Lowell House is one of the twelve undergraduate houses at Harvard University. It is an active community of more than five hundred individuals: approximately four hundred undergraduate students, twenty five residents from Harvard’s graduate and professional schools, and over two hundred affiliated faculty and staff. Lowell House was constructed in 1930 and was one of the first two Houses established by the gift of Edward Harkness. The House was named for the Lowell family, closely identified with Harvard since John Lowell graduated in 1721. Lowell’s first decade was overseen by Julian Lowell Coolidge, a distinguished mathematician (who also gained notoriety as the zealous head of the Boston Watch and Ward Society). It was Coolidge who instituted the traditional Monday night high table and began the habit of taking tea with students. One of the first tutors in Lowell House, the late historian Elliott Perkins, was master from 1942 to 1963 and was considered deeply influential to generations of Lowell House graduates. Classics scholar Zeph Stewart was the third master, evolving Lowell House into co-educational living and overseeing expanded musical and poemical traditions along with his wife and associate master, Diana Stewart. Computer scientist and avