- Lowell House
's drive to provide housing for all Harvard students. Prior to his tenure, most students were housed in privately run dormitories; these became so competitively lavish that the area between Mt. Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue, just south of Harvard Yard, was once known as the Gold Coast.
Lowell House is home to a number of curious and longstanding traditions, including Thursday Teas at the Masters' Residence, a
May Day Waltz at dawn onWeeks Footbridge , the yearly [http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/lho Lowell House Opera] held in the dining hall, and the annual playing of the1812 Overture in the House courtyard duringArts First weekend. During the latter, students who do not play orchestral instruments are encouraged to contribute onkazoo s, and in lieu ofcannons ,hydrogen gas-filled balloons are exploded. Each spring, Lowell House also holds the Bacchanalia Formal that typically features a live swing band in the courtyard, a beautiful reception in the JCR, a DJ in the dining hall, and a promotional website riddled with typographical errors. Many of the house events are planned by the Lowell House Committee, currently chaired by Charles Redlick and Amanda Fields.Lowell House's Sister College at Yale is
Pierson College .The current Masters of Lowell House are
Diana L. Eck andDorothy Austin . TheAllston Burr Resident Dean is Ryan Spoering.Notable Lowell alumni include
John Berendt ,Harry Blackmun ,Michael Crichton ,Christopher Damm ,Matt Damon ,Walter Isaacson ,Vanessa Lann ,Tom Lehrer ,Alan Jay Lerner ,Robert Lowell ,Nicholas Kristof ,Anthony Lewis ,Crown Princess Masako ,Natalie Portman ,Frank Rich ,David Souter ,John Updike ,David Vitter ,Chris Wallace ,Andrew Weil , andNed Lamont .The bells
One of the more distinctive features of Lowell House is the presence of a set of Russian bells in a tower above the House, one of only a handful of complete sets of pre-revolutionary Russian bells left in the world. The set was bought around 1930 by Chicago industrialist
Charles R. Crane in order to save the bells from being melted down by Soviet authorities. Crane is reputed to have bought the bells for the price of their bronze content. When Lowell House was built, Crane donated the set of 18 bells to Harvard (only 17 are in the House today; the 18th was thought to be too close in tone to one of the others, and it now hangs in the tower ofHarvard Business School 's Baker Library).The bells originally came from the
Danilov Monastery inMoscow , now the seat of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. They range in weight from 22 pounds (10 kg) to 26,700 pounds (12,100 kg) (the largest bell is known as "Mother Earth"). The bells are consecrated, and are of great significance to the Russian Orthodox Church, where bells are regularly rung as part of the liturgy. At Harvard, the bells are rung every Sunday from 1:00 to 1:15 pm, and on certain special occasions, by an interested group of Lowell residents known as the "Klappermeisters". The Bells had been rung for generations of students, for instance, following the Harvard-Yale football game, with Harvard's score rung on the "Mother Earth Bell" and Yale's rung on the "Bell of Pestilence, Famine, and Despair." Visitors are welcome. They can also be heard on [http://lowell.harvard.edu/Bells/Bells.html the Lowell House Virtual Bell Tower] .With the revival of Christianity in Russia and the reopening of the Danilov Monastery, a request had been made for the return of the bells to
Moscow . Although the bells' legal ownership is not in dispute, Lowell House and the Danilov Monastery have been involved in negotiations over the past few years about a possible repatriation, and a deal was finalized whereby Harvard would receive newly cast Russian bells that arrived in fall 2007, and will be hung in spring 2008 at which point the historic bells will return to Russia (bell-making is an expanding industry in Russia). The bell at theHarvard Business School was replaced in August 2007 with a newly cast bell, and is now on its way to Moscow. A symposium on the art, culture, and history of the bells and of Russian bellringing will be held at that time. [ [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/08.23/99-bells.html Harvard News Service] "Danilov Monastery bells to ring in Russia once more; Replicas come to Cambridge" by Ken Gewertz; 08-23-2007]This exchange is made possible by the financial and administrative support of the Link of Times Foundation, founded by the Russian industrialist
Victor Vekselberg , and directed by Vladimir Voronchenko.External links
* [http://lowell.harvard.edu/ Lowell House]
* [http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~loho/ Lowell House Committee]Notes
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