Week 6 - The Development of the Radcliffe Quadrangle

 

Detailed in Bainbridge Bunting's authoritative text Harvard: An Architectural History (1985, Harvard University Press), the majority of the land upon which the Radcliffe Quadrangle (henceforth "the Quad") sits today was acquired in 1900 by Radcliffe College from the estate of Willard Phillips (Bunting 140). Shown in pink at the lower right of the above map (G.W. Bromley and Co.'s 1903 Atlas of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Plate 24, "Part of Wards 9 & 10"), the first dormitory the college built was Bertram Hall in 1901.

 

Followed in 1907 by its sister building Eliot Hall, both designed by A.W. Longfellow, Jr., the two were envisioned by Bremer W. Pond to be connected by an entrance arcade in his renderings of the unexecuted project above (Bunting 140, 141). This would have provided enclosure of the Quad in the area that today features one of the few gaps in the fortress of facades, still filled only by a parking lot. 

Labeled below, from left to right: Whitman, Eliot, Bertram, Barnard

  

 

Progress marched north along the Quad, though the western flank that today lies between the Busway and Garden Street remained occupied by homes late into the history of the college. After Bertram and Eliot came Barnard and Whitman in 1911 and 1912, respectively, both designed by Kilham and Hopkins, shown above in a view looking south titled "The Radcliffe Quadrangle and playing fields."
 

 

The new construction is documented in the 1916 edition of G.W. Bromley and Co.'s Atlas of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Plate 24, "Part of Wards 9 & 10." South House (today's Cabot House) would be completed with the additions of Ellwell and Blackell's Briggs Hall in 1923 and Ames and Dodge's Cabot Hall in 1936 (Bunting 140). The aerial photo below (looking toward the south) was taken by Pacific & Atlantic Photos before the construction of the latter dormitory.

 

This detailed oblique aerial, taken by Donald W. Felt from the opposite perspective (looking north), shows all of South House and most of what makes up today's Pforzheimer House, formerly North House. "The well-proportioned and impressive facade of Moors Hall [pictured at center, with cupola] forms a focus for the Quadrangle," writes Bunting on 144, designed along with Holmes Hall (to its back left in the photo) and Comstock Hall (later to be built to the back right of Moors, then tennis courts) by Maginnis and Walsh and built in the decade following 1947. Wolbach Hall, depicted in the above image directly to the right of Moors, was built in 1938 as private apartments but not acquired by Radcliffe until 1962 (Bunting 144).

This section of Alva Scott Garfield's popular "Scott-Map of Harvard University and of Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts," produced in 1959, shows the nearby residential houses possessed and in use by Radcliffe as dormitories. The Jordans would be built on the site shown occupied by Rogers at Shepard and Walker Streets in 1960, designed by Carleton Granberg as "Radcliffe's first break with neo-colonialism," (Bunting 144). Note the parity between the names of Garden Street buildings above and the owners' names in the atlas maps.

 

 

Shown above is Harrison and Abramowitz's plan for a Quad free of single-family homes (Bunting 146). This firm designed the Hilles Library (today's SOCH, lower left) and Currier House (upper left) in 1965, which would be completed that year and in 1969, respectively. Thus, the undergraduate-accessible portion of the Quad was complete, only to be followed by Faculty Row in 1971 by Gourley and Richardson and much later by the renovation of Moors (Bunting 145).

 

The expansion of the Quad to fill the block bounded by Garden, Linnaean, Walker, and Shepard Streets has created an environment that looks in upon itself instead of out toward the community, literally and figuratively. The integration with the neighborhood depicted in the early aerials in which halls abut homes is all but absent from today's Quad, which is firmly fixated on its wide lawn.

 

Bunting describes the effect of the design of the Quad as creating "on a grand scale, a world unto itself," (140). Such isolation requires the provision of good transport links to serve students in this separate world. That is why I, as a Quad resident, have been excited for the city's plan to make Garden Street one way for vehicles alongside the Quad and provide a contraflow lane for bikers. While this project has already been greenlit, the Neighborhood and Long Term Planning Committee is holding a public meeting on the 19th to discuss the city's "Street Study: Findings and Recommendations Update." Considering the flyers (pictured below) I have seen posted on Garden Street, I expect continuing obstructionism from local automobile owners at this meeting in regards to pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Below is my drawing of the south facade of Moors Hall, where I live, for the illustrative part of this assignment. I used the concrete tiles of the terrace outside to approximate its proportions.