100-Year-Old Beer Bottles Dug Out of Hidden Oven in Harvard Hall Cellar

Beer bottles more than 100 years old were the most spectacular of the relies dug out of the basement of Harvard Hall yesterday by John F. Brown of the American Georgian Society. Brown is engaged in reconstructing the Harvard Hall kitchen as it appeared from 1765 to 1814.

The bottles were evidently bricked up in the huge fire-place when the College kitchen was moved to the basement of University Hall in 1814. For many years prior to the change, Harvard Hall was the largest eating place in the Massachusetts colony, and the General Court used to hold its dinners there.

On the first floor of the Harvard Hall of 1800 was a large room which served as a dining hall and general meeting place, and another about the same size, used as a chapel. The dining hall's policy was good food and plenty of it. Pork, beef, and fowl formed the backbone of the College diet, with the students frequently eating all three meats at one meal.

Undergraduates were served beer, made in the brewery which stood in the Yard near the present site of Hollis Hall. But only privileged bodies like the Board of Overseers rated the luxury of wine.

On the top story of Harvard was the library. So small was the collection of books that the so-called "Visiting Committee" which inspected the stacks periodically, used to go around checking off every volume in a little catalogue they carried with them.

There is a story that the day before the inspection of the library in 1823, the librarian was seen flying across the yard in the direction of one of the dormitories. An undergraduate stopped him with. "I suppose you're all ready for the inspection tomorrow, Mr. Sibley."

"No", puffed the hurrying official, "there's one book still out.--But I know where it is!"