October 1, 2021 - Harvard University

We started our second full day in the Boston area by going on a guided tour of the famous Harvard University.  That's Jayne and Bob on the left.

Here we are in front of the iconic Harvard statue.  Roddy, our tour guide, told us there is uncertainty about who the statue actually is of.  It may not be John Harvard, as there are no surviving paintings of him.
   
We met Roddy our guide in Harvard Square (which seems more like a triangle) and then started the tour.  Across the street was this house which General George Washington made his headquarters during the Revolutionary War Boston campaign.
   

The Harvard University administration building.  Most of the buildings at Harvard are made of red brick like this one.  Out of site to the left is Johnston Gate.

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world.
   
Across the street is Flagstaff Park.  I wonder what the "homeless" man sleeping on the pedastal thinks of Harvard?
   

Another gate surrounding the main "Yard".  In yet another example of the stupidity of Covid policies, tour groups were not allowed in The Yard, once the tour was over we -- and anybody else -- were free to walk into the Yard individually.

Harvard has more alumni, faculty, and researchers who have won Nobel Prizes (161) and Fields Medals (18) than any other university in the world and more alumni who have been members of the U.S. Congress, MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars (375), and Marshall Scholars (255) than any other university in the United States.  Its alumni include eight U.S. presidents and 188 living billionaires, the most of any university. Fourteen Turing Award laureates have been Harvard affiliates. Students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 110 Olympic medals (46 gold), and they have founded many notable companies
   
That's Roddy the tour guide to the left.  A Harvard sophomore himself, he was very knowledgeable about Harvard, and was able to answer all questions.  That ugly building to the right is the Information Technology building, of course.
   
Memorial Hall, built to honor 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."  Among other things, it is now used as the Freshman dining hall.
   
The Fogg Museum of Art, closed to visitors because of Covid, of course.
   
Looking across the Yard.
   
Outside the Campus, the Harvard Book Store, in business since 1932.
   
Roddy concludes the tour.  Notice the sign:  David L. Halberstam Square.  Halberstam, a Harvard grad and managing editor of The Harvard Crimson., was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism.  He died in a traffic accident in 2007 at the age of 73.  I've read quite a few of his books including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, The Breaks of the Game, Summer of '49, Playing For Keeps, and just recently The Education of a Coach (about Bill Belichick).
   
Upperclass at Harvard live in dorms like these.
   
The tour ended and we headed into The Yard.
   
The main yard is a open area, well-stocked with trees, surrounded by the red brick buildings.
   
Harvard's Yard is similar to that of the Naval Academy's.
   
 
   
Memorial Church.  The current Memorial Church was built in 1932 in honor of the men and women of Harvard University who died in World War I. The names of 373 alumni were engraved within alongside a sculpture named The Sacrifice by Malvina Hoffman.  It was dedicated on Armistice Day on November 11, 1932.  The knight's face in The Sacrifice was modelled on the British World War I flying ace, Ian Henderson.  Since then, other memorials have been established within the building commemorating those Harvardians who later died in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. For seventy-five years, it has stood in Harvard Yard opposite Widener Library as a physical reminder of Harvard's spiritual heritage. Since its inception, the Harvard Memorial Church has had weekly choral music provided at its Sunday services by the Harvard University Choir, which is composed of both graduate and undergraduate students in the university.
   

Roddy told us the fascinating story behind Widener Library and its funding by Eleanor Elkins Widener after her son's death in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912.

The ninety-unit Harvard Library system, of which Widener is the anchor, is the only academic library among the world's five "megalibraries"‍—‌Widener, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, France's Bibliothèque Nationale, and the British Library making it "unambigu­ously the greatest univer­sity library in the world," in the words of a Harvard official.
   
Looking back at the Memorial Church.
   
 
   
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