Short Headlines from Harvard History Spring 2025

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

Illustration of Lewis and Clark Expedition artifacts at Peabody Museum

Illustration by Mark steele

1920 

Harvard acquires Claverly, Apley, and Westmorly halls along Mount Auburn Street for use as regular dormitories. (Today they are parts of Adams House, now in its final stages of renewal.)

1925 

An Overseers Committee recommends the appointment of an alumni group to raise $1 million for the erection and maintenance of a new College chapel as a war memorial and a replacement for the often overcrowded Appleton Chapel.

1945 

The University Library has outstripped the New York Public Library to become the nation’s second largest, surpassed only by the Library of Congress, according to its director’s annual report.

1965 

The Rockefeller Foundation funds an eight-week summer program “to introduce the legal profession” to 40 black students from Southern colleges, in an effort to increase the number of black applicants to law schools around the country.

1990 

After a six-year makeover, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology reopens its Hall of the North American Indian, including a temporary display of its rare Lewis and Clark Expedition artifacts.

2010 

The Corporation has begun a confidential self-examination—encompassing its size, appointment and succession procedures, committees, and more. (That culminates at year-end in the most significant governance changes since 1650, including a near-doubling of the number of fellows to 13.)

2015 

The first new Allston construction nears occupancy, as work concludes on the Continuum residential/retail complex at North Harvard Street and Western Avenue; tenants are expected by late summer.

The 2015-2016 undergraduate term bill will be $60,659, the College announces. It crossed $50,000 in 2010-2011; $40,000 in 2005-2006; and $30,000 in 1997-1998.

2020 

President Lawrence S. Bacow announces on Tuesday, March 10, that instruction in residence will be suspended “until further notice” given the rising incidence of “coronavirus” infections. Students are advised to depart by Friday, and not to return following the spring recess that begins that afternoon.

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