Kirkland House

Kirkland House boasts one of the most distinguished histories amongst the Houses of Harvard College, for the Main Courtyard of Kirkland – with its procession of Edwardian formal rooms and Oxbridge entry-ways – may rightly be regarded as an architectural prototype from which the later House idiom was derived. Smith Halls, which enclose the main Courtyard, were constructed in 1914 as freshman dormitories and pre-date the House system by some fifteen years. They were designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, and named for their donor, George Smith (A.B. 1853) of St. Louis, and his personal benefactors, James and Persis Smith, who raised him as a boy.