Extra, Extra! John the Orangeman, Revealed!

Posted on July 8, 2011 by in Articles, FDR Suite

John the Orangeman, Harvard's Mascot, as he appeared in FDR's day. This is the picture we have in the Suite. If you look carefully in the lower left-hand corner (this image, as all the others in the piece, can be expanded by double clicking the picture) you will see another source of John's financial success: by 1900 or so, he had moved into selling copyrighted souvenir photos.

Without fail, whenever I give a tour of the FDR Suite, someone asks me who’s that bearded man with dancing eyes, merrily peering out from the frame on the mantle piece. There’s  something about the sparkle of his expression that simply captivates visitors. My inevitable reply: “That’s John the Orangeman, Harvard’s mascot. He sold fruit to the students at a time when citrus was a rarity, and become hugely popular with the undergraduates. He and his cart, pulled by a donkey named Radcliffe, were a feature of the College for over five decades.”

A thorough answer, but not a very satisfactory one. Who was this man, really, and how did he become so popular with the students? I decided to do a bit of digging in the Harvard Archives to try and find out.

Well, let me tell you: In the spirit of the soon to be demised News of the World, there seems to be more to this story than first meets the eye!

To begin with, it’s important for you to understand that John was not just popular, he was hugely popular.  The archives have more than six folders of Orangeman pictures dating back to the 1870s, many of them official photos, and a whole other file of clippings, memorabilia – even two short published biographies written by former students.  Here’s one of my favorite photos from the Archives collection, showing a parade passing through Harvard Square. (The view is looking east down Mass Ave. The low building right of middle is where Holyoke Center now stands. The tall building at center is extant and holds Leavitt and Peirce.)

This is a truly spectacular photo for many reasons. For one, the level of historical detail is amazing; notice, for example, the maze of telegraph and telephone wires almost clouding the sky. We forget that not everything in the "good old days" was quite so pretty. The picture is not captioned or dated, but judging from the bunting, the summer dress of the paraders, and the two top-hatted men marching behind the wagon each with a "9" on the front, I would guess this to be the late 1890s. (Again, click to expand; see reader's comment below for exact dating.) Courtesy, this and following photos: Harvard University Archives.

At first glance, this picture doesn’t seem to have much bearing on our story. But look again at the lower right side: just passing out of view, there are John and Radcliffe, cart and all, being hauled down the street on some sort of large wagon, the Victorian equivalent of a parade float.

So, famous indeed. Here’s the official bio:

John and his first cart, about 1881

Born John Lovett in Kenmere, County Kerry, into a farming family about 1833, John left Ireland during the famine, first for Boston, then later to Cambridge, where he took odd work. Then one day, finding himself with nothing to do, he went to “over an the Carmon to wartch the byes play barl.” (The transliteration of the brogue is from one of his student biographers.) Seeing that the players were thirsty after the game, he offered to fetch them a jug of water from his nearby flat (laced with “lemon” and “molasses”, as he put it)  for which the students were quite graceful, requesting another. He complied, and the students, wishing to thank him, passed around a hat, collecting  about two dollars, along with a suggestion that bringing fruit to their rooms later might prompt similar reward. Thus, a career was born. John began selling various small items to the students, mostly bananas and oranges. Each day he made his way into Boston to buy at the wharves. By mid-morning, basket in hand, he would be in the college yard, “depending on stray customers between the recitations and lectures; in the afternoon, if the weather was warm, he visited the ball fields; while in the evening he made his tours through the dormitories.” So grateful were the students that Class of 1881 gave him a handcart: “They warnted to give me a darnkey too but I be afraid the Farculty mek a row about havin’ ‘im in the Yard.”  At first an overzealous Yard Manager prohibited the cart from entering, but petitioned by the students, the Faculty allowed finally allow John and his cart admittance – the only person ever permitted, before or since, to sell goods in the Yard. As age advanced, so did rheumatism, and seeing John in distress, the class of 1891 bought him a donkey and cart. In winter, Radcliffe the donkey pulled a small sleigh. Soon John, with or without Radcliffe, was not only selling goods but making the round of the various football games, brought by the team to locations as far away as New York, where he cheered tirelessly for his school. (On state occasions like the Harvard-Yale game, Radcliffe was decked out with special crimson bloomers.) Fame and increasing fortune brought John a wife, plus a three-story two-family in Cambridge, which amazed student visitors with its size and comforts, given his humble occupation.  Stories about John abound, but an oft-quoted one was this:

John and Radcliffe in winter garb in front of Massachusetts Hall.

