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HOLLIS
AND STOUGHTON HALLSAND HOLDEN CHAPEL
Two
freshman dormitories, Hollis Hall (1763) and Stoughton Hall (1805),
face the statue of John Harvard across the Old Yard. Former inhabitants
include Al Gore, Tommy Lee Jones, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, and Charles Bulfinch.
Dents and pockmarks dot the bricks in front of
both halls. Legend holds that before central heating, students heated
their rooms with cannon balls warmed in their fireplaces. When spring
arrived, students threw their "heaters" out the windows, denting
the sidewalks below.
Nearby Holden Chapel (1744) is the third-oldest
building in the Yard. From 1744 to 1766 and again from 1769 to 1772
students used the space for morning and evening prayers. However,
the chapel also hosted secular activities. In 1755, John Winthrop,
the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, delivered
two lectures on seismology in the Chapel, explaining earthquakes
as natural phenomena rather than as emblems of divine discontent.
In 1783 the Medical School used the Chapel as a place to perform
autopsies. Today, many of Harvard's choral groups use the space
as a headquarters.
top:
Hollis Hall stands at the edge of the lawn in the Old Yard. left:
Holden Chapel has seen days as a religious space, lecture hall, morgue,
and headquarters for choral groups.