popular with the collegians that it was expressly stipulated that he should still deliver an annual course in anatomy and chemistry at Cambridge. Four years later, the building of University Hall (containing another intramural chapel) again relieved the pressure on Holden, the undergraduate recitations were removed to the new hall, and a fresh set of alterations was made in the old edifice. The anatomical amphitheatre, now taken over for a “Philosophy Room,” was shifted to the western end of the second floor, and enlarged by pushing the partition toward the east.[1] A curious circular sky-light or cupola, resembling the conning-tower of a submarine, was opened in the roof above it, greatly improving its illumination.[2] The lower floor was thrown into two rooms, as the former four had proved little better than dungeons—small, low, dark, damp, and melancholy in the extreme. To amend their light and ventilation, the side windows were cut down about two feet (where they still remain), and a narrow slit was pierced on each side of the staircase well at the eastern end. These changes had very little effect; the lower rooms, with their floors on mother earth—as innocent of a cellar as the pyra-
- ↑ Corporation vote of August 27, 1814. Chapel to be “fixed up for a Philosophy Room,” at request of the President, by Mr. Farrar (Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy).
- ↑ Dr. Peabody speaks of it as “a lecture-room lighted from above, cheerful, airy, and by far the most beautiful apartment then appertaining to the college.” Harvard Reminiscences, 208.
