732, and has grown, mainly in periods of growth at the late 18th and late 19th/early 20th centuries. Most of the village's buildings post-date 1831. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.The historic district is roughly cruciform in shape, radiating out from the common along Still River Road (west), Massachusetts Avenue (Massachusetts Route 111) to the north and south, and Oak Hill Road and Old Littleton Road to the east. It covers about 125 acres (51 ha), and includes 59 historically significant houses, that range in architectural styles and age from the 18th to 20th centuries. The main civic buildings are located at the northern end of the common, and include a stone animal pound, a small powder house, and the 1872 Gothic Revival town hall, which stands next to an older (1828) Greek Revival frame building, now a residence, that also served as town hall.The district is home to two church buildings: the 1867 Colonial Revival First Congregational Church, set on the location of the town's first colonial meeting house, and the 1840 Methodist meeting house, now a private residence at 13 Massachusetts Avenue. Two of its architecturally most sophisticated buildings are the Bromfield School (1878, Romanesque Revival) designed by Peabody & Stearns, and the public library (1886, also Romanesque) designed by William Channing Whitney.

The Frederick Fiske Warren and Gretchen Osgood Warren House, known to the family as The Hutch, is a historic house at 42 Bolton Road in Harvard, Massachusetts. Built in 1894, it was the summer home of Frederick Fiske Warren and Gretchen Osgood Warren, who organized a major enclave of Georgist single tax properties in Harvard. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

The Oak Ridge Observatory (ORO, code: 801), also known as the George R. Agassiz Station, is located at 42 Pinnacle Road, Harvard, Massachusetts. It was operated by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian as a facility of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) from 1933 until August 19, 2005.

Fruitlands was a utopian agrarian commune established in Harvard, Massachusetts, by Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in the 1840s, based on transcendentalist principles. An account of its less-than-successful activities can be found in Transcendental Wild Oats by Alcott's daughter Louisa May Alcott.Lane purchased what was known as the Wyman farm and its 90 acres (36 ha), which also included a dilapidated house and barn. Residents of Fruitlands ate no animal substances, drank only water, bathed in unheated water and "no artificial light would prolong dark hours or cost them the brightness of morning." Additionally, property was held communally, and no animal labor was used. The community was short-lived and lasted only seven months. It was dependent on farming, which turned out to be too difficult. The original farmhouse, along with other historic buildings from the area, is now a part of Fruitlands Museum.

Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse (a National Historic Landmark), a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.Visitors can tour the farmhouse, which has been restored to appear as it did during the 1840s, and exhibits about Transcendentalism and the Alcott family. Fruitlands offers a diverse schedule of contemporary exhibits, lectures, outdoor concerts and easy walking trails. There is also a museum store and restaurant. The properties are overseen by The Trustees of Reservations.

Still River is a village located on the west side of the town of Harvard, Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States just north of the Still River in Bolton where is converges with the Nashua River. Noted for its views of Mount Wachusett, Still River is home to Saint Benedict Abbey, St. Benedict Center, Harvard Historical Society, Willard Farm Stand, various hills, meadows, and wetlands. The zip code is 01467.

Still River Baptist Church (also known as the Still River Meetinghouse) is the home of the Harvard Historical Society. It is an historic Gothic Revival-style meeting house located at 213 Still River Road in Harvard, Massachusetts. The building houses the Harvard Historical Society's museum and archival collections.

Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge is a property of the United States National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) system located in Middlesex and Worcester counties in Massachusetts. It was founded in 1974.

St. Benedict Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in the village of Still River in Harvard, Massachusetts. It is known for being centered on praying the Divine Office and the Novus Ordo Missae in Latin.

Harvard Shaker Village Historic District is a historic former Shaker community located roughly on Shaker Road, South Shaker Road, and Maple Lane in Harvard, Massachusetts. It was the second oldest Shaker settlement in Massachusetts and the third oldest (after New Lebanon (1787) and Hancock, Mass (1790)) in the United States.