Did Lowell really steal Eliot’s chandeliers?
Harvard folklore has it that the chandeliers Lowell House residents enjoy as they eat their daily bread were originally intended for Eliot House. The lost delivery man pulled up at Lowell House in 1930, so the story goes, and asked Lowell House Master Julian Lowell Coolidge whether he had arrived at Eliot House. Coolidge supposedly took one look at the chandeliers the man was delivering and promptly replied, “Yes, this is Eliot House.”
Like any interesting rumor bite, this account is only halfway true. Lowell House’s present dining hall design, complete with chandeliers, was indeed intended for Eliot House, while the dark-paneled wood design of Eliot dining hall was meant for Lowell. Once someone figured out that Eliot’s south-facing dining area got good natural light, the design plans were switched, and Eliot’s chandeliers went to Lowell. But was it the natural light in Eliot that made the difference, or the heavy hand of then-University President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, in deciding House construction plans? Lowell House administrator Elizabeth Terry acknowledges that President Lowell had a “tendency to hover around House constructions and make unilateral decisions” about the design schemes. Whether or not he purposely switched the chandeliers to the House with his namesake, we may never know. Says current Eliot House Master Lino Pertile, “I’m delighted, and not at all surprised, to hear that from the very beginning all Houses, even Lowell, wanted to be like Eliot.”
