Radcliffe Quadrangle (Harvard)

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The Quadrangle, Cabot House Cabot House HDR.jpg
The Quadrangle, Cabot House

The Radcliffe Quadrangle at Harvard University, formerly the residential campus of Radcliffe College, is part of Harvard's undergraduate campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Nicknamed the Quad, it is a traditional college quad slightly removed from the main part of campus.

Contents

Geography

The term "the Quad" can refer to the rectangular green field bounded by Cabot and Pforzheimer Houses, or it can refer to the entire section of campus bounded by Garden, Linnaean, Walker, and Shepard Streets, plus the Jordans, which are east of Walker Street. This larger area consists of the Quad green itself as well as all of Pforzheimer, Cabot, and Currier Houses (the Quad Houses); plus the Hilles building, which formerly contained the Quad Library and now houses the Student Organization Center.

Currier House and Hilles are separated from the rest of the Quad by a landscaped walk and paved road, a private way used mainly by campus shuttlebuses, that runs north-south through the Quad.

Other adjacent portions of campus, such as the Botanic Gardens, Kittredge, the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (Q-RAC), and the Observatory, are often also grouped as part of the Quad.

Buildings

Quadlings

The Quad Houses—Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer—are three of the 12 residential houses in which most Harvard undergraduates reside after their first year. Residents of these Houses are often called Quadlings (after the Quadlings of the Oz books).

The Quad is separated from and about half a mile northwest of the main part of campus surrounding Harvard Yard, where almost all undergraduate classrooms and department offices are located. The other nine Houses, called "River Houses", all neighbor each other south of Harvard Yard, in an area near the Charles River.

History and nomenclature

The Quad began as housing for (female) Radcliffe College students in 1901 with the construction of Bertram Hall; male students first moved in around 1970 as part of an exchange program between Radcliffe and Harvard (Women from Radcliffe moved into Winthrop House at about the same time). The Quad became fully coresidential in 1972, when Radcliffe College and Harvard University agreed to let their respective students live on the other institution's campus.

Early in its history, Radcliffe College was unofficially called "the Harvard Annex," and its dorms were called "Annex housing" by Harvard students. Within Radcliffe culture, however, the collection of dormitories was officially called the "Radcliffe Quadrangle". Because of the terms of the merger agreement between Harvard University and Radcliffe College, the Radcliffe Quadrangle and the Radcliffe Yard are designated as "Radcliffe" in perpetuity. For more on Radcliffe's shifting role in the University, see Radcliffe College.

Related Research Articles

Radcliffe College Former womens college in Cambridge, Massachusetts

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. It was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and held the popular reputation of having a particularly intellectual, literary, and independent-minded female student body. Radcliffe conferred Radcliffe College diplomas on undergraduates and graduate students for approximately the first 70 years of its history and then joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas to undergraduates beginning in 1963. A formal "non-merger merger" agreement with Harvard was signed in 1977, with full integration with Harvard completed in 1999. Today, within Harvard University, Radcliffe's former administrative campus is home to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and former Radcliffe housing at the Radcliffe Quadrangle has been incorporated into the Harvard College house system. Under the terms of the 1999 consolidation, the Radcliffe Yard and the Radcliffe Quadrangle retain the "Radcliffe" designation in perpetuity.

Harvard College Undergraduate college of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

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The Seven Sisters is a term that refers to seven highly selective liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. They were created to provide women with the educational equivalent to the Ivy League colleges. The name Seven Sisters is a reference to the Greek myth of The Pleiades, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. The daughters were collectively referred to as The Seven Sisters.

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Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Division of Harvard University

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Pforzheimer House Residential House of Harvard College

Pforzheimer House, nicknamed PfoHo (FOE-hoe) and formerly named North House, is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University. It was named in 1995 for Carol K. and Carl Howard Pforzheimer Jr, major University and Radcliffe College benefactors, and their family.

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Cabot House Residential House of Harvard College

Cabot House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses at Harvard University. Cabot House derives from the merger in 1970 of Radcliffe College's South and East House, which took the name South House, until the name was changed and the House reincorporated in 1984 to honor Harvard benefactors Thomas Cabot and Virginia Cabot. The house is composed of six buildings surrounding Radcliffe Quadrangle; in order of construction, they are Bertram Hall (1901), Eliot Hall (1906), Whitman Hall (1911), Barnard Hall (1912), Briggs Hall (1923), and Cabot Hall (1937). All six of these structures were originally women-only Radcliffe College dormitories until they were integrated in 1970. Along with Currier House and Pforzheimer House, Cabot is part of the Radcliffe Quad.

Currier House (Harvard College) Residential House of Harvard College

Currier House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses of Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Opened in September 1970, it is named after Audrey Bruce Currier, a member of the Radcliffe College Class of 1956 who, along with her husband, was killed in a plane crash in 1967. The area was formerly used as housing for Radcliffe College, and as such the four towers of Currier House are named for distinguished alumnae of Radcliffe, including the author Barbara Tuchman. Along with Cabot House and Pforzheimer House, Currier is part of the former Radcliffe Quadrangle, known colloquially as simply "the Quad."

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Grace Hopkinson Eliot Hall United States historic place

Grace Hopkinson Eliot Hall, often called Eliot Hall, is a historic dormitory building on the Radcliffe Quadrangle of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The four story neo-Georgian brick building was built in 1907 to a design by Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr. It is a duplicate of Bertram Hall, which is adjacent, except some of its architectural details were simplified to reduce costs. The house is named in honor of Grace Hopkinson Eliot, the wife of Harvard President Charles W. Eliot. The building is now one of the dormitories of Cabot House.

Bertram Hall (Radcliffe College) United States historic place

Bertram Hall at Radcliffe College is an historic dormitory building on the Radcliffe Quadrangle of Harvard University at 53 Shepard Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1901, it was the first dormitory building constructed for Radcliffe College. The building is now one of the dormitories of Harvard's Cabot House. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

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Coordinates: 42°22′53″N71°07′27″W / 42.38140°N 71.12424°W / 42.38140; -71.12424