Dorm Decor

"Thus, whatever be the season or weather, you can always find enjoyment and comfort in College rooms. There is a kind of independence about a residence in them which can never be acquired elsewhere. Until very recently, one could even exercise his propensity for destructiveness on the venerable walls and doors, and the only result would be an increase of a cent or two in that vague item on the term-bill, 'Special repairs by general average.'"

~from "My Room,"
by Augustus Allen Hayes, Class of 1857

The 1960s

Radcliffe Archives, Radcliffe Institute. Harvard University

A 1973 photograph precursor to the now-popular loft. In a March 1972 column in this magazine, Anne Fadiman '74 described contemporary trends in undergraduate décor: the Psychedelic-Iguana School, the Blood-and-Guts School, the Decadent-Aesthetic School, and — most typical, perhaps — the Fallen Sights School.

Harvard College Yearbook, 1973

Cabot F-52 in 2002, the room of then seniors (clockwise from right) Gerard Hammond, John Bingaman, Joshua Raffaelli, and Brian Clay

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Weston M. Hill '94 has been a teaching fellow for General Education 105, Robert Coles's "The Literature of Social Reflection," for six years. He encourages alumni to contribute photographs, stories, poems, or other creations for the project; see his website, www.crimsondormlife.com, for more information.

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