Harvard Medical School, Longwood Medical Area

The construction of this imposing Classical Revival campus marked the earliest development of the Longwood Medical Area and the modernization of Harvard Medical School. Founded in Cambridge in 1782, Harvard Medical School moved to Boston in 1810, occupying several different locations before establishing the Longwood Avenue campus in 1906. During the 1870s, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot initiated sweeping reforms at the medical school, transforming the old apprenticeship system to a more rigorous and professionalized academic program. New emphasis on the natural sciences required a new campus with larger and more technologically advanced laboratory spaces. The architects designed the teaching buildings on a modular plan, allowing for reconfiguration of classroom space and enlargement of the buildings, while accommodating the lighting, ventilation, and other mechanical systems needed in laboratories. The buildings' simplicity of style, monumental scale, and ordered symmetry embodied the school's modern scientific spirit as well as the new professional and academic authority of medical educators at the turn of the century.