Introduction
Because Harvard is the nation's oldest university, visitors
expect it to
look "colonial." It seldom disappoints. When people
walk into the
Yard, they have a sense of walking back in time. The red-brick
buildings and the gold-capped towers along the river enhance
the sense of antiquity.
But when did Harvard start to look like Harvard? Has it always
looked and felt like a colonial
college writ large? This site is intended to help you
think about how our twenty-first-century university came to
look the way it does. We've selected some of Harvard's most
familiar landmarks and many of the buildings that made way
for them to give you an idea of how the campus has grown and
changed over its four centuries.
Although no buildings survive from the seventeenth
century, you can see what those buildings might have looked
like and where they were located. You can also look at buildings
constructed (and sometimes demolished too!) in the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries as well.
Maybe you spotted the eye featured in our introductory animation.
The eye, which evokes an early Harvard coat of arms, reminds
us of the importance of visual culture in creating (or inventing)
myths. And if we, as detectives, keep our eyes peeled and
look closely enough, we might just find that things aren't
always what they seem.
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