Cambridge and Harvard

Here are a few holiday snaps from my perambulations around Cambridge yesterday. Naturally they started at Harvard Square and the Coop (the University bookstore and merchandise emporium). I wanted to buy myself a Harvard tee-shirt, but the prices were stratospheric (in the range of $30-$40 for a teeshirt, for crying out loud), so I satisfied myself by looking at the books. The science section was a bit thin, but I did see this: Matthew’s latest book prominently displayed. I sent the photo to him, and his cynical comment was “They should have sold more.” But if they did, there wouldn’t be a book on display!

They also had one copy of Faith Versus Fact in the science section, but no copies of Why Evolution is True:

I visited my friend Andrew Berry, whose office is in the Bio Labs, the oldest part of Harvard’s biology section, but the site of many famous discoveries and home of many Nobel Laureates. On the way from the Square to the labs, you walk though the famous Harvard Yard, the central quad of the old campus. From Wikipedia:

Harvard Yard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest part of the Harvard University campus, its historic center and modern crossroads. It contains most of the freshman dormitories, Harvard’s most important libraries, Memorial Church, several classroom and departmental buildings, and the offices of senior University officials including the President of Harvard University.

The Yard grew over the centuries around Harvard College’s first parcel of land, purchased in 1637.  Today it is a grassy area of 22.4 acres (9.1 ha) bounded principally by Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Street, Broadway, and Quincy Street. Its perimeter fencing – principally iron, with some stretches of brick – has twenty-seven gates

A panorama (click to enlarge)

On the east side is the equally famous statue of John Harvard, probably the object photographed more often than any other by visitors. Here one of a group of Asian students poses by the statue (they all did, one by one).

Some of the details from Wikipedia (it’s may not even depict John Harvard!):

John Harvard is a sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachu­setts honoring clergyman John Harvard (1607–1638), whose deathbed bequest to the “schoale or Colledge” recently undertaken by the Massachu­setts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered “that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge.”  There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French used a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president as inspiration.

The statue’s inscription‍—‌JOHN HARVARD  •   FOUNDER  • 1638‍—‌is the subject of an arch polemic traditionally recited for visitors, questioning whether John Harvard justly merits the honorific founder. According to a Harvard official, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many, and John Harvard is therefore considered not the founder, but rather a founder, of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution have made him the most honored of these.

Tourists often rub the toe of John Harvard‘s left shoe for luck.

Heading northeast, you pass the famous Memorial Hall containing the Sanders Theater, site of many lectures, performances, and inductions into societies.  It was completed in 1878.  From Wikipedia:

Memorial Hall, immediately north of Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a large High Victorian Gothic building honoring Harvard men’s sacrifices in defense of the Union during the American Civil War‍—‌”a symbol of Boston’s commitment to the Unionist cause and the abolitionist movement in America.”

Built on a former playing field known as the Delta, it was described by Henry James as consisting of

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.

James’s “three divisions” are known today as (respectively) 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.

And then, the Biological Laboratories, or Bio Labs, opened in 1933. It’s famous for its carved brick, the iconic rhinos that flank the doors, and the biological decorations on the doors.

The building:

The brickwork at the top of the building is decorated with carved animals, which are lovely. Few visitors look up to see them. Here are some cats:

There’s one rhino on each side of the entrance. When I was younger and spry, I’d climb stop them and have my picture taken:

They don’t make biology buildings like this any more. The building is now part of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, but once held all the molecular biologists, including greats like Matt Meselson, James Watson, and Mark Ptashne.  Meselson, 93 still works there, and was famous (and should have won a Nobel Prize) for the “Meselson-Stahl” experiment, which showed that DNA replicates “semiconservatively” (the strands separate and a new strand is copied onto each old one.  That experiment was done at Caltech, before Matt moved to Harvard. (I go on because I like the guy and he’s a terrific person and scientist.)

The three entrances to the Biolabs are each decorated with a different group of organisms in brass.

Insects:

Marine invertebrates (all the vertebrates are carved on the brick above):

And plants:

They don’t make biology buildings like this any more! I didn’t do my Ph.D work in this building (I was in the Museum of Comparative Zoology Laboratories nearby), but I spent many hours taking and t.a.ing classes here.

On the walk down Massachusetts Avenue back to where I’m staying, I passed two marijuana dispensaries, seven barber shops, and four waxing parlors. I’m not sure why so many denizens of Harvard and Cambridge get waxed.  Here’s a notable building on Mass Ave: the old Sears store, which was bought by Lesley University and now contains classrooms. It’s a great old Art Deco structure:

The lovely house in North Cambridge where I’m staying with my oldest friends. As you see from the plaque below, it’s a “historic place”:

Next door, a milkweed pod spreads its genes: