Just wondering, is it as nice as Stanford, Upenn, etc.?
@mlunghi out of Stanford, Harvard, Penn I think most would say that Stanford has the prettiest campus. Between Harvard and Penn I think it comes down to personal preference. Personally I think the Penn campus makes more sense in the way it is structured, but maybe I am just biased.
You can look at photos online. They are all lovely and unique – it would be a matter of personal preference which is your favorite.
Harvard Yard with the chairs in place is wonderful. I don’t know why other colleges don’t do that sort of thing.
@Zinhead Harvard is not unique in putting out chairs. Northeastern has done it for years.
Swarthmore has long had adirondack chairs on the main lawn. http://gardenseeds.swarthmore.edu/gardenseeds/2011/07/picnic-spots/
^^ Carleton has the adirondack chairs too - I’m sure there are many more schools who have them as well.
To answer the question - yes Harvard campus is very nice, though it is often populated with tourists, so sometimes trampled grass, muddy areas and litter can be a problem.
Take the virtual tour and judge for yourself: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/visit/virtual-tour
My son was turned off by Harvard in general, its architecture in particular. I think too many tourists on campus really didn’t help his impression. He fell in love with Stanford at first sight. I think he’s going to love Princeton even better (only from online; the actual visit is later this month).
There are different styles of campuses – there isn’t just one standard of “nice.”
Princeton and Stanford are in many ways very similar in their campus styles (though Stanford is much bigger). They are located in very affluent suburban communities and have a large, well-defined area that the university occupies as its campus. Everything is landscaped exquisitely. At Stanford, everything is color-coordinated, too – to me, it looks like a really nice suburban office park, and that’s not a compliment. At Stanford, there is only one major building that is more than 50 years old. Princeton has a number of buildings older than that, many going back 80-90 years, and a few even older, and some of the newer buildings were built to have an old look. To me, Princeton is probably the most beautiful campus I know – but I don’t care that much about campus beauty.
I love the Harvard campus. It’s all jumbled up with the city of Cambridge, with relatively few areas that are set apart from the hustle and bustle of a city. There’s a wild mixture of old and new, and contrasting architectural styles. Nothing is color-coordinated. There is almost no American Collegiate Gothic architecture – the Disneyland version of Oxbridge, found in abundance at Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Duke, and elsewhere – and there is a lot of Georgian red brick that feels appropriate to the place. I find it very energizing, although the tourists would be a huge annoyance if I weren’t one myself.
Penn is a lot like Harvard in its urban situation, but – with the exception of a couple magnificent late-19th-century Frank Furness buildings and the main Wharton building – the buildings aren’t as nice as those at Harvard, and some of the ones constructed in the 60s and 70s are just awful. And the streets running through the campus are wider and noisier.
I personally did not like the Harvard campus at all, mostly due to all the tourists. While I love the thought of being right in Cambridge, Harvard feels more like a tourist attraction than the world class university it is. There were non university run “Hahvard Tours” and it seems that students and professors re treated as zoo exhibits, not scholars.
The campus architectural theme at Harvard is Red Brick Colonial.
At Yale and Princeton it is Faux Oxford.
At Stanford it is Taco Bell Modern circa 1975.
Actually, Stanford is quite nice. It kind of reminds me of Disneyland - clean and polished, not a cigarette butt or piece of litter anywhere in sight. And one thing you will need at Stanford more than at the others is a bicycle to pedal around campus. The place is huge and very spread out. It can take a surprising long time to hike between two buildings on the opposite sides of campus.
Stanford has lots of tourists also. I think there are even weddings there
Harvard’s campus is integrated into the community in a way that I, a Cambridge resident, actually appreciate. The chairs in the Yard are for the community not just students. The new plaza in front of the Science Center has fire pits in the winter with various activities (curling for one), and now the spring ping pong tables are up. There are tables and chairs and food trucks. They are trying, anyway.
The Yard is certainly a magnet for tourists but it is also a place for community members. On a Sunday morning you will find a variety of people, couples with toddlers, older people, enjoying the space. The upperclass residential areas, the “river houses” and other houses, are not on any tourist paths and are beautiful old buildings, mostly right across Memorial Drive from the water, and they have large courtyards with flowers, and elegant dining halls where students hang out.
I hope people are not mistaking all those locals for tourists! And anyone who equates Harvard with the Yard needs to walk down to the river houses.
ps red brick with, yes, ivy!