Pub Set to Open, Faithful to Old English Roots

“Let us rejoice, then, while we are young,” exhorts the Latin prose above the set of antiquated doors.

Starting on Thursday, patrons of the Queen’s Head, Harvard’s long-awaited pub, will be able to do just that. But visitors can rest assured that the revelry won’t come at the expense of historical ambience.

The pub’s planners have equipped the new space, located under Annenberg Hall in the Memorial Hall complex, with everything from museum artifacts to paintings to bring patrons back to the tavern’s 19th-century origins. (The pub shares it name with a Southwark, England, drinkery that was among the properties bequeathed by John Harvard to the University upon his death.)

Following the pub’s ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1:15 p.m. on Thursday, free appetizers will be served for two hours.

The cuisine will include Poilâne bread from the world-renowned Paris bakery owned by Apollonia Poilâne ’07.

When the taps open on Friday, the brew will be “1636,” a beer developed and supplied particularly for the Queen’s Head by the Harpoon Brewery.

Enhancing the atmosphere of the new space will be a Memorial Hall gargoyle, which fell off the building’s tower during a 1956 fire and resurfaced 12 years later in the Fogg Art Museum.

The museum has agreed to a permanent loan with the Queen’s Head, and the gargoyle will be displayed above the bar.

“As you walk in, the gargoyle will be right there to greet you,” said Loker Commons Project Manager Zachary A. Corker ’04, who has previously served as campus fun czar.

Also on display will be a 500-pound fragment of the Memorial Hall bell, cracked in the same fire, Corker said.

Officially known as the Cambridge Queen’s Head, the pub has been in the works for more than two years.

Its debut has been delayed twice over the past year due to construction hold-ups.

While the original Southwark pub burned down in 1876, the name was unearthed by Kirkland House residents who discovered it while playing “The Harvard Game”—a board-based trivia challenge, according to Corker. Since then, the Southwark connection has continued to play an important role.

The pub commanded a significant Southwark presence last Friday, evidenced in the accents of Nicholas Stanton and Annie Shepperd of the town’s London borough. The pair had traveled to Cambridge to bring paintings of the original “Queen’s Head” for display in the pub. Both expressed their pleasure at the venue’s attempts to foster historical allusions.

“It’s making the connection about where this place came from,” Shepperd said. “It’s maintaining the link, which is great.”

“The Brits have not always been in good favor in Boston,” added Stanton. “But it’s nice to remember the nice bits as well.”

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.