"In this great collection of young men, there are lads who are used, when at home, to dine in a dresscoat, and very many others who never possessed a dresscoat and do not see the need for one...lads who are used to society and lads that are not."

The article illustrated Gold Coast living with sketches of young men lounging in their rooms, smoking cigars and generally enjoying the fruits of leisure.

Struggling with tiny grates and dusty fireplaces, the boys in the Yard lived in cold and uncomfortable conditions. Their creature comforts were not Venetian mirrors and chaise lounges, but broken-down furniture and a Harvard pennant.

"Fastidious youths who wanted plumbing had to room in private houses," writes historian Samuel Eliot Morison. There was no heat in any of the Yard buildings, and students bought their own coal and stored it in the basement of Grays Hall. An editorial in an 1895 Crimson vehemently protested the lack of bathing facilities and lamented that the only water to be found was in the basement of each building or from the pump outside of Hollis. Today, the pump rests as a bizarre monument in the Yard, but to the boys banished for lack of money, the pump was their sole source of plumbing.

Morison felt that nothing could change the social strata so strongly felt at Harvard.

"Boston has been a social leech of Harvard College...when the supply of eligible young men in Boston was decreased by the westward movement, the Boston mammas suddenly became aware that Harvard contained many appetizing young gentlemen from New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere...In vain are freshmen tossed onto the same heap; freshman fellowship, brisk enough in the opening days of College and the first elections of committees, blows away in a whiff of invitations to dances and week-end house parties. The social cleaver widened the chasm that a mistaken laissez-faire created between Yard and Gold Coast; and not even the houses or the Depression have bridged that gap."

Throughout its history, Harvard College has suffered the effects of a "social cleaver." In the mid-eighteenth century the college president personally listed students, when they enrolled, in order of their social rank or, to be precise, "to the Dignity of the Familie whereto the students severally belonged." The social list was printed in the college catalogue for all to see. The creme de la creme were placed at the top, followed by the social outcasts who attended Harvard because of academic merit. The social list determined precedence in table seating and service during meals, position in academic processionals and even class recitation. Without ancestral mansions in Newport or proof of a Mayflower voyage, the boys at the end of the list really did come last.

This institutionalized method of social rank was soon terminated, not because it was deemed undemocratic, but because too many angry parents harrassed the president for not rating their sons high enough. Nevertheless, new lists emerged and even without the "official list" the Gold Coast was still shining in the distance, a glowing reminder of the best things in life.

Living in the Yard was not the only punishment for poverty and social shortcomings. Subsequent presidents maintained an unofficial roster of the elite students and lists were used in many of the University clubs--especially the exclusive final clubs: the dictators of social success at Harvard. The Institute of 1770, which joined with the Hasty Pudding Club in 1926, began the social filtering at the beginning of sophomore year. The Institute chose the college's 100 most socially promising students and then ranked them in groups of 10, from the ultraprivileged to the "barely-elite." Local newspapers would publish the precise lists so all of the city could see "everybody who was anybody." Woe to those young men in the Yard far away from Gold Coast leisure and social success.

Enrique Hank Lopez, author of The Harvard Mystique, argues that the existing dichotomy between the Yard and the Gold Coast encouraged a rank-conscious Harvard population.

"The majority who remained in the Yard, in addition to their physical discomfort, suffered the psychological stigma of being unfashionable. And when the new private dormitories [on the Gold Coast] increased the growth of elite private clubs, [President Charles] Eliot's critics accused him of erecting an aristocratic society on the ruins of the supposedly democratic community he had inherited."

But times changed. The Housing system was initiated. In theory, the Houses were a democratic advance for Harvard. President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, wanted democracy to reign and usurp the aristocracy. The Gold Coast would be a thing of the past and the socially elite would mix with the common man. In the General Information for the Class of 1935, Lowell proclaimed his philosophy of the houses on the first page of the book:

"The Houses are designed to help substitute for the schoolboy attitude of mind...Now contacts, good talk, wide range of friendships, flourish when men live in a community, and take their meals in the same dining room, not only with other undergraduates of different classes, types and early associations, but also with tutors...That is the meaning of the houses; but unfortunately some men do not appreciate these things and fail to take the full advantage of them until after the chance has gone."

By design, this change would entail some discomfort for the Gold Coasters. But this new system of democracy was not a reality. To join a House, the master would interview an undergraduate to see if his attitude was an acceptable addition to the microcosm within the Harvard community. Soon the Houses gained reputations of their own.

According to Dwight D. Miller, admissions officer and tutor in Eliot House for 30 years, "Master Finley [of Eliot House] and Master Perkins [of Lowell House] were famous for their interviews. They were the antithesis of randomization." Eliot and Lowell rapidly became the homes of the elite with a few "commoners" sprinkled in. In those days, students could pick their freshman roommates and many prep-school students and New York upper-crust chose to live together. They flocked to Eliot and Lowell in groups which were, says Miller, "pretty exclusively St. Grottlesex."