Boston’s Top 10 : Harvard University (part 2) – Harvard Alumni & Harvard’s “Architectural Zoo”

by

Harvard Alumni

  1. John Adams (1735–1826)

    The
    nation’s second president, although nervous upon entering the
    illustrious college as a freshman, eventually became enthralled by his
    studies.




    John Adams

  2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    Apparently
    more of a social butterfly than dedicated academic, F.D.R. played
    pranks, led the freshman football squad, and earned a C average at
    Harvard before he became the 32nd president of the US.

  3. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)

    Founder
    of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
    (NAACP), Du Bois studied philosophy, and said of his experience, “I was
    in Harvard, but not of it”.

  4. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94)

    The
    1861 grad and future Supreme Court Justice was also the class poet,
    delivering a stirring reading of original work at his Class Day
    exercises.

  5. Al Gore (1924– )

    After
    serving as Vice President under Bill Clinton, Gore lost the 2000
    presidential election to George W. Bush. In 2007 he won the Nobel Peace
    Prize for his environmental work.

  6. Leonard Bernstein (1918–90)

    The country’s greatest composer and conductor was firmly grounded in the arts at Harvard. He edited the Advocate – the college’s estimable literary and performing arts journal.




    Leonard Bernstein

  7. T. S. Eliot (1885–1965)

    The modernist poet of The Waste Land fame contributed much of his early work to the Advocate. He went on to edit many of those submissions for later publication.




    T. S. Eliot

  8. Henry Kissinger (1923– )

    The
    International Affairs and Government professor, who graduated from
    Harvard summa cum laude, became President Nixon’s National Security
    Advisor in 1969 and Secretary of State in 1973.

  9. Benazir Bhutto (1953– 2007)

    This
    class of 1973 alumna later became the first woman to lead a modern
    Muslim state when she was elected prime minister of Pakistan in 1988.
    She was assassinated in 2007.

  10. Henry James (1843–1916)

    The master of the psychological novel sourced plenty of material at Harvard for his scathing 1886 work, The Bostonians.


Harvard’s “Architectural Zoo”

Prominent modernist architect
James Stirling described Harvard as an “architectural zoo” – and with a
campus as aesthetically diverse as Harvard’s, it’s a well-deserved
moniker. Stirling was himself responsible for the university’s modernist
Sackler Museum & Harvard Art Museums opened in 1985. The seemingly ubiquitous architect Charles Bulfinch, whose claim to fame is the Massachusetts State House,
left his mark on Harvard Yard with his 1814 University Hall, featuring
an ingenious granite staircase that “floats” – supported solely by
virtue of its interlocking steps. In complete contrast Walter Gropius,
whose strongly linear residential buildings pepper college campuses
throughout the northeast US, contributed the Harvard Graduate Center in
1950. Gropius strove to make his industry-informed projects seem
welcoming for their inhabitants, but by most Harvard grad students’
accounts, the austere-looking center doesn’t exactly scream “Home Sweet
Home.” One of Harvard’s more whimsical buildings is Le Corbusier’s
Carpenter Center. A wondrous collection of forms and materials, the
center boasts entire walls made of glass and deeply grooved concrete.
Surprisingly it is Le Corbusier’s only design in North America.



Sever Hall
Trinity Church
architect and 1859 Harvard alumnus H. H. Richardson designed Sever and
Austin halls. Both halls echo Richardson’s distinctive Romanesque style
found on his Copley Square masterpiece.



Harvard’s Top 10 Buildings

  1. Memorial Hall, 45 Quincy St (Ware & Van Brunt, 1878)

  2. Busch-Reisinger Museum, 32 Quincy St (Charles Gwathmey, 1991)

  3. Massachusetts Hall, Harvard Yard (University Overseers, 1720)

  4. Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway (James Stirling, 1985)

  5. Fogg Museum, 32 Quincy Street (Coolidge, Bulfinch & Abbott, 1927)

  6. University Hall, Harvard Yard (Charles Bulfinch, 1814)

  7. Sever & Austin Halls, Harvard Yard & North Yard (H. H. Richardson, 1880 & 1883)

  8. Harvard Graduate Center, North Yard (Walter Gropius, 1950)

  9. Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St (Le Corbusier, 1963)




    Carpenter Center

  10. Undergraduate Science Center, Oxford St (Jose Luise Sert, 1971)