One day a visitor accosted John  in front of Hastings Hall, and wishing to draw him into conversation, pointed to the College seal on the iron gate and asked him what Veritas meant. John bowed respectfully and replied: “I’m not sure fr’ind, but I guess it means ‘to hell with Yale.’”

John Lovett died in 1906 at the ripe old age of 81.

That’s the official story… Neat, pat and tidy.

But why was he so popular? There were a host of other notable characters at FDR’s Harvard, but none quite so beloved. What was John’s secret? His biographers often cite to his jovial personality:

“You all know him, Old John, who is the first to welcome the Freshmen in the autumn, and the last to shake hands with the Seniors on Commencement and perhaps drink him God-speed from a flowing bowl of punch. He well remembers the time your father was in College; will tell you where he roomed, how he lived, who his friends were; perhaps he will even whisper in your ear of a narrow escape he had, in the early part of his Freshman years, from being asked to resign. Is there one who has not tasted and orange or banana from the little white handcart?”

John and his cart under the Washington Elm which once stood on Mass. Ave across from the Common.

Also to his integrity: “For those who know him well he is rather an interesting study, though his brogue is a trifle hard to comprehend at times. One of the best traits of his character is that he can never be induced to speak ill of anyone. Mingling as he does with the men of various sets and cliques, he necessarily hears more or less slander, but if asked his opinion about a man, his only comment is ‘Aw, he’s a good fellah, frind.'”

And on and on…

But then I came across one very curious sentence: “Who has not been comforted, when sorely pressed by creditors, by John’s ready willingness to trust him for any amount?”

Ah ha… The plot thickens. Perhaps it was more than just a juicy orange that gave John his appeal. Still, a bit of money-lending on the side couldn’t account for such lasting hail-and-well-met. I was about to give up, thwarted by the silence of the past, when just before the closing hour,  I came across this picture stuck to the back of one of the folders. Unlike other pictures of John, many of which were “official” shots reproduced again and again, this was distinctly different, and one I had never seen before:

Again, there is no caption, other than to note that the photo came as part of the estate of a member of the class of ’01. The scene’s obviously been professionally staged in some photographer’s studio, for reasons now forgotten – perhaps as a private memento (or perhaps, even more rare, as a publicity photo for Brown of Harvard, which premiered in Boston in 1906, and in which John played a bit roll as himself, just a few months before his death.)  But however clouded the origins of the picture, its subject is certainly straight-forward enough, and meant to evoke a familiar scene – at least for those in the know: a grinning student, having polished off the bottle on the table, holding a cigar large enough to choke a horse, looks gratefully at a still imbibing John the Orangeman, empty liquor bottles littering the floor and more poking from of his basket – the very one supposedly full of fruit!

Hail and well met, indeed!

So if I remind you, dear reader, that Cambridge was dry in those years, and that the only alcohol to be had was by going to Boston, does not the reason for John’s immense and continued popularity across five decades of thirsty students suddenly become crystal clear?

I’m thinking John bought more than oranges on those daily trips to the wharves, and sold more than fruit on his nightly rounds.

20-years gone but not the least forgotten: the Class of 1881 chose to feature John on its 20th Reunion Medal. Acquired just last week, the medal will hang on John's picture in the Suite.

And remember that admiring bit about John never betraying a confidence? Neither it seems, did his “byes.” In fact, the whole thing is one long inside-joke, known by all, and advertised by none, across 50 classes of Harvard men – the don’t-ask-don’t-tell of its age. If it hadn’t been for this one surviving photo, John’s open secret might be a secret still.

