This is a list of dormitories at Harvard College. Only freshmen live in these dormitories, which are located in and around Harvard Yard. Sophomores, juniors and seniors live in the House system.
Apley Court
South of Harvard Yard on Holyoke Street, Apley Court has the most spacious rooms among the freshman dorms; accommodations include marble bathrooms. Formerly part of Adams House, it is the only one of the Gold Coast apartment buildings – luxurious private apartments built south of the Yard in the late 1890s – to now be a freshman dormitory. Notable residents have included T. S. Eliot.
Canaday Hall
Completed in 1974, it is the newest dormitory in Harvard Yard. Seen from the air its seven buildings resemble a question mark. It is named after Ward M. Canaday, former president and major shareholder of the Willys, manufacturer of Jeeps during World War II.
Canaday's construction immediately followed the 1969 student takeover of University Hall, and certain features of its design were meant to confound student organizing.[citation needed]
There is a Muslim prayer space in the basement.[1]
Opened in 1863, Grays became the college's first building with water taps in the basement. (Residents of other buildings in Harvard Yard had to haul water from pumps in the Yard.)
Nicknamed "The Harvard Hilton",[3] it is considered the most luxurious dormitory in the Yard.[4]
The oldest surviving building at Harvard and the country's oldest dormitory, Massachusetts Hall is located next to Johnston Gate. Designed by two Harvard Presidents, John Leverett and Benjamin Wadsworth, between 1718 and 1720 for the housing of sixty-four students, the building served various functions over the years, including a refuge for American soldiers during the Siege of Boston, and an observatory after Thomas Hollis' donation of a twenty-four-foot telescope in 1722. Today, it houses the offices of Harvard's president, with a handful of freshmen living on the uppermost floor.
Part of the Union Dormitories, Pennypacker is named for Henry Pennypacker, a former president of Harvard's admissions committee.
The studios of radio station WHRB (95.3 FM) are in the basement.
Straus was built in 1926 by three brothers in memory of their parents, Isidor and Ida Straus, New York department store entrepreneurs who owned both Macy's and Abraham & Straus and died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Built in 1870, Weld was the second of two important additions to the Harvard campus designed by Ware & Van Brunt (the first being Memorial Hall).
It was a gift of William Fletcher Weld, in memory of his brother Stephen Minot Weld, and represented a new trend toward picturesque silhouettes that became important in American domestic architecture of the later nineteenth century, as can be seen in the Queen Anne style which was popular during the same period.
The second largest of the freshman dormitories, and actually three buildings, Wigglesworth is located along the southern edge of the Yard, between Widener Library and Boylston Hall to the north, and Massachusetts Avenue to the south. It was constructed in 1931 as "part of President Lowell's plan to enclose the Yard from the traffic of Harvard Square."
To accommodate the unusually large freshman class in the 2021–22 academic year, Harvard College housed first-year students in that year in several additional university-owned buildings: apartments at 20–20A and 22–24 Prescott Street, apartments at 10 DeWolfe Street, and The Inn at 1201 Massachusetts Ave. These are collectively termed "Maple Yard", one of the several smaller "Yards" into which first-year dorms are organized.[10][11]
^"Freshman Dorms". The Unofficial Guide. Harvard Student Agencies. Archived from the original on 14 November 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)