Harvard Yard Historic District

Harvard Yard is the historic core of Harvard's Cambridge campus, a 26.8-acre district of dormitories, classrooms, libraries and a church arranged around linked quadrangles and enclosed by an ornate wrought iron fence. Its oldest surviving building, Massachusetts Hall, dates from 1718, and later additions include Georgian halls, Charles Bulfinch's University Hall, H.H. Richardson's Sever Hall, and early twentieth century Neo-Georgian buildings. Widener Library and Memorial Church anchor the central Tercentenary Theatre. The district was listed as the most important evolutionary grouping of historic college buildings in the nation. Its cohesion comes from the quadrangle form, which organizes space as much as buildings, and from planning under Presidents Eliot and Lowell. It is recognized for its architecture, its place in the history of American education and campus development, its associations with notable people, and archaeological evidence of seventeenth century settlement. Postwar buildings such as Houghton, Lamont, Pusey and Canaday are not counted as contributing.