Of course, I can’t prove any of this.

But it fits, doesn’t it?

Can’t you just feel it?

It’s important to note that this potential revelation doesn’t at all reflect badly on John. (He wasn’t selling booze to minors. There was no drinking age in those days, and the only law he was skirting was the selling of liquor in the town of Cambridge.) Nor does this diminish in any way the genuine regard generations for Harvard men had for this beloved character. On the contrary.  In the end what we get is the image of a cunning Irish Robin Hood fighting to outwit the dastardly Sherwellian forces of the Cambridge establishment for the benefit of the (not so) poor inhabitants, and I’ll admit, if true, this vision brings me a quiet satisfaction. Often the view of our Harvard past becomes too perfect, too polished, too mannered. The memories are all noble, the deeds all gallant, the people, upright & upstanding. This little bit of Irish roguery, abetted and encouraged by grateful generations of scheming undergraduates, is just the kind of thing to add a welcome bit of humanity to the tale.

So, here’s raising a glass to you, John.

Some People Read History. Others Make It.
Come make a little history: support the FDR Suite Foundation!


Opulence

Posted on May 7, 2011 by in Articles, FDR Suite

For those of you who enjoy time travel stories, one of the very best is Time and Again (1970) by Jack Finney. I won’t bore you with a detailed synopsis; suffice it to say that the Federal Government discovers it’s possible to travel in time by simply willing yourself back through history. The trick is that to achieve this temporal separation, you truly have to believe yourself back in time – no mechanics are involved, simply a type of self-hypnosis. So the Government sets up several experiments in places that haven’t changed much through history – one in Paris right around Notre Dame for the Middle Ages; one in a now deserted Vermont farming village returned to its 1920s bustle; and one in the Dakota, the famous apartment building in New York City for the 1890s – all in an attempt to steep the participants in the past. The various would-be time travelers experience the life and language of the age; dress the part, eat the food – in essence they do everything in their power to make themselves believe they are inhabitants of another time. I remember reading this book when I was a child, utterly fascinated.  (It’s also an illustrated novel, which helps when a kid.) One of the passages I remember most vividly is when the main character, Simon Morley, visits the Smithsonian to view the costumes of the 1880s. The curators remove one of the ladies’ dresses from the collection, and show it to him. The material is dark brown, slightly frayed, smelling of age; he touches it, the fabric crumbles. Then suddenly, he is presented with a new version of the same dress on a mannikin:   “Martin snapped the covering from the next figure, and there stood – I won’t call it a dress but a gown of bright wine-red velvet, the nap fresh and unworn, the material magnificently draped in thick multiple folds front and back. The bead trim caught the light, glittering a clear deep red, shimmering as though the garment were moving… It was spectacular…

“Can you see an actual breathing woman Si, a girl, wearing this and looking absolutely great?” And I said: “Hell, yes: I can see her dancing!”

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re almost ready to dance ourselves, in the Suite. The last of the draperies arrived today: (You can click any of these photos for a larger, clearer view.)

It’s amazing the impact the fabric has had on the space: where there were formally white walls and bare doors, now riots of color compete and play – surprisingly successfully –  providing a first real sense of the opulence these rooms once possessed. The portieres (the fabric in the door frames) add a lot of character; originally used to close off the rooms for additional warmth, by FDR’s time they were entirely Victorian vestigal bits of decoration. Sara had insisted… and FDR acquiesced, though he often wished they’d been set just a bit taller for his tall frame… Just behind can be glimpsed the new drapes in FDR’s bedroom; a future president can now sleep soundly in richly muffled darkness.

Lathrop’s desk too has come alive, gleaming with brass. Can’t you just see young Lapes, his handsome brow bent over a sheet of heavy cream writing paper, answering one of his many house party invitations, as a dance card on the wall, souvenir of some now forgotten ball at the Somerset, pirouettes slowly at his elbow? The lamp on the table, by the way, originally oil, is one of the famous “Harvard Lamps,” providing “superlative light for scholars” according to an ad from a local newspaper. Lapes never cared much about that, but he has to admit it has come in quite handy for all his social correspondence.

