This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "List of Harvard College freshman dormitories" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This is a list of dormitories atHarvard College. Only freshmen live in these dormitories, which are located in and aroundHarvard Yard. Sophomores, juniors and seniors live in theHouse system.

South of Harvard Yard on Holyoke Street, Apley Court has the most spacious rooms among the freshman dorms; accommodations include marble bathrooms. Formerly part ofAdams House, it is the only one of the Gold Coast apartment buildings – luxurious private apartments built south of the Yard in the late 1890s – to now be a freshman dormitory. Notable residents have includedT. S. Eliot.

Completed in 1974, Canaday Hall is the newest dormitory inHarvard Yard. Seen from the air, its seven buildings resemble a question mark. It is named after Ward M. Canaday, former president and major shareholder ofWillys, manufacturer ofJeeps duringWorld War II.

Canaday's construction immediately followed the 1969 student takeover ofUniversity Hall, and certain features of its design were meant to confound student organizing.^{[citation needed]}There is a Muslim prayer space in the basement.^[1]

Residents have includedJillian Dempsey,Alexander Fällström,Charles Lane,Eduardo Saverin,Esther Lofgren,Ben Mezrich,David Sacks,Mira Sorvino, andPaul Wylie.^[2]

Opened in 1863, Grays became the college's first building with water taps in the basement. (Residents of other buildings in Harvard Yard had to haul water from pumps in the Yard.)Nicknamed "The Harvard Hilton",^[3] it is considered the most luxurious dormitory in the Yard.^[4]

Past residents includeJeff Bingaman,Rosa Brooks,Charles Joseph Bonaparte,Michael Cohrs,Jeremy Doner,Ryan Fitzpatrick,Langdon Gilkey,Charles Grier Sellers,Swinburne Hale,Julie Hilden,Marcial Lichauco,Norman Mailer,Malia Obama,Natalie Portman,Joseph Ransohoff,Frank Rich,Mo Rocca,Joshua Sharfstein,Don Sweeney,John Weidman, andMichael Weishan.

Located just outside the confines of Harvard Yard, Greenough is part of a group of dormitories outside the Yard called the "Union Dormitories".Past notable residents includeElliott Abrams,Bill Kristol,Wallace Shawn,Laurence Tribe,Kyriakos Mitsotakis, andColin Jost.

Hollis Hall in 1934

Hollis Hall in 2007

Built in 1763 byThomas Dawes and named forThomas Hollis and his family,^[5] Hollis is one of the oldest buildings at Harvard (after onlyMassachusetts Hall (1720) andHolden Chapel (1744)), and housed George Washington's troops during theAmerican Revolution. Past residents includeCharles Francis Adams Sr.,John Quincy Adams,Horatio Alger Jr.,Jim Cramer,Ralph Waldo Emerson,Edward Everett,Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.,Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.,Wendell Phillips,Henry David Thoreau,George Santayana,Charles Sumner,John Updike, andWilliam Weld.

Holworthy Hall was built in 1812 and was named after Sir Matthew Holworthy, a wealthy merchant who made what was, at the time, the largest donation to Harvard in its history.Past residents includePete Buttigieg,Al Jean,Horatio Alger Jr.,Alex Biega,David Halberstam,Christian Herter,Conan O'Brien,Sumner Redstone,Henry Hobson Richardson,Noah Welch,Cornel West, andJeff Zucker.

Another "Union" dormitory, named after Byron Hurlbut, a former Dean of Harvard College.^[6]

Past notable residents includeJames Blake,Alice Crary,Roger W. Ferguson Jr.,Brian Greene,Amory Lovins,Roger Myerson, andElizabeth Wurtzel.

Lionel (built 1925)^[7]: 77 was given by Harvard PresidentA. Lawrence Lowell as a memorial toLionel de Jersey Harvard, the first relative of John Harvard to attend Harvard, and who was killed in World War I.^[8] Past residents includePeter Benchley,Lou Dobbs,Kevin Kallaugher,Grover Norquist,Endicott Peabody, andErich Segal.

The oldest surviving building at Harvard and the country's oldest dormitory,Massachusetts Hall is located next toJohnston Gate. Designed by two Harvard Presidents,John Leverett andBenjamin Wadsworth, between 1718 and 1720 for the housing of sixty-four students, the building served various functions over the years, including a refuge for American soldiers during theSiege of Boston, and an observatory afterThomas Hollis' donation of a twenty-four-foot telescope in 1722. Today, it houses the offices of Harvard's president, with a handful of freshmen living on the uppermost floor.

Five of the United States'Founding Fathers lived here:John Adams,John Hancock,Samuel Adams,Elbridge Gerry, andJames Otis Jr. Other residents have includedZabdiel Adams,John Harbison,Alan Jay Lerner,John Redcliffe-Maud,Elliot Richardson,Jared Sparks,Jones Very, andEdward Wigglesworth.

Matthews Hall was designed byPeabody & Stearns and built from 1871 to 1872.^[9][10]

Past notable residents includePhilip Warren Anderson,Danny Biega,Matt Birk,Matt Damon,John Dos Passos,Maura Healey,Barney Frank,William Randolph Hearst,Mark Penn,Daniel Quillen,Robert Rubin,Chuck Schumer,Lloyd Shapley,Maurice Wertheim, andElizabeth Wurtzel.

Built in 1925, Mower Hall is named for Thomas Gardiner Mower of the class of 1810,^[11][12], who was also the namesake of PhiladelphiaMower General Hospital.^[8][13]

Past residents includeTimothy Crouse,Al Franken,Al Gore,Edward Gorey,Tommy Lee Jones,Arthur Kopit,Charles Murray,Thomas Oliphant,Meredith Salenger,Tanya Selvaratnam, andBob Somerby.

Part of the Union Dormitories, Pennypacker is named for Henry Pennypacker, a former president of Harvard's admissions committee.The studios of radio stationWHRB (95.3 FM) are in the basement.

Past residents includeKristin Goss,Hendrik Hertzberg,Nicholas Kristof,Bjorn Poonen,Peter Sagal,Andrew Tobias,Chris Wallace, andFernando Zobel de Ayala.

Stoughton Hall (built 1805) is Harvard's second building to be named Stoughton Hall. Designed byCharles Bulfinch, it was built byThomas Dawes. The original Stoughton Hall was built in 1700 and funded by Massachusetts Lieutenant GovernorWilliam Stoughton, who also presided over theSalem witch trials.Past residents includeFrancis Parkman,Philippe de Montebello,Trip Hawkins,Jeremy Lin,Eric Maskin,Mehmet Oz,Nathan Pusey,Sydney Schanberg, andEdmund Ware Sinnott.

Straus was built in 1926 by three brothers in memory of their parents,Isidor andIda Straus, New York department store entrepreneurs who owned bothMacy's andAbraham & Straus and died in the sinking of theRMSTitanic.

Notable residents includeDarren Aronofsky,Phil Bredesen,William S. Burroughs,Peter Chiarelli,Seth Goldman,Joseph Lelyveld,Soledad O'Brien,Tom Ridge,John Roberts,David Souter,Caspar Weinberger,Tim Wirth, andMark Zuckerberg.^[2]

Thayer was built in 1870 and originally offered housing to students who had trouble affording the ever-increasing prices of housing outside the university.Past notable residents includeJames Agee,Bill Ackman,Conrad Aiken,Steve Ballmer,Virgilio Barco Isakson,Andy Borowitz,Hamzah bin al Hussein,E. E. Cummings,Roy J. Glauber,Walter Isaacson,Ji Chaozhu,Perri Klass,Bernard Francis Law,John F. Manning,Crown Princess Masako,Jonathan Mostow,Gabe Newell,Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,Edward Seaga,Jonathan Taylor Thomas,James Tobin,Stephanie Wilson, andOwen Wister.

Built in 1870, Weld was the second of two important additions to the Harvard campus designed byWare & Van Brunt (the first beingMemorial Hall).

It was a gift ofWilliam Fletcher Weld, in memory of his brotherStephen Minot Weld, and represented a new trend toward picturesque silhouettes that became important in American domestic architecture of the later nineteenth century, as can be seen in theQueen Anne style which was popular during the same period.

Past residents includeRobert Bacon,Ben Bernanke,Michael Crichton,Christopher Durang,Daniel Ellsberg,Douglas J. Feith,Fred Grandy,Lionel de Jersey Harvard,Rashida Jones,John F. Kennedy,Douglas Kenney,Michael Kinsley,Neil H. McElroy,Neil deGrasse Tyson,Patrick Harlan andScott Weinger.

The second largest of the freshman dormitories, and actually three buildings, Wigglesworth is located along the southern edge of the Yard, betweenWidener Library and Boylston Hall to the north, and Massachusetts Avenue to the south. It was constructed in 1931 as "part of President Lowell's plan to enclose the Yard from the traffic of Harvard Square."

Past residents includeLeonard Bernstein,Melissa Block,Benjamin C. Bradlee,Mark Danner,Jared Diamond,Bill Gates,Andre Gregory,Donald P. Hodel,Michael J. Kennedy,Ted Kennedy,Aga Khan IV,John Lithgow,Robert Lowell,Christopher Nowinski,Pat Toomey,David Vitter,Naomi Yang, andRandi Zuckerberg.

To accommodate the unusually large freshman class in the 2021–22 academic year, Harvard College housed first-year students in that year in several additional university-owned buildings: apartments at 20–20A and 22–24 Prescott Street, apartments at 10 DeWolfe Street, and The Inn at 1201 Massachusetts Ave. These are collectively termed "Maple Yard", one of the several smaller "Yards" into which first-year dorms are organized.^[14][15]

• Harvard Dorm History Search for past residents

• A Guide to Freshman Dorms, Harvard Student Agencies

• Harvard University-related lists
• Harvard Freshman Dormitories
• Lists of university and college residences in the United States
• Lists of university and college buildings in the United States

• CS1: unfit URL
• CS1 errors: ISBN date
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use American English from July 2025
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
• Articles needing additional references from January 2014
• All articles needing additional references
• Use mdy dates from February 2025
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from February 2019