The buildings of the Harvard University Graduate Center belong to an earlier—and pioneering— generation of the Modern Movement, but the spaces between them speak to no single generation. This seminal effort by TAC, with Walter Gropius as “job captain,” advanced educational architecture in the United States immeasurably by demonstrating that its oldest university could call on one of its most advanced architectural firms. The center is composed of seven dormitories housing approximately six hundred students; its Harkness Commons is able to feed over one thousand at a sitting. Note that although the space is limited, no dormitory faces its neighbor. A milestone in the development of the Modern Movement in this country. (From Sourcebook of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings from the 10th Century to the Present by G.E. Kidder Smith)
