Pusey did not choose the building, though he clearly likes its modern look: Deveraux C. Joseph, the head of New York Mutual Life and a member of the Board of Overseers, owned the building when Pusey moved to New York and secured the apartment for him.

Some years earlier Joseph had found an apartment in the same building for Pusey's Harvard predecessor, James B. Conant '14. Indeed, Pusey and Conant became great friends while living in the building from 1971 to 1977--a process facilitated, according to Pusey, by their shared fondness for bourbon.

In the Yard

When Pusey suceeded Conant as Harvard President in 1953, he did not know he would be the last President to live in Loeb House, in what is now the headquarters of the Harvard Corporation.

The move to Loeb House, a three story mansion that came complete with three maids, a cook, a housekeeper and a chauffeur, was a big one for the head of a liberal arts college in rural Wisconsin with 700 students and 53 faculty members.

As president of Lawrence College, Pusey was an unlikely candidate for the Harvard presidency. He earned three Harvard degrees--a B.A. in English in 1928, and a Masters in 1932 and a 1937 Ph.D., both in classics--but his entire career had been spent outside of Harvard.

He was the first president born west of the Mississippi and, presaging the recent trend towards increased formal requirements for the university presidency, the first who had previously served as president of another institution.

At Harvard, Pusey's heart was in the College, which he wanted to use to instill the value of scholarship in young students. Liberal education meant broad reading in all of the humanities--which, in Pusey's ideal view, included a healthy dose of religion.