Memorial Hall (Harvard University)

Memorial Hall, Harvard University
A ground-level exterior view of a large, highly ornate 19th-century building. Its main body is longer than it is high, with a single very tall story of red-orange brick with tall stained-glass windows. The steep and tall slate roof is patterned in pale shades of blue, light brown, and red-orange, arranged in broad horizontal stripes of widely varying heights. A tower rises to the right of the building's center.
View from southwest showing Annenberg Hall (foreground) and Memorial Transept (right). Sanders Theatre is out of view beyond Memorial Transept.
LocationCambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Coordinates42°22′33.2″N 71°6′53.7″W / 42.375889°N 71.114917°W / 42.375889; -71.114917
Built1870–1877
ArchitectWilliam Robert Ware,
Henry Van Brunt
Architectural styleNeo-Gothic
NRHP reference No.70000685[1]

Memorial Hall, immediately north of Harvard Yard on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a High Victorian Gothic building honoring Harvard University alumni's sacrifices in defending the Union during the American Civil War‍—‌"a symbol of Boston's commitment to the Unionist cause and the abolitionist movement in America".[2]

Built on a former playing field known as the Delta, it is an imposing structure intended to be imposing.[3][4][5]

It was described by Henry James as having

three main divisions: one of them a theater, for academic ceremonies; another a vast refectory, covered with a timbered roof, hung about with portraits and lighted by stained windows, like the halls of the colleges of Oxford; and the third, the most interesting, a chamber high, dim and severe, consecrated to the sons of the university who fell in the long Civil War.[6]

James's "three divisions" are Sanders Theatre, Annenberg Hall (formerly Alumni Hall or the Great Hall), and Memorial Transept. Beneath Annenberg Hall, Loker Commons offers a number of student facilities.

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  2. ^ Shand-Tucci, D.; Cheek, R. (2001). Harvard University: An Architectural Tour. Princeton Architectural Press. p. 158. ISBN 9781568982809. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  3. ^ King, M. (1884). Harvard and Its Surroundings. Moses King. p. 41. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  4. ^ American Architect and Architecture. Vol. 25. American Architect. 1889. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  5. ^ The Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal. Vol. 92. W. Curry, jun., and Company. 1878. p. 503. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  6. ^ Henry James (August 3, 1984). The Bostonians.