“I only got to work because the University police came and picked me and the dean of the Faculty up,” says then-Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. ’59.

One Harvard service continued operating even at the height of the storm—the College’s dining halls. Despite shortages of food and dining hall staff, all undergraduate dining halls remained open, with students filling in for dining hall workers who were unable to get to work. Some workers at the Freshman Union dining hall remained at Harvard overnight, after realizing Monday evening that the snow was too heavy to allow them to travel home.

The Red Cross held a special blood drive in Quincy House to help alleviate a winter blood shortage, which was worsened by the blizzard.

Winter Wonderland

“A party atmosphere reigned in Harvard Square as a multitude of students and Cambridge residents enjoyed the winter wonderland” with “a sense of anarchy” replacing the usual structure of Harvard life, The Crimson reported.

Harvard students took to the streets on skis, converting Memorial Drive and Mt. Auburn Street into thoroughfares for cross-country skiing.

An adventurous group of first-year downhill skiers built a makeshift ramp on one side of the Widener steps and impressed onlookers with their jumps. On the other side of the library, students sledded down the stairs on dining hall trays.

Members of Kirkland House frolicked in the snow in their bathing suits, pausing only briefly to pose for a Crimson photographer. Snow sculptures abounded in the Yard.

Some of these snowbound antics were “dangerous fun,” according to Lt. Francis P. Shannon of the Harvard University Police Department. One first-year seriously injured his leg after taking a 40-foot jump into Pusey Library’s sunken courtyard and hitting his leg on a snow-covered stone wall.

While many students used the snow days to relax indoors or frolic in the snow, dozens of Harvard students volunteered at Cambridge’s four Red Cross centers set up to deal with the weather emergency.

And a more dedicated bunch of some Harvard Business School students who were stranded at the school when the blizzard hit continued to meet unofficially despite the University shutdown.

Weathering the Storm

By Wednesday, the snow had reached 29 inches in Boston, the deepest snowfall since records were first kept a century earlier.

On that Ash Wednesday, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston granted a special dispensation to the many Catholics who were unable to get to a church. Despite the weather and the dispensation, about 450 people attended the noon Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Harvard Square, with some making their way to church on skis, The Crimson reported.

And after Monday’s Beanpot Hockey Tournament, nearly 200 of the 13,000 spectators were stuck in the Boston Garden overnight as major roads closed. The concession stands in the Garden stayed open all night and the stranded hockey fans slept in the stands.