Boylston Hall is a

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

classroom and academic office building lecture hall near the southwest corner of

Harvard Yard Harvard Yard is the oldest and among the most prominent parts of the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The yard has a historic center and modern crossroads and contains List of Harvard College freshman dormitories, most ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

. Ward Nicholas Boylston had left a bequest to Harvard for the building in 1828. It was built in 1858 to designs in Rundbogenstil by Paul Schulze of Schulze and Schoen. It was clad in stone, as specified by the donor, specifically Rockport granite, and had a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downward to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope, with variants including Tented roof, tented roofs and others. Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other ve ...

. In 1871, Peabody and Stearns replaced the roof with a mansarded third floor.Harvard Property Information Resource Center, Boylston Hall
/ref> It has been speculated that it stands on the homesite of the Rev.

Thomas Hooker Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent English colonial leader and Congregational church, Congregational minister, who founded the Connecticut Colony after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was know ...

, first minister to the first church in Cambridge, but this is not well established. It originally served as a chemistry building, with a laboratory and classrooms, and later housed the anatomical museum of Jeffries Wyman, Professor of Comparative Anatomy, who in 1866 became the first curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, as well as a mineralogical collection. In the 20th century, it became the first home of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Boylston Hall was gut renovated in 1959 by the architectural firm of Benjamin Thompson and Associates, and is considered an early example of the reuse of sound old buildings (" adaptive reconstruction"), "juxtaposing glass and steel with historic details". It functioned as the university language center. It houses the offices of the Harvard Classics Department. Its Fong Lecture Hall seats 144.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boylston Hall Harvard University buildings Harvard Square University and college buildings completed in 1858 1858 establishments in Massachusetts