After 25 Years: Upperclassmen in the Yard

Since the House System changed the face of social life at Harvard, the Yard has been the exclusive heritage of the freshman class. But next fall, when over 100 upperclassmen temporarily move into most of Wigglesworth Hall, an old chapter in the history of the College will be reopened. For the first time in twenty five years freshmen will not live in cloistered seclusion. And with over one-tenth of the class of '60 staying in converted apartments on Prescott St., they will be outside of the gates for the first time since World War II.

Before Edward S. Harkness walked into President Lowell's office in 1928 with his offer to finance the House Plan, Harvard's rooming program served only two classes, freshmen and seniors. At that time freshmen lived in halls spread out over the river front where the houses now stand. In 1910, they had moved into the first of these new dormitories, Standish and Gore. Four years later Smith Hall was completed, with McKinlock Hall going up after World War I. These halls had dining and common rooms, and were broken up into suites of one to five people.

The senior class generally lived in the Yard, filling up old dorms and occupying Mower, Lionel, Straus and Lehman Halls after their erection in 1923-25.

But sophomores and juniors were left to fend for themselves. Although the owners of the private halls on the Gold Coast had sold out to the University during the war, a Gold Coast atmosphere still prevailed. Money determined the standard of living and only the club men had a regular place to eat. The three upper classes split up into tight cliques, and clubs and fraternity chapters sprang up.

To the wealthy who could afford expensive apartments and gain club admittance, Harvard life was quite enjoyable. But those on the other side of the University tracks found Cambridge a dismal place, from their rooms in "rat houses," lofts of buildings in the Square. And when the commons in Memorial Hall closed because it was losing money, they could eat only in the beaneries of the Square.

Two years after the commons closed, President Lowell made a serious effort to decentralize the College and house the three upper classes in residential units. But the General Education Board turned down an application to build one experimental house for honors students, and the plan was shelved.

Soon after, Harkness made his $10,000,000 offer, and the House system was on its way. Harvard's physical plant had almost changed overnight, and intellectual tongues wagged across the nation. H. I. Brech summed it up in the New York Times when he said:

"Abandonment of the old Harvard Yard to the freshmen, elimination of that historic bit of ground as a real center of college life, has grieved many good Harvard men. But the fact is that long before the houses came, the pattern of college life about the Yard, which was only Harvard's individual variation of the pattern of life on all the other college campuses, had faded out of existence. There was no pattern of college life."

The freshmen, forced out of their river-front dormitories--incorporated into the Houses--did not immediately fall into a new pattern. The greater part of the incoming classes moved into the Yard halls evacuated by the seniors, but some gained entrance into the Houses. When Dunster and Lowell opened, 155 freshmen flocked into the new Houses.

Within a few years, however, the Yardlings began to live up to their name. When Wigglesworth, built on an entry system with suites modeled after those in the Houses, was completed in 1931, the freshmen began to find themselves enclosed. The Union became their dining hall and center of activity.

World War II once again opened the Houses to the freshman, as the members of '46 were given their choice of House or Yard. But the University re-established the pre-war system once it cleared away the uniforms.

Now freshmen will once again be outside of their own walls, but this time it will not be of their own choosing. And because the administration faces a problem of overcrowding in the Houses, a group of incoming freshmen will be denied the physical associations of the Yard. Thus a new problem will arise. For the sense of class, defined by F. Skiddy von Stade, Jr. '38, Dean of Freshmen, as the "opportunity to rub shoulders with so many varied fellows who are just as green as you" must suffer. It is a long walk from Prescott St. to a friend's room in Mower.