Circling the Square

By steering course 017 from the Square and holding, it for three minutes you find Holden Chapel close on the starboard bow. A small brick building, beautifully proportioned, it is one of the University's most nearly perfect examples of Georgian architecture.

In 1741 Mrs. Samuel Holden of London, granted 400 pounds "to build a Chapple for Use of ye College" at Cambridge. Finally completed in 1744, it might possibly challenge Christ Church's claim of being the oldest church building in Cambridge.

Housed the General Court

For only twenty years, however, was it actually in use as a chapel for in 1769 the Royal Governor transferred the General Court to Cambridge and the House convened in Holden Chapel. Here, James Qtis delivered one of his most effective orations. Later, Colonial troops were barracked in it. Then in 1783 Dr. Joseps Warren those it as the home of the infant Harvard Medical School. Next, an an anatomical museum, its history was characterized by undergarduate raids in search of human skulls--highly prized as room ornaments. As a chemical laboratory it was the scene of a near tragedy when Charles William Eliot, then an undergraduate, touched off an explosive mixture in an iron kettle. The explosion shattered the kettle and a large fragment almost struck the chemist.

Converted to Navy

In 1880 the exterior was restored and Holden, until the present day, has been the headquarters of the odds and ends department of the college. Recently the favorite haunt of speech classes, it is now a Navy storeroom. Students pass by without noticing it, usually totally ignorant of its history. The decorative applied heraldry on the east pediment no longer has any significance. To the Navy sentries it is just another ivy covered Harvard building.

Holden Chapel long ago outlived its religious function. Perhaps too, it has now passed beyond its active stage as a general handy room. Its main value now is that of a relic, a museum which exists in semi-obscurity, mainly in the minds of antiquarians. To the few odd souls, however, who appreciate its architectural qualities, there comes the hope that some day it may be restored to its original beauty and dignity.