And just behind, FDR’s desk, piled high with the loves of his life: Eleanor at left, as she looks this warm May of 1904. Less pleasant memories are next: dear, dear Alice Sohier, who’d unexspectedly spurned him. (He’d better put that picture away now…) The Half Moon II at full sail, at Campobello,with FDR at the helm, and on the wall, his father, James, shortly before his death, mounted on one of his favorite trotters. And Sara too, as always, is present; the butterfly collection she sent him smiles from the wall; plus,  an unanswered letter awaiting his reply sits tucked in one of the roll-top cubbyholes.

For a moment, here, now, you can almost feel 1904.

Do you think, perhaps, if I just concentrated hard enough…

Some people just read history. Others help make it.
Come make a little history. Support the FDR Suite Foundation!





The Widow

Posted on March 11, 2011 by in Articles, FDR Suite

“Having a good time was of major importance in those days at Harvard. Customary procedure was to study for ten days with a tutor before an examination and never open a book for the rest of the time.”          Lathrop Brown to Pare Lorentz, 1949

Over the last few weeks, as time and funds permit, I’ve been slowly framing a series of 16 prints we acquired last year, from a charming but extremely tattered 1903 volume entitled Harvard Celebrities. Written and illustrated by a classmate of FDR’s, this 30 page book parodies in picture and verse Harvard characters of the day. While some are still easily recognizable – Nathaniel Shaler, the famous naturalist, for example – others are far less so. Here’s one that I found intriguing:

Now from the text, and from Lathrop’s chance comment above, I had a general idea of who this might be, but imagine my delight when I discovered the following article from the October 1917 Independent, telling me not only who this was, but revealing a portrait of a Harvard long gone:

An Unofficial University Just Outside Harvard’s Gates

THEY call him “The Widow,” no one knows why. Whatever he is called he is, in his own single person, Harvard’s chief competitor. In moments of indiscreet candor members of the Harvard Faculty have confest that the college has tried, and tried in vain, every possible means of dislodging him—even to flattering him out of the way with the offer of a chair in the college. But he never could afford the honor. The highest paid professors in Harvard get a meagre $5000 a year. “The Widow” is reputed to enjoy an income of $20,000 a year—perhaps more. Nobody knows. [Editor’s Note: For comparison, Harvard Tuition in 1903 was $150 per year.]

So he remains what he is—president of himself. For he is in his own university, with his own staff of fifteen professors, and his own dormitories, conveniently stationed just outside the famous Harvard “Yard.” The one concession he makes to Harvard is to permit his students the use of all of Harvard’s facilities—the Bursar, the Yard, the Gym, Soldiers Field, even the classrooms if they please. Even Harvard’s degrees. All “The Widow” pretends to supply is the best known substitute for a Harvard education.

If you find that it would be pleasant to be a Bachelor of Arts but for certain annoying obstacles in the way; if you find your studies interfering with the pleasures of the theater or the athletic field; if the exams are approaching and certain to find you embarrassed how to meet them; if you are the son of a rich man, a little spoiled and unaccustomed to work—what do you do?

You visit the Widow Nolen.

AND straightway you come under the eye of a remarkable man. Two generations of Harvard men know him, by reputation if not by personal experience of his bewildering fund of knowledge and his even more bewildering gift of handing it out to you in one exquisite, highly concentrated pill of information. In the Harvard records he is William Whiting Nolen, A.B. ’84. During five more years in the Graduate School he drew down an A.M. in ’86. Then to make a thoro job of it, he put himself thru the Law School besides. No one has discovered why he slighted the Medical School, the Dental School, the Veterinary School, and the Bussey Institute of Agriculture. Except for these trifling omissions, his education is fairly complete.

But in Harvard he learned much more than Harvard teaches deliberately. He learned, besides, the peculiar psychology of the Harvard professor. He learned how the Harvard professor teaches. Most important of all, to himself at least, he learned to gage, and with an accuracy that is uncanny, precisely what questions any given Harvard professor is most apt to ask.

