Nation, who visited Harvard in 1902, was mobbed by students in Sanders Theatre who grabbed at her bonnet and shoved cigarettes in her face after a speech in which she preached abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.

The prohibitionist crusader promptly exited the building, slapping students' faces along the way and crying that everyone at Harvard was a "hellion."

As cafeteria-style eating became popular in the 1910s and 1920s, Memorial Hall's high prices fell out of favor with most students. All first-years began taking their meals at the Harvard Union in 1925.

Neglected and Doubted

In the years since 1925, the building has often been neglected and its relevance called into question.

Since that time, the hall has been used to train United States Army chaplains, feed Navy cadets and host special University events.

Even when it was relatively new, many were repulsed by the high Victorian style. In the 1920s, President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, used to deliberately avoid taking visitors to Memorial Hall due to embarrassment over the building's poor design.

Much of the ornate ironwork that was added during the early part of the century was removed and melted in the 1940s for use in the war effort. The fire did even greater damage, though everything but the clock and tower were eventually repaired.

After the blaze, several prominent alumni launched a campaign to demolish the hall and replace it with a more usable building. President Nathan M. Pusey '28 publicly entertained the idea, but eventually decided against it.

So "Mem" has survived. The Cambridge Historical Commission succeeded in having the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. And restorations in 1976 and 1985, as well as the current construction project, have returned it to a less squalid state