Gates of Harvard Yard

Harvard Yard – the oldest part of the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts – is bounded by a perimeter fence punctuated by a series of gates, all built since 1880.^[1]

Northwest

Johnston Gate

Johnston Gate. The tablet at left reads (in Latin): "Samuel Johnston of Chicago  · Graduate in the year 1855  · Who was born in Cincinnati in the year 1833  · Lived 53 years  · By his will he ordered this."

The Johnston Gate was completed in 1889 after a Georgian Revival design by McKim, Mead, and White, it opens onto Peabody Street (often mistaken for Massachusetts Avenue, from which Peabody Street diverges nearby) just north of Harvard Square. Costing some $10,000, it was the gift of Samuel Johnston (Harvard College class of 1855). Each Harvard Commencement Day for several hundred years, the sheriffs of Middlesex and Suffolk Counties have arrived at Harvard Yard on horseback, preparatory to the Middlesex Sheriff's ritual calling of the celebrants to order. It has become traditional for them to enter via the Johnston Gate.^[2][3]

Tablets flanking the gate's exterior

Class of 1874 Gate

Class of 1870 Gate

The 1870 Gate (2010)

Class of 1886 Gate

North

Class of 1881 Gate

1881 gate

The inscription on the Class of 1881 Gate invites the reader to "come within its gates, in order that in whole-hearted service to the truth, they may enter into life and so be free".^[4] It has been locked for many years.^[5][6]

Class of 1876 (Holworthy) Gate

The Class of 1876 Gate is also known as Holworthy Gate; Holworthy Hall, a freshman dormitory, is immediately inside it. A plaque at its apex reads, "In Memory of Dear Old Times."^[7][8]

• 
  The Holworthy Gate (2019)
• 
  Holworthy gate
• 
  Detail, 2010

Class of 1879 (Meyer) Gate

Meyer gate

The Ralph Waldo Emerson plaque on the West side of the Meyer gate

Meyer Gate was given by George von Lengerke Meyer^[9] in 1901.^[10][11] Like the Holworthy Gate, it connects the Yard to the Science Center Plaza.^[12] The words on a plaque set in the gate's brickwork are from Ralph Waldo Emerson's journal for 1836:^[13]

I went to the College Jubillee on the 8th instant. A noble & well thought of anniversary. The pathos of the occasion was extreme & not much noted by the speakers. Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts; but on that day the anointed eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded; and then the far longer train of ghosts that followed the Company, of the men that wore before us the college honors & the laurels of the state – the long winding train reaching back into eternity.

Bradstreet Gate

The Bradstreet Gate (2010)

Bradstreet Gate is a wrought-iron gate across Quicny Stree and Cambridge Street from Memorial Hall.^[14] In 1997 it was dedicated to Anne Bradstreet on the 25th anniversary of female students living in Harvard's freshman dormitories.^[15][16][17] A plaque with a quote from one of Bradstreet's poems was added in 2003.^[18]

Classes of 1887 and 1888 Gate

1887 and 1888 Gates (2010)

Fire Station Gate

East

Robinson Gate

Class of 1885 Gate

Emerson Gate

Class of 1908 (Eliot) Gate

Loeb House Gate

17 Quincy Drive Gate

Dudley Memorial Gate

South and southwest

Class of 1880 (Bacon) Gate

Class of 1890 (Dexter) Gate

Class of 1877 (Morgan) Gate

The 1877 Gate, at the rear of Widener Library (2018)

Class of 1889 Gate

Porcellian Club (McKean) Gate

The McKean Gate (2010)

Class of 1857 Gate

The 1857 Gate (2018)

The 1857 Gate (or Class of 1857 Gate) is a triple-arched gate which Harvard Magazine called "a very touching memorial to the unbroken bonds of friendship that this class had" despite the fact that its members had fought on both sides of the American Civil War.^[19] Students on both sides helped fund the gate.^[20] It has a Latin inscription from Horace's Odes.^{[further explanation needed][21][22]}

The gate was relocated 40 feet^{[clarification needed]} in 1924,^[23] and is now on axis^{[further explanation needed]} with the 1876 Gate.^[24]

Class of 1875 Gate