Suppose an exam catches you a trifle innocent of history or literature. Suppose you have never dipped into some obscure book like “Vanity Fair.” To repair this natural oversight you join one of the Widow’s famous “seminars.” It is chiefly by these seminars that the Widow’s fame and fortune live.

These meetings are organized with wonderful psychological cleverness. Fifty students will be admitted to a room in the Widow’s establishment. The room is stark naked. Not a picture is on the walls to distract your eye. Not a sound is heard, except the Widow’s voice, to break your attention. You sit in silence with a pad of paper on your knee. Naturally every man jack in the room is frightened to death for fear of flunking, and the Widow begins with that advantage to himself.

HE needs no other advantage. No one sleeps when the Widow is speaking. One reason why his patients nearly always pass the desired exam is because the Widow has a marvelous faculty for making his talks interesting. Any professor might learn from him there. In an hour he will range over an entire history course. All he pretends to do is spot in the high lights, the main events, the leading figures. But it is all a wonderfully clear and compact digest of the course to be covered. Easy as this may be to remember, and remember even beyond the day of the examination, the Widow will finish by retracing his talk in a still more wonderfully clear and condensed conclusion.

In a literature course he will outline the periods and give the substance of every book required in the course. He will give you the message, the philosophy, the teachings of every author. And all this in the space of one hour! “Around the World in Eighty Days” reduced to sixty minutes! And yet the Widow has been known to lecture for five hours on end without a break.

In a complicated course he may supply a few “keys” for the memory, for he has invented a complete system of mnemonics. With almost hypnotic effect he will hang up a chart laying bare, say, the whole secret of a course in trigonometry. Or he may make the Word “Nawb” serve as a symbol for a whole period in history. A fool word in itself, it sticks in the memory by reason of that very fact, and faithfully bobs up in the mind during the exam, to stand for the names of Napoleon, Wellington and Bluecher, and their influence on the nineteenth century.

Or suppose a student on the eve of a German exam finds that he has opened nary a one of the books required for outside reading in the course. The Widow will welcome him to a cubicle in his establishment where he will be made comfortable with cigars or cigarets. The chair is restful. Everything is provided to leave the student’s mind open to treatment. Then in comes one of the Widow’s faculty of assistants. In the course of a single evening, while the student has nothing to do but sit back and drink it in and try to remember it all, this assistant will go thru that list of books and give a nutshell account of the contents of each one.

It is a college education in capsule form.

The one fault to be laid against a Nolen degree is that this mass of information is not guaranteed to stick in the mind for longer than the three hours of the examination. It is apt to be written on the mind in vanishing ink. Still, there is nothing to prevent a student from remembering it all if he can. The Widow charges his price and offers his commodity, to be taken how you please.

His income is his own business, but he certainly drives a thriving trade. If you want a whole evening with one of his assistants he will charge you $5 for the-services rendered. To join one of his hour-long seminars costs each man of the fifty present $2.50. And during the exam period the Widow and his faculty are busy day and night. Another of his rush seasons opens when the boys from the prep schools begin to congregate for the entrance exams. For these the Widow even maintains a dormitory, a nursery, for the fatherly care of the backward. It is a prep school in itself, with a course reduced to three or four weeks. For such services the Widow charges accordingly, with his prices based on the backwardness of the case. Since his patrons come mostly from the rich, his charges are probably in proportion.

Toward his assistants, however, he is reputed to be generous enough. He picks the brightest men he can get, and pays them well. You are taxed $2.50 for an hour with one of them, and of that $2.50 the Widow collects fifty cents. The $2 goes to the assistants.

OUTSIDE his crowded hours of tutoring Mr. Nolen finds time to indulge a nice taste in old furniture and objects of art—and his rooms are thickly strewn with superb specimens. And often, out of an income ample beyond his own simple needs, he exerts himself in behalf of the poor student. More than one man has had from Mr. Nolen other aids to a Harvard degree than great gobs of information only.

