Only Memorial Hall surpasses the standard garishness of Victorian taste. Guides on one of the sight-seeing tours now conducted through Cambridge claim that Harvard wanted so much to erect a great and lasting tribute to its Civil War dead that University officials asked every leading architect in America to contribute one detail to such a monument, put them all together and erected Memorial Hall.

But there was one great architect of this period who designed for Harvard a building which can justly be considered among the most important in the United States.

Henry Hobson Richardson's Sever Hall, finished in 1880, was a great influence on the changing styles of the time and eventually became a major step toward the 20th century and modern architecture. This was the building in which Richardson reached the ultimate maturity of his art, in general design, in construction, and in the minute details of ornamentation. Preserving the massive boldness which was characteristic of Richardson and his Romanesque school, Sever achieved a new simplicity which was to be widely copied. The deep Syrian archway of the front side gave the building a remarkable sense of security; the brick carving in the cornices, the chimneys, and the friezes, is some of the best ever done in this contry; and the inclination of the building to harmonize with the older works in the Yard without sacrificing a distinct style of its own, is something few architects of the late 19th century ever understood.

Richardson also designed Austin Hall, a building more characteristic of his work but neither as important nor as good as Sever.

In the 19th century, Harvard builders had followed contemporary trends on some occasions and completely reshaped them on others. In the first major period of construction in the 20th century, both of these practices were abandoned in favor of an outright return to classical forms. This apparently was done chiefly to suit the wishes of President A. Lawrence Lowell, a man of reactionary tastes, who selected a Georgian style for the buildings of his House System in the 1930's. In making such a choice, Lowell was following the theories of gentleman architect, Thomas Jefferson, who had advocated the use of classic styles for the official buildings of the new American republic, to give the government a look of stability and purpose, a transfer of aged nobility to the institutions of a young nation. Lowell wanted that same established look for his new Houses and it was natural that he and the University's architects selected a sturdy New England design.

The pseudo-Georgian look, however, was not restricted to the Houses. Virtually everything built in the Lowell years, including the Indoor Athletic Building, surely the world's largest Georgian cube, was designed in this style. Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott, then the regular University architects, pandered to their ancestors more than to art; but if not creative, at least their buildings are comfortable and outwardly attractive.

The 20th century is leaving the University another legacy which is neither comfortable nor attractive. Leverett Towers, the still growing Holyoke Center, and the projected married students housing complex are part of this legacy; they may be personally hideous but in the future they will be an important part of Harvard's architectural museum. They represent the New Victoriana, a school based on bald gimmickry, loud primary colors, starkness and bigness, which is responsible for a good measure of contemporary American building.

Fortunately, Harvard also has some highly original pieces of sensible modern design. Walter Gropius' Harkness Commons (1950) is regarded as one of his best works. In it his design gained a more fluid appearance than ever before and it became a great influence on the building of its decade. The new Geology Laboratory, designed by Gropius' firm, the Architects Collaborative, is another splendid, original building and Hugh Stubbins' Loeb Drama Center is a third.

The Visual Arts Center, a good work by a great artist, brings to Harvard and to the United States the results of some of the best experimentation in the history of architecture. A living dramatization of the creative arts, for all its functional flaws, it is a good and suitable home for the study of vision and creation. There are quirks of design which are nervous and unappealing, of course, and there are people who don't like it -- for example, the classics professor who compared it to two grand pianos copulating. But there is no bolder building at Harvard; no other can grab a man's attention and hold it for so long a time as the Arts Center does. It serves its special purpose as few other buildings can: it excites a new interest in the creative arts.

Sometimes the University builders have been more concerned with the accumulation of indoor space than with the creation of beauty and too often economics or tastelessness have blotched the landscape with ugly piles; but the University has been generally fortunate in its assemblage of edifices. A path extended in an easterly direction from Johnston Gate, passes Massachusetts Hall, University Hall, Sever Hall, and the Visual Arts Center, Harvard's best buildings representing the most interesting periods in American architecture. Such a path wanders through the middle of a huge and amusing collection of buildings.

Besides architectural quality and diversity, those buildings have places in history and personalities of their own. The people who lived in them and the character the buildings managed to develop for themselves add a great deal to Harvard architecture. The community of buildings at Harvard have always meant more to the community of men than mere roofs and walls.