Mahan also lamented a lack of student consultation on Lewis’ part, mentioning a May 8 meeting of the Committee on House Life that student representatives attended.

“There certainly wasn’t any resolution at that meeting,” he said. “It was just up for discussion, we left for the summer, and then out of the blue, without any additional student input, [Lewis] decided to do it.”

Adams House Co-Master Sean Palfrey said in an e-mail that he was sorry to see the fireplaces go.

“I think it has been a special aspect of Adams House life for generations,” he said. “Recently, relatively few students availed themselves of the opportunity, but for those who did, it was a great pleasure.”

Mahan, too, cited the importance of burning fires in student life.

“There is a certain type of genuine interaction you can’t get from watching TV together, drinking or studying in your room,” he said. “I think it is a shame that the University has decided that we aren’t intelligent enough, old enough and responsible enough to use fireplaces.”

But Palfrey said he understood the decision: the need for student safety outweighed the pleasures brought by crackling fires.

“This is an issue of risks and benefits, and the Harvard administration has to balance these and make their own decisions,” he said. “I am perhaps not as risk averse as others, and believe that there may be alternative ways to minimize the chance of serious fires, but it was not for me to decide.”

Eliot House Master Lino Pertile—who student representatives said had vocally opposed the ban when it was discussed at the May meeting of the Committee on House Life—expressed a similar resigned acceptance.

“The dean took the right decision,” he said. “I’m the first to regret that it had to come to that, but we couldn’t really go on in the Houses with this kind of risk.”

—J. Hale Russell contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.