Such is the familiar figure of many jibes and of more caricatures than have been aimed at any other college celebrity

“Dead or dying, drunk or sleeping,

Nolen puts you thru; But gratitude takes early wings when Nolen’s bill is due.”

So runs a famous lyric lampooning the high tax that Nolen levies on laziness. And so he daily and serenely takes his stroll along the Charles, comfortable and corpulent, carelessly drest, with the never-absent Boston terrier that is almost as familiar a figure as he.

As a final aside,  perhaps the aspect of all this I find most remarkable is that such levels of discovery are even possible. Ten years ago, before the age of the Internet search, only extreme good luck would have directed me to an Independent article a decade and a half after the fact, one citing the very book I held in my hands. But now, if you know how to frame the right question, a few staccato taps and clicks often yield the most astounding answers, from half a continent or more away.

Suddenly, the term “world-wide web” has true meaning.

I wonder what the old Widow would have thought about that…

A Missing Place…Revisited

Posted on February 27, 2011 by in Articles, FDR Suite

Wow! Of all the topics we’ve covered recently, my previous post certainly caught everyone’s attention, and rightly so. Thanks to so many of you who commented below or wrote me directly. It’s always wonderful to have that level of response.

So, a few updates: Several of you eagle-eyed folks tracked down two more African American faces in the crowd, and Renny Little pointed out quite a number of missing places if you look closely enough – however, only our lone black man sits by himself. At the request of several of you, I did a little poking around the Archives last week, and I believe I can now tell you who our man is. May I introduce James Graham Wolff, ’04:

Born Cambridge MA 1881; prepared Boston Latin school; AB 1904 LLB (Boston YMCA Law School 1911)

From the 25th Class report: Wolf graduated from the Boston Normal School [a teacher’s college, Ed.] in 1907, and received a certificate to teach in the Boston public schools. The following September he accepted the position of clerk in the office of District Attorney John B Moran, at the same time studying for his LLB.     He writes: “For sixteen years I was attached to the District Attorney’s office, Boston, and since resigning I have engaged in independent practice with a special attention to conveyancing. During the war I was recommend for the Training School for Infantry at Camp Pike, Arkansas, but the Armistice was declared before I was called. Meanwhile, I served on the Boston Committee for Public Safety, including the subcommittee on recruiting. I have always been interested in public affairs, and have been active in many political campaigns  sometimes openly, sometime behind the scenes. Otherwise I have lived very conservatively all my life within five miles of the University, and for many years but one mile from Harvard Square.”

From 50th Class Report: “Last January I retired after four years as Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on retirement was one of the five assistants who were presented with gold cuff links for outstanding service to the District Attorney’s office. My father, who came down from Dartmouth to the Harvard Law School and was a practicing attorney at Boston for many years, was an outstanding officer of the Grand Army of the Republic, rising to be Department Commander of Massachusetts and Judge Advocate General of the national body. My library, which has accumulated for three generations, has now been greatly depleted by the donation of a large number of volumes to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.”

Wolff married twice, once in 1915 (widowed) and again in 1948. No children are recorded.

All in all, quite a testament to courage in that day and age.

And on one final note, while I was poking around, I found Lathrop Brown!

FDR, however, is still at large!

A Missing Place

Posted on February 19, 2011 by in Articles, FDR Suite

One of the most delightful aspects of my “job” with the FDR Suite Foundation has been the interaction I’ve had with our students over the last four years. They are an incredible group of young adults at that wonderful point in life where nothing seems impossible and all roads remain open – their energy and enthusiasm are palpable, and provide a tonic for older, wearier bones. Our students are also incredibly, incredibly diverse, in a way that many of you who still remember the tie-and-jacket-clad all male Harvard of old might find almost unfathomable. Even I, who lived in Adams during the fast and free – and now almost legendary – 1980s am impressed. Looking out over the dining hall, the sea of faces is almost kaleidoscopic: Asian, African, Caucasian, Indo-European, European, Native American, of every kind and creed imaginable. There is no one of anything. And the interesting point is, our students take this state of affairs entirely for granted, as if Harvard had always been that way. Of course, if asked, they’ll certainly acknowledge that history must have been far different. But I don’t think they comprehend how different, and sometimes that bothers me; for to measure the worth of such intangibles, don’t you need some personal understanding of the opposite? Can you truly appreciate heat without knowing cold? Sweet without sour? Light without dark? Life without death?

