Word: severities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dark-red massiveness of Sever Hall stakes out a solid claim on the land beneath, in contrast to the make-shift wooden pillars and ersatz Old-North-Church steeple of Mem Church next door and the Pusey library burrowing underground. The steps of Horace Trumbauer's Widener dominate the quandrangle, but Sever holds its space without demanding reverence. Widener, it is assumed, will last forever--it appeals to the scholar's upward gaze beyond forever, while Sever controls its ground right...
...associates paid careful attention to the details of the inside; and the outside, as well, was keyed to function (the long banks of windows, for instance, gave classrooms a then-unheard-of degree of natural illumination). But Harvard's modernization of the interior, years after Richardson's death, left Sever maligned...
...liked Sever from the start. As a freshman, I didn't know architects did too. But a lunchtime compatriot with a panache he could pass off as a plume of knowledge deigned to explain Sever's deficiences. It's awkward and contradictory, he explained. Look at the round turrets and the rectangular chimneys. They don't belong on the same building, he said. I can't recall his other criticisms; I assume they were each as contrived...
...know which one Sever is, a freshman living in the Yard told me this week, you'll have to ask my roommate...
...Sever. That's one of the uglier ones, the roommate said. Mainly I don't like the doors. They're weird--big and ugly...