Mud-Chinked Building Housed Harvard College in Earliest Times--Liquor and Lives tock Satisfied University Bursar

The reports of a new dormitory to be built on De Wolfe Street, which will be furnished with a sybaritic luxury and offer the conveniences of porters, servants and breakfasts in bed, recalls the sterner way in which our academic forbears lived at Harvard three centuries ago.

When the College first began, the whole life of the community was centered under one roof. In this single building the students lodged, ate, recited and attended divine worship. The building was built of unseasoned lumber, which as it aged, warped and necessitated that the walls be caulked with mud, which frequently proved but poor protection against the rigors of a New England winter.

The first structure was probably situated in the Yard about where Gray's Hall now stands, and probably faced to the south towards what is now Massachusetts Avenue. The kitchen and buttery and the Senior Fellows' study were on the ground floor at the western end. The eastern end was given over to chambers within which small studies, about six feet square, were partitioned off. Each student had a study of his own, but the chambers were common. Between the chambers and the kitchen was the hall, entrance to which was through a projecting turret in the front of the building. This turret also contained a staircase which led to the library and studies on the second floor.

Since there were evidently only two chimneys in the building, very few rooms had a private fire, and so on cold nights, the students were forced to retire to the hall, where they warmed themselves by the fire and studied by the light of "the public candle." Charges to the students were made for the maintenance of both these conveniences.

That there were goodies" even in those early days is assumed from the fact that the Corporation "concluded that Old Mary be yet connived at to be in the College, with a charge to take heed to do her work undertaken and to give content to the college and students."

The original building, due to its faults in construction, became uninhabitable in 1677, although it was first occupied, so far as is known, only 35 years before.

Term bills, in the days of the first college building, were paid in livestock, grain, groceries, and various fluids, because of the scarcity of money.