A Stroll Through the Hallowed Halls of Harvard University

Massachusetts Hall(1720) is the oldest surviving building at Harvard; today, it houses the offices of Harvard's President but five of the country's Founding Fathers once lived here: John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, and James Otis Jr

John Harvard was an English dissenting minister in Colonial America who bequeathed half his inherited fortune to a newly established college that soon became Harvard College

The top-ranked Kennedy School of Government has produced 17 heads of state, the most of any graduate institution in the world (for example, Pierre Eliot Trudeau, Ellen Johnson, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Juan Manuel Santos); Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is also an alum

The Baker Library is the centerpiece for Harvard's top-ranked business school; across the Charles from the rest of campus, alums include Hank Paulson, Andy Jassy, Bill Ackman, George W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Steven Covey, Jeff Skilling and Jamie Dimon

The Dexter Gate (Class of 1890) is one of 25 gates around Harvard Yard; it's widely known for the inscription on its crest: 'Enter to Grow in Wisdom' while the reverse side reads 'Depart to Serve Better Thy Country and Thy Kind'

Harvard Yard (22.4 acres) is the oldest part of the campus, its historic center and modern crossroads; it contains most of the freshman dorms, Harvard's most important libraries, Memorial Church, and several classroom and departmental buildings; the brightly colored chairs pre-date the pandemic and invite students to take a break and enjoy the outdoors

Completed in 1744, Holden Chapel is the third oldest building on campus and originally housed morning and evening prayers for the Harvard student body; the small building today serves as both a classroom and a musical rehearsal and performance space

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library is one of the world's most comprehen­sive research collec­tions in the humanities and social sciences with 3.5+ million books on 57 miles of shelving; Widener, a 1907 Harvard graduate, died when the Titanic sunk

More than 1.3 million bricks were used to construct Sever Hall, completed in 1880, which is built in Romanesque Revival style; Harvard owns 660+ buildings across its sprawling campuses encompassing 25+ million square feet of space

The Harvard Museum of Natural History was closed for my visit; I want to see their famous glass flowers collection which has 4,400 individual glass models representing over 830 plant species that were made between 1887 and 1936 in Germany; the museum also houses the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology which is the oldest (1866) museum of anthropology with the largest collection of North American archaeology and ethnology in the world

Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest continuously operating law school in the US; alums include Barack Obama, Janet Reno, Merrick Garland, Ted Cruz, Sam Ervin, Elizabeth Dole, Mitt Romney, Chuck Schumer, John Roberts and Elena Kagen

Completed in 1877, Memorial Hall honors Harvard men's sacrifices in defense of the Union during the Civil War‍; its 1970 National Historic Landmark designation recognized it one of the nation's most dramatic examples of High Victorian Gothic architecture

Lehman Hall is a 1925 Georgian-revival building and is a modified example of the early New England counting house (the building's original function was home to Harvard's bursar); today, it's the student center for the Graduate School of Arts and Science

Built in 1726 for the president of Harvard, Benjamin Wadsworth, the house that shares his name is the 2nd oldest building on campus; George Washington set up his first MA HQs in the house and rode from here to assume command of the Revolutionary troops

Grays Hall (1863) became the College's first building with water taps in the basement (residents of other buildings had to haul water from pumps in Harvard Yard); this freshman dorm housed Malia Obama, Natalie Portman, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Norman Mailer

Harvard Hall (1764) is the fourth oldest building on campus and is designed in High Georgian style; this classroom building housed the country's first experimental physics laboratory and the university's first mineralogical collections

The 1973 Science Center, funded by the inventor of the Polaroid camera, is Harvard's main classroom and laboratory building for undergraduate science and math; the plaza between it and Harvard Yard is used for food trucks, roller skating, ice skating, and other activities such as markets and concerts

Holworthy Hall (1812) is a freshman dorm that housed many writers of The Simpsons, Horatio Alger, Conan O'Brien, Deval Patrick, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, Pete Buttigieg, Jeffrey Zucker and James Murdoch

Memorial Church (1932) stands opposite the Widener Library across Harvard Yard; notable Harvard alums include Thoreau, Emerson, FDR, John Adams, Helen Keller, Benazir Bhutto, JFK, Al Gore, WEB DuBois, Bill Gates and Barack and Michelle Obama

University Hall(1815), designed by the great early American architect Charles Bulfinch, lies at the heart of Harvard Yard; a neoclassical icon, it's built of white granite, a departure from the red brick designs of other early campus buildings

Matthews Hall (1872) is a freshman dorm on Harvard Yard that has housed Matt Damon, Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, William Randolph Hearst, Robert Rubin, Maura Healey and John Dos Passos

The Arthur Sackler Museum was built in 1985 to house the University's collection of Asian Art; Sackler died more than a decade before OxyContin was developed but students have lobbied unsuccessfully to have the Sackler name removed from the building

I didn't expect to see a wild turkey in the street at Harvard!; Harvard was the only college in the New World from its founding in 1636 until 1693 when the College of William and Mary was established