No, I don’t believe so. Not fully. Nor do I think you are fully able to appreciate the expansive man Franklin Delano Roosevelt became as President unless you understand the much more narrow ‘Frank’ Roosevelt at Harvard, along with his highly restricted and closed off college world.

So… long story short, when I give tours of the Suite, I’m always looking for poignant illustrations of how rarefied life in Westmorly Court was, and how different the Harvard College of 1904 is from today’s Harvard University – The Gold Coast with its maid service, private clubs, breakfast in bed, bootblacks and doormen;  the $50 Harvard tuition; the $500 Westmorly rent (the equivalent of some 35K); the gaslit rooms with flickering hearths; the neighing four-in-hand at each street corner; the 10 days it took to reach Europe by steamer,  or the 6 days to the West Coast by steam engine (if you were lucky)….  Remarkable changes all, but still only charming facts and figures to the young.

And then one day a few weeks back, I came across this, or more precisely, I came across this once again, for I personally hung the full size version of this picture in the Suite last fall. (Click on the image to expand the photo.)

Now, I’ve looked at this picture a hundred times at least, in a fruitless search to find FDR and Lathrop in the sea of faces. (FDR, almost assuredly, is there somewhere. The man never missed a photo-op in his life.) But what struck me as I passed the other day was how uniform those faces were. Surely, there must be someone of color somewhere? Seemingly not… But then, wait, up there on the very last row, far to the left…


Sure enough. One proud black face, and next to him… a missing place. And then I noticed something else I had never seen before. A man standing – the only man standing – in the top row, behind the seated figures.

While we can’t be sure, does this seem a likely coincidence to you, that the only face of color in a sea of white is the only one with no one sitting next to him, and that the sole standing man has somehow missed the one remaining seat a few spots down to his right?

Hmmm…

I must admit that this discovery – perceived though it may be – has removed some of the pleasure this picture once held for me. Rather than playfully searching for Frank and Lapes as before, my gaze now inevitably wanders to that sole black face, sitting all alone, and I think to myself: what a courageous and remarkable person you must have been to attend a College where people chose not to sit next to you merely because of the color of your skin!

Still, as with most things, there’s a silver lining, I suppose. That perfect example I sought of how much life at Harvard has changed? It’s now just a mouse click away.

Restoring FDR’s Harvard, One Pixel at a Time

Posted on December 18, 2010 by in Articles, FDR Suite

A number of our readers have been curious as to how we’ve found all the framed art that hangs on our walls. Well, let me tell you –  it’s been quite a process. First of all, we’ve been extremely lucky: discovering Lathrop’s descendants and their generous sharing of the Brown family archives; acquiring rare finds from the internet such as the Hertzog scrapbook I wrote about last week; benefiting from wonderful scholarship and support from the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park. But even with all this, sometimes it’s not enough to fulfill our mission. You see, unlike a house museum where the present is held in stasis, our goal is to create a living environment that actually transports you to 1904. If all the materials look old and faded, the illusion is compromised. Think about it: In 1904, everything would be new, or newish; colors bright, fabrics fresh, pages crisp. Which is why, for instance, we had craftsman Lary Shaffer create two “new-old” Morris chairs, and why we’ve sent “FDR’s desk” out for a complete renovation. Unlike the folks on the Antiques Roadshow, we don’t want too much patina of age.

This is especially true of paper goods. Take for instance this fascinating piece which came as part of the EBay find last week:

Now while it doesn’t look like much in its current state, this is really something special. It’s a 13″ x 19″ map of Harvard, drawn by the Harvard School of Engineering, centered on University Hall, and showing the extent of the College in 1901-1902, FDR’s sophomore year. Not only does the key list principle buildings of the University along with dates of construction, but it also shows the addresses of most of the principal professors at the College. (Can you imagine that in this day and age!) Unfortunately for us, the condition is pretty bleak: besides having a huge bite out of the right hand margin, the map had been folded and left in a very acidic scrapbook for almost a century – you can see the acid marks clearly. Now as an antique, this piece could conceivably be mounted and hung in the Suite, and we could call it a day. But its very condition reminds us all too readily that 110 years have passed. It’s 2010, not 1904, looking at this map. How much better would be a fresh copy, say, like this…

And in fact, we now have just that, ready for framing. This minor miracle is achieved using a program called Photoshop, which allows an operator to manipulate digital images. The process goes like this: the original document is first scanned into the computer, and then, in a series of steps, the effects of aging are removed one by one. This is possible because the computer sees the image not as a picture, but as millions of tiny dots called pixels, each with an assigned range of characteristics. I can ask the computer to group and isolate these pixels in a variety of ways – taking say, all the pixels of a certain color tone (such as faded tan) and changing them to white. I can have the computer sharpen lines by telling it to group all pixels within a certain color range more tightly and eliminate outliers. I can also remove or reinforce any element, eliminating a tear here, or darkening a capital there. (In actual period photographs, the process is much more dynamic and difficult, but the result is the same. We can often return a damaged century-old photo to brand-new condition.) The correction process is very much trial and error, and relies entirely on the skill level of the operator. Fortunately, after ten years in the media biz, I’ve gotten to be an old hand at such digital manipulation. (Need to lose 10 pounds and those wrinkles on your published photo, give me a buzz! lol) Still, it takes a tremendous amount of time. The map above required a good three hours to fix, but I think you’ll agree the result is fairly spectacular. Below’s a larger version. Just click on it to maximize your view. (It’s a very large file, so depending on your download speed, it may take a bit of time. Then, once you see the map appear, you may enlarge the image further through your browser and poke around the Cambridge of 1901.)

Just for fun, I’ve added three red numerals to this version of map, to point out to you how valuable pieces like this are to understanding FDR’s Harvard. At 1, you’ll see Soldiers’ Field as FDR first knew it, with wooden football bleachers and no Harvard Stadium. No Biz school either; that’s another 25 years off.

In FDR’s time, athletics were still grouped north of the yard, near numeral 2, which explains the odd location of the College’s Hemenway Gymnasium. (It’s also where the first football game was played, from my previous post.) This area was rapidly becoming built up though, and soon (1903) the Stadium would rise and athletics would move permanently across the River.

And finally, take a look at 3, the area south of Mt. Auburn:

Notice how the Charles still has watery fingers pushing towards the Square (remnants of now long-contained streams running from the north) and how the area along the still-tidal banks is almost industrial. (You can clearly see the College coal wharf.) No Memorial Drive for another few years, and no Harvard Houses either. Where Eliot sits there is a coal-tar plant, Leverett and Winthrop are swamps, and Mather’s site is occupied by a long-vanished boat house. And see the grouping of buildings along Mt. Auburn, including  our beloved Westmorly (or half of it, with A-Entry yet to be built), and how there’s almost nothing to the south worth mentioning? At last, the term “Gold Coast” begins to have some meaning… Oh, and how about that! Something I never noticed before: a Catholic church on Mt. Auburn, too, just west of Claverly where Holyoke Center now stands. Perhaps the predecessor to the later St. Paul’s we now know so well?

All in all a very different Harvard, this, and one we’re able to restore – one pixel at a time – thanks to support from people like you.

The FDR Suite Restoration Project at Adams House, Harvard College is funded entirely through your contributions to the FDR Suite Foundation Inc, a public 501(c)3 charity set up to create a  living memorial to FDR at Harvard, as well as a museum of 19th century Harvard student life. We do not receive funds from the University to support this endeavor, and rely on your help to continue our efforts!