Dudley Community (formerly called Dudley House) is an alternative to Harvard College's 12 Houses. The Dudley Community serves nonresident undergraduate students, visiting undergraduate students, and undergraduates living in the Dudley Co-op. In 2019, the Dudley Community was formed, reflecting the administrative split between the undergraduate and graduate programs that were under Dudley House since 1991. The student center for the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science (formerly Dudley House) is based in Lehman Hall; the building houses a dining hall, library, game room, computer lab, coffee shop, lockers, and common rooms. Affiliated undergraduates have access to Dudley House advisers, programs, intramural athletics, and organized social events.

History

A decentralized commuter center was established in 1935 called Dudley Hall, named after the former Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony

Thomas Dudley Thomas Dudley (12 October 157631 July 1653) was a New England colonial magistrate who served several terms as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dudley was the chief founder of Newtowne, later Cambridge, Massachusetts, and built the tow ...

. Coinciding with the founding of the Dudley Co-operative Society (Dudley Co-op)—Harvard's off-campus cooperative housing dormitory—it was renamed Dudley House and officially became part of the Harvard House system in 1958. It moved from Dunster Street to the Ambassador Hotel on Cambridge Street in 1963. Dudley House consolidated operations and moved to its current location at Lehman Hall in the southwest corner of

Harvard Yard Harvard Yard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest part of the Harvard University campus, its historic center and modern crossroads. It contains most of the freshman dormitories, Harvard's most important libraries, Memorial Church, seve ...

in 1967. In 1961, the Dudley House dining hall was the first at Harvard to go

coeducational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

, which was an experiment that paved the way for the university's eventual merger with

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and h ...

Lehman Hall

Lehman Hall is a Georgian-revival building by Charles Coolidge completed in 1925 as part of Harvard President

Abbott Lawrence Lowell Abbott Lawrence Lowell (December 13, 1856 – January 6, 1943) was an American educator and legal scholar. He was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933. With an "aristocratic sense of mission and self-certainty," Lowell cut a large f ...

's program to "cloister"

. The building occupies the site on which the second, third, and fourth meetinghouses (1650, 1706, 1752) of The First Parish in Cambridge had been built. The site became Harvard property in 1833. Named for donor Arthur Lehman (1873–1936) and his wife

Adele Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a rec ...

, its exterior "is a modified example of the early New England

counting house A counting house, or counting room, was traditionally an office in which the financial books of a business were kept. It was also the place that the business received appointments and correspondence relating to demands for payment. As the use of ...

." In keeping with its original function as the home of Harvard's

Bursar A bursar (derived from "bursa", Latin for '' purse'') is a professional administrator in a school or university often with a predominantly financial role. In the United States, bursars usually hold office only at the level of higher education ...

's Office – for part of which time it was known as "The Counting House" – its "heroic parade of pilasters, a bit overblown admittedly, redoubtless intended to mark the principal frontispiece, as Lehman is, of Yard to arvardSquare" (as Shand-Tucci put it). Its "main chamber reaches practically the entire height of the building, is finished in delicately modeled cream plaster... an extraordinarily light, cheerily simple room. A balcony reaches about part of its upper circumference." Bainbridge Bunting wrote that its "public function is announced by an architectural frontispiece of giant pilasters and arched windows repeated on both major elevations. The building's mass also is sufficient to announce its official role and to define the triangular open space on its east side, although the pilasters are out of scale with other buildings in the Yard." The plaza immediately in front of its Yard-facing elevation once had a sculpture by

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Mo ...

References

{{Harvard , state=collapsed Harvard Houses Georgian Revival architecture in Massachusetts 2019 establishments in Massachusetts