The History of Lowell House

The History Of Lowell House Charles U. Lowe HOW TO MAKE A HOUSE Charles U. Lowe ’42, Archivist of Lowell House Lucy L. Fowler, Assistant CONTENTS History of Lowell House, Essay by Charles U. Lowe Chronology Documents 1928 Documents 1929 Documents 1930-1932 1948 & Undated Who’s Who Appendix Three Essays on the History of Lowell House by Charles U. Lowe: 1. The Forbes story of the Harvard Riverside Associates: How Harvard acquired the land on which Lowell House was built. (2003) 2. How did the Russian Bells get to Lowell House? (2004) 3. How did the Russian Bells get to Lowell House? (Continued) (2005) Report of the Harvard Student Council Committee on Education Section III, Subdivision into Colleges The Harvard Advocate, April 1926 The House Plan and the Student Report 1926 Harvard Alumni Bulletin, April, 1932 A Footnote to Harvard History, Edward C. Aswell, ‘26 The Harvard College Rank List How Lowell House Selected Students, Harvard Crimson, September 30, 1930, Mason Hammond “Dividing Harvard College into Separate Groups” Letter from President Lowell to Henry James, Overseer November 3, 1925 Lowell House 1929-1930 Master, Honorary Associates, Associates, Resident and Non-Resident Tutors First Lowell House High Table Harvard Crimson, September 30, 1930 Outline of Case against the Clerk of the Dunster House Book Shop for selling 5 copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence Charles S. Boswell (Undated) Gift of a paneled trophy case from Emanuel College to Lowell House Harvard University News, Thursday. October 20, 1932 Hizzoner, the Master of Lowell House - Essay about Julian Coolidge on the occasion of his retirement in 1948 Eulogy for Julian L. Coolidge, Elliott Perkins, March 8, 1954 Photographs History of Lowell House “Of the making of books there is no end.” [Ecclesiastes: 12,11] And books about Harvard make no small contribution to this plentitude. What follows, while yet another history of Harvard, is a different one, a tale told by an album of documents selected to trace the path of the House Plan from concept to reality. In the main they comprise memoranda and correspondence between A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University, and Julian Lowell Coolidge, first master of Lowell House. This compendium in large measure covers the years 1928-1932, a critical period in the evolution of “Houses” at Harvard, and one apparently overlooked by historians. After all, President Lowell was stepping off into the blue, there were no precedents, and, as he wrote, he wanted a program “uniquely American”. In many ways, Lowell House was the anvil upon which policy and procedure for the “House Plan” were wrought. This joint creative process began on January 14, 1929, when Coolidge accepted the title of Master of a house yet to be built and it continued at least until 1933. It becomes clear that Coolidge had a special relationship with his cousin, the President, one not shared by the master of Dunster House (the second of the first two houses.) Much of the history emerges from a study of the papers of President Lowell, the giant that directed the destiny of Harvard University for a quarter of a century. His accomplishments answer the question of whether history makes men or men make history. Whether he could have achieved as much at another time or indeed in another setting must remain moot, but certainly with a man of equal mind but different character and disposition, the story at Harvard would not have been the same. In contrast to President Lowell, who carefully indexed his voluminous papers by both subject and date, Coolidge seems to have been indifferent to collecting his documents and those that exist are gathered in a few folders in the Harvard Archives. On the other hand he produced a number of important papers on theoretical geometry, the first in 1909 and the last as late as in 1949. After graduating from Harvard (summa cum laude,’96), he “came up” to Balliol, Oxford 1896-97 and there, among other things, proved to be a successful oarsman. There is some evidence that he was also interested in the pole vault. Subsequently he received his doctorate at the University of Bonn. After a stint of teaching at Groton, he returned to Harvard, and soon became a professor of mathematics. It is unclear why President Lowell plucked the mathematician Coolidge to become his first housemaster. There appears to be no correspondence shedding light on this matter. Coolidge left his mark at Harvard not as a mathematician, though he was surely accomplished, but rather as a distinguished House Master. At Harvard in the first decades of the 20th century, the time when the story of the Houses begins, there was still a kind of informality among men who knew each other and shared a common ethic. Many decisions were confirmed by a simple handshake, or perhaps over a cup of tea, or at a chance meeting with the President in the Yard. Thus it follows that the documentation of this history may be incomplete and some critical documents overlooked. What remains, after sifting through a vast collection of papers, should serve to tell the history we set out to document. These illuminate the process by which the cold stones of a building would acquire a unique character and began to vibrate with student life in a manner until then unknown in American collegiate experience, and one that to this day continues as a vital component of student life at Harvard. In 1902, President Eliot asked Lowell, now in his fifth year as professor of government, to serve on a committee to examine student life. This experience kindled in Lowell what became a determination to improve a student’s collegiate experience. The committee report warned Eliot of the need to build student dormitories. Eliot encouraged use of private dormitories to spare the College the burden of maintaining buildings. As early as 1904 Lowell had become convinced that the College had responsibility for the quality of student life. In his inaugural address as President (1909) he explicitly laid out one of the responsibilities of the College. In the Harvard Archives one finds the address, written in his distinctive cursive; it states, “A large college ought to give its students a wide horizon and it fails therein unless it mixes them together so thoroughly that the friendships they form are based on natural affinities, rather than on similarities of origin.” Upon taking office, Lowell had inherited a University from President Eliot that Theodore Roosevelt considered to be a national institution, yet at that time Harvard lacked the cohesiveness and commitment to student scholarship that became so prominent in the Lowell era. It has been said that the University needed a man with Lowell’s qualities and only the challenge of leading this University was needed to bring out all the subtleties of his mind. Harvard had more the trappings of a 12th century studia generalia than a modern institution, an accumulation of distinguished professors, but an indifferent student body left to gain knowledge from an inadequately structured curriculum. At that time only half of the students were lodged and fed by the university. Most of the others made do with private lodgings and sought food in the indifferent atmosphere of the Square. Those with bluer blood and sufficient wealth populated Mt. Auburn’s Gold Coast and shared a social life and dining limited to members of their club. In his first year as President, Lowell corresponded with H. B. Kipper (H’95) who identified some of the problems of student housing and the benefits to be gained by dividing the student body into smaller colleges. Kipper even provided an architectural rendering of a plan to accomplish this purpose. Lowell replied, “Problems of this kind have been fermenting in the minds of many of us for some years.” And indeed as early as 1894 the Secretary of Harvard University, Frank Bolles, had, like Kipper, recommended breaking up the student body into smaller colleges. As President, Lowell’s challenge was not only to rectify the problems entailed by the growing size of the student body, but also, while doing so, to create an environment that would be a magnet for the brightest young minds of the nation while maintaining the high caliber of the faculty. In an address given in New Haven in 1913 Lowell became explicit: “The problem is so to organize the students as to mix together on an intimate footing men of all kinds from all parts of the country. The obvious solution is to organize the undergraduate body into groups like the English colleges.” He later wrote, “What we want is a group of colleges each of which will be national and democratic, a microcosm of the whole university.” As envisioned by Lowell, a House was not to be yet another dormitory. Rather, he wished to create an academic community of students and scholars. The idea was complex - part Aristotle’s Akademie, part Oxbridge, and part Grotlesex - a place where a cross section of the students guided by a master and tutors could live, learn, and dine in an intellectual democracy. Unique in its approach to collegiate life, it would dramatically change how students interacted at Harvard. Being a good administrator, Lowell put first things first. By 1920 he had created a new demanding curriculum, required student concentration in specific fields of endeavor, established the tutorial system, and built three of the four River dormitories for freshman. The Houses, though still in the future, were to be the “capstone” (Lowell’s term) of his reign. And they would be the final step in his commitment to restructure student life.

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