John Harvard Statue, Harvard Yard

Of John Harvard's gift to the college, one book got away from the fire.

Collection: Boston: More Stories · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The seated bronze outside University Hall · Jessica Williams, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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How the story begins

The man in this chair is not John Harvard. No description of him survives, so the sculptor Daniel Chester French used the face of a student, Sherman Hoar. The body came from a poor Oxford graduate who was paid to pose. Read the base: John Harvard, Founder, 1638. The college was founded in 1636, and he did not found it. He was its first benefactor, who died of tuberculosis at thirty, about thirteen months after reaching America.

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Visiting

Harvard Yard, Cambridge, by Harvard Square station. The Yard is normally open to walkers, but its gates close to anyone without a Harvard ID during some protests and events, as on 5 June 2026 and for several hours in March 2025. No entry cost.