Austin Hall (Harvard University)
Austin Hall | |
Austin Hall | |
Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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Coordinates | 42°22′37.4″N 71°07′7.6″W / 42.377056°N 71.118778°W |
Built | 1881 |
Architect | Henry Hobson Richardson |
Architectural style | Romanesque |
NRHP reference No. | 72000128[1] |
Added to NRHP | April 19, 1972 |
Austin Hall is a classroom building of the Harvard Law School designed by noted American architect H. H. Richardson. The first building purposely built for an American law school, it was also the first dedicated home of Harvard Law School.[2] It is located on the historic Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.[1]
Construction
The hall was built 1882–1884 in
Design
Austin Hall's first floor contains three large classrooms; these were designed to complement the new law school curriculum that was being implemented at the time by Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell, including large core classes employing the Socratic method. As this curriculum has been imitated by other American law schools, so has the classroom layout first employed at Austin Hall.
The building's second floor contains the Ames Courtroom, where students argue moot cases before panels of judges. A
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Austin Hall, shortly after its construction, albumen print, ca. 1883-1895
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Entryway detail
See also
- Sever Hall, Richardson's first Harvard commission
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts
References
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, H. H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works, MIT Press, 1985, page 76. ISBN 0-262-65015-0.
- Harvard Law School walking tour
- Harvard Law School map
- ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
- ^ "About Austin Hall". Harvard Law School. Retrieved 2014-03-05.