The Overseers purchased the College’s first piece of real estate: a house and an acre of land from Goodman Peyntree. Located on the southern edge of “Cow-yard Row” and soon distinguished as the “College Yard,” this tract became the nucleus of present-day Harvard Yard and remains at the southern end of the Old Yard (the area west of Thayer, University, and Weld halls).

Harvard College Yard purchased

The first Harvard Hall was built between 1674 and 1677. It was Harvard College's first brick building and replaced a decaying wooden building located a few hundred feet to the southeast. Samuel Andrew, a local Cambridge merchant and shipwright was the master builder.

The original Harvard Hall burned on January 24, 1764, destroying 4,500 of the College Library's 5,000 books as well as its collection of "philosophical apparatus" (scientific instruments).

The Massachusetts General Court, which had been meeting in Harvard Hall to escape a smallpox epidemic in Boston, took responsibility for the fire and funded reconstruction. Thanks to generous donors such as Thomas Hollis V and John Hancock, within two years the new Harvard Hall housed a library larger than that the college had before the fire Thomas Dawes, who also built Hollis Hall at Harvard, was the master builder.Under the specific advice of Benjamin Franklin, a new collection of scientific instruments and electrical demonstration equipment was acquired (mostly in London) to replace the apparatus that had been lost in the fire. The collection he assembled would later become part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, now on public display in the Harvard Science Center.

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, v. 3, 1892, p. 107

Harvard Hall

 Robinson Hall at Harvard University was designed by the prominent New York architecture firm of McKim Mead and White and completed in 1904 to house Harvard's department of architecture. Today it is home to Harvard's history department. Building is a gift from the parents of Nelson Robinson, Jr (Class of 1900). Robinson Hall was built of the site of the Walker House, home of James Walker (A.B. 1814). Walker house was moved to the site now occupied by the Sackler Museum. The site is named after Nelson Robinson Jr., (-1899), late son of Mr and Mrs. Nelson Robinson of Buffalo, New York, who provided funds for construction of the building. This building has been designated by the University Planning Office as having a Notable Interior. 

Robinson Hall

 Memorial Church is the physical and spiritual heart of Harvard University's campus. Students are welcomed to school here, and they graduate on its steps, which face Tercentenary Yard. With Widener Library, Memorial Church defines the "New" Yard. Like Widener, it was completed during the presidency of Lawrence Lowell presidency. Its small and precise colonnade emphasizes the height of its spire. Memorial Church stands of the site of Appleton Chapel (1851-1931). A bronze plaque at the east end of the church depicts the original chapel. 

At the heart of Harvard's campus, in the "New Yard" across from Widener Library on Tercentenary Theater.

Memorial Church

 Matthews Hall is a freshman dormitory for Harvard University, constructed in Harvard Yard in 1872. The building was a gift from Nathan Matthews. Together with Weld Hall and Grays Hall, it completes the southern end of the Old Yard. Matthews Hall serves as a dormitory for first year students. When Matthews donated the money for the hall, he stipulated that half the income of the dormitory would be given to needy and deserving students, with a preference for ministry students. The new building required that Dane Hall be moved 70 feet. The hall is built on the site of the Indian College, Harvard's first brick building, which housed a printing press, classrooms, and living quarters for English and American Indian students from 1655 to 1698. The first Bible in North America was printed at the Indian College from 1659-1663, translated into Algonquian by John Eliot. Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck of the Wampanoag tribe was the first American Indian to graduate in 1665.

Matthews Hall

 At the heart of Harvard Yard, University Hall houses important administrative and meeting rooms &mdash; notably, the offices of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The large, symmetrical building was designed in 1813 by Charles Bulfinch, primary architect of the United States Capitol and the Massachusetts State House. A neoclassical icon, University Hall is one of the most important historic structures in New England. This major restoration transformed the aging landmark into a functionally modern, code compliant building. Work included extensive historic restoration and discreet insertion of all-new mechanical and electrical systems, with respect for the building`s historic context, proportions and materials. Lifts and concealed ramps were integrated within the building and with the landscape of Harvard Yard. Significant structural repairs included the restoration of spalling exterior granite and reconstruction of sagging entry stairs. In the original basement, excavation increased headroom for meeting rooms and offices, and provided a new sub-basement level for mechanical equipment. 

Harvard Yard

University Hall

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library is Harvard University's flagship library. Built with a gift from Eleanor Elkins Widener, the library is a memorial to her son, Harry, Class of 1907. Harry was an enthusiastic young bibliophile who perished aboard the Titanic. It had been Harry's plan to donate his personal collection to the University once it provided a suitable alternative to the outdated and inadequate library then located in Gore Hall. Mrs. Widener fulfilled her son's dream by building a facility of monumental proportions, with over 50 miles of shelves and the capacity to hold over three million volumes.    The library opened in 1915, but Harvard's collections continued to grow at an astounding rate. By the late 1930s, Widener's shelves were at capacity. Space was at a premium for staff and patrons as well as books, which led the administration to begin a lengthy decentralization process. Over time Harvard built several new libraries to house its increasingly specialized collections. By redistributing books to new libraries, space opened up in Widener, but it was gradually given over to the growing staff hired to attend to the collections.   

Widener Library

 Weld Hall is a residential hall at Harvard University. It was the second building on Harvard's campus that was designed by Ware and Van Brundt (the first was Memorial Hall). 

Weld Hall

 John Harvard was an Englishman from the Southwark neighborhood of London. He emigrated to New England in 1637 but died of tuberculosis only one year later. He is buried in the Phipps Street Burial Ground in Charlestown. When Harvard died he bequeathed half of his fortune and his entire library to the new college that was founded in Cambridge. The college was named after him in 1638. Daniel Chester French (Massachusetts native who also created the Lincoln Memorial sculpture, among many other famous monuments) sculpted the John Harvard Statue, now known as the "statue of three lies" in 1884. The three lies are: 1) the sculpture is not of John Harvard because, of course, it was created 250 years after Harvard died. French used a student as a model. 2) The statue incorrectly states that the founding of Harvard was in 1638, not 1636. 3) The plaque lists Harvard as the founder of Harvard college, when he was in fact only a benefactor after the Massachusetts colonial government founded the college. 

Located in the Old Yard at Harvard, in front of University Hall.

John Harvard Statue

 Sever Hall was built with 100,000 bricks and has elaborate brick carvings. The archway was built with unique acoustic properties. If you face the archway and whisper into it, it can be clearly heard on the other side of the archway. It now houses the film program and the Visual and Environmental Studies programs at Harvard. 

Sever Hall

 Harvard Yard is a 25-acre plot that encompasses the oldest buildings on the Harvard University Campus. The grassy area between Widener Library and Memorial Church is known as Tercentenary Theater. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates recently worked with Harvard over the course of more than a decade to restore and redesign the planting and circulation scheme for the yard. Michael Van Valkenburgh continues to be involved with the future of this landscape through his participation in the Harvard Yard Soils Restoration Project, an ongoing effort to implement a biological soils program at Harvard. 

   Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.

Harvard Yard

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