So welcome to Harvard Yard.
As you can see, all the red brick buildings
around here-- in fact all of these buildings-- are freshman year dorms.
So these are dorms that freshmen will live in for only their first year
at the college.
But it's really great to have a central nucleus of campus.
>> Now, you might know some of these freshman that
have lived here at various points in history.
For instance, over there in that dorm, we
have Grays Hall, which is where Natalie Portman took up residence
during her freshman year.
Over there, we have Holworthy Hall.
You may know of Conan O'Brien.
That's where he lived.
>> And then some esteemed historical figures we have right here in Hollis
were Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
But a really cool fun fact is right over here in Matthews.
Matthews actually was home to actor Matt Damon.
But not just Matt Damon.
In fact, Matt Damon and David Malan had the same room at different points
throughout their Harvard career, which I think is pretty cool.
>> But the real star of Harvard Yard is actually right over here,
the John Harvard statue.
So the John Harvard statue is really interesting for a couple of reasons.
Its inscription reads, John Harvard, Founder, 1638.
>> Now, they call it the Statue of Three Lies for a reason.
Those three are all wrong.
Now, the college was actually not founded by a guy named John Harvard.
It was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636.
>> Now, there was a guy John Harvard that donated a couple
books to the university.
That's why it's called Harvard today.
So what about that third lie I was talking about, John Harvard?
Well, that's actually not John Harvard.
In fact, no one really knows what John Harvard
looks like, because that building over there--
Harvard Hall-- was the old university library.
And it burned down.
And when it burned down, it burned down with it all likenesses of John Harvard.
So to this day, no one really knows who that guy is.
>> So now we're going to actually move on to our next stop on the tour.
Follow me.
So welcome to Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library.
Now, this library has a fun story, so I'm
going to monologue for a little bit.
>> Once upon a time, there was this man Harry Widener, who graduated in 1907.
Now, Widener loved books.
He absolutely loved them.
So as a graduation present, him and his mom went on a journey
to Europe to go on a rare book hunt.
And they found all sorts of first edition tomes and novels.
And they were so successful, they decided
to travel back in style in this fun little ship called the Titanic.
>> So what happened was Harry and his mom supposedly had gotten onto a lifeboat.
But when Harry realized that he had left his books on the ship,
he supposedly jumped back on and was never seen from again.
So his mother was so devastated at the loss of her son
that she decided to have a library built to commemorate his love of books.
So that's why we have Widener library today.
>> But there's a couple interesting things you may or may not
know about Widener Library.
Now this is interesting, because Harvard's gotten a lot bigger
since the Titanic sank.
So what did they do when they got lots and lots of books?
>> In fact, they dug downward.
If you look right behind me, you see all of that grass.
In fact, below that is 60 miles of shelving.
The library goes down four floors.
It's an absolutely incredible space.
>> But what's really relevant is that also located in Widener library
is the site of the Hauser Studio, recently completed this past January.
Now what is the Hauser Studio?
You may know it as actually where CS50 live is shot.