ABSTRACT
On 28 October 1636, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay convened a meeting. Amongst the afternoon’s busy agenda was an epochal act – the endowment of £400 towards the construction of ‘a schoale or colledge’. The founding of a college only six years after the colonisation of Massachusetts Bay was a bold feat. Yet the colony leaders were unwavering in their belief that for the New World experiment to prosper, it needed a leadership of educated men. Harvard College opened in 1638 upon a half-hectare plot of land in Newtowne, a village six-and-a-half kilometres from Boston that was quickly renamed Cambridge in recognition of the English university of which many of the colony’s leaders were alumni. This plot has grown organically over the centuries to form the heart of the university today, Old Harvard Yard.
