Holden Chapel Once Housed Majority of College Classes--Held Four Lecture Rooms and Two Laboratories

The recent discovery of a coin dated 1742, the date of erection of Holden Chapel, and of several relies of the eighteenth century near the new Holden dormitories, has directed interest to the remarkable history of the chapel. During 183 years it has served in almost every capacity possible to a building.

A description of Holden's use in 1807 has been found in an almost forgotten Boston literary journal, "Today," which was begun and discontinued in 1852. Charles Hale, author of the description, has set forth the chapel's miraculous powers in an account of the Harvard Alumni Festival of 1852.

"Holden," the journal declares, "although the smallest of the five college buildings, was, in some respects, the most remarkable. Its western end was divided into four recitation rooms; its eastern end contained, on the ground floor, the chemical lecture-room and laboratory and up stairs the anatomical lecture and dissecting rooms. In these last-named rooms was given all the instruction to the undergraduates of the Senior class who chose also to attend the lectures.

"In the four rooms just mentioned, at the western end of the building, the four college classes attended their daily recitations, not in subdivisions, as now, but altogether; the classes being about as large as at present. Yet there was no crowd nor inconvenience. There was room for every professor, every course, and every class. The smallest classes filled it; but the largest did not crowd it.

"Nor was the want of elbow-room ever felt, till we moved out of Holden into ten or fifteen spacious lecture-rooms and recitation-rooms in the other college halls, in which we have suffered greatly for want of accommodation ever since. I really think the name of 'Holden' must have something to do with its capacity for holding every body and everything."