Phillips Brooks House's soul was saved this month.

Provost Buck's Committee on Religion decided to leave the 50-year-old Yard organization alone. Through the years PBH has become a social service center with no direct emphasis on the spiritual side. The students working with Graduate Secretary Robert L. Fischelis '49 didn't want that changed.

But last fall the University Corporation and Overseers decided that something should be done about the problem of religion at Harvard. They said no to President Conant. The President was in poor health at the time, so he told Provost Buck about the idea. The Provost was busy with the extra work the extra work the president's illness had given him, so he got in touch with Dean Bender. Buck and Bender formed a committee, and the Committee investigated.

During the weeks that followed, rumors and suggestions were heard and repeated with a rapidity that outran press reports. The old question of religion's place in a university came up. Other schools were cited. The idea of a chaplain, courses taught by ordained clergymen, even compulsory chapel were bandied about, then dropped. Inevitably, the Committee got around to PBH.

Start New Movement

PBH has been thought of by generations of Harvard men as the center for religious activities. The House's motto, "Charity, Piety, and Hospitality," was linked with the precepts of religion. It seemed the logical place from which to launch a back-to-religion movement.

The Committee put forward a list of suggestions that would have turned Brooks House back 25 years by stressing only one-third of Phillip Brooks' original intentions in proposing the House--"to serve the religious, charitable, and social interests of the University." The new emphasis would have made it resemble its nominal counterpart at Yale, Dwight Hall.

PBH undergraduates were against the move. But they did not protest out loud. For 50 years, since its dedication in 1900, it had been building a record and tradition as a meeting place for any students who wanted to use it and a service organization for Harvard, Cambridge, and Boston. PBH was sure that its work and reputation would fight for it with no outside help. PBH was right.

For, although the Committee's report won't be out before the end of this term, Dean Bender told graduate secretary Fischelis that the University would change nothing at Brooks House. It would be permitted to grow in the same unique way that has distinguished it throughout the country's colleges, and made it a center in the Yard since the turn of the century.

Brooks' Memorial

True to its own tradition, PBH has been changing since it was built. At the time, there were no upperclassman Houses, and the freshman Union had not yet been built. Brooks thought that a building like PBH was needed. Brooks had a reputation for being a powerful and convincing preacher in his day. He campaigned for his idea, and a group of friends built it after his death.

But when it finally opened its doors to the University in 1900, the Union had just been completed as a meeting and lounging place for undergraduates. At the time, too, a religious movement was sweeping the country. The YMCA had been organized with principles close to those Brooks had followed. So the massive building was used as its headquarters.

Competition soon began building up all over Cambridge. Harvard Square became a business and social center. The YMCA grow too large for the house and moved to its own quarters. Churches sprang up around the University and formed students groups of their own. By the early '20's, all the religious societies that had operated from PBH were dropped or absorbed by churches. According to a Yale divinity student in 1944 who did an extensive paper on Brooks House, religious interest here was "suffering from arterio-sclerosis."

With the new trend, PBH began to bring the light activity it had held in the background for so long--service to the College and community. The new subway to Boston enabled it to expand its work until today, it sends volunteers to 33 Boston settlement Houses to teach kids how to speak and write, how to play basketball and baseball, how to make wooden bookstands and tin ashtrays for Christmas gifts, and how to have fun.

Free Entertainment