Advertisement

'Herald' Attacks Harvard 'Blotch'

William James Hall is "a white blotch on the skyline" and Larsen Hall a "fortress turned away from the world." according to an article in the Boston Sunday Herald Magazine.

Fran P. Hosken, an "architectural writer," observed that neither building expresses the spirit of the subject studied there. She complained that Larsen Hall "lacks all reference to people in its blank walls -- such references as windows, floor divisions, or some means for the eye to orient itself to 'read' the building." "Why should a building concerned with . . . teaching shut out the world and turn inside itself?" Miss Hosken asked.

She also described the buildings as too large for their surroundings, a "visual blunder" that she predicted Harvard would regret.

Advertisement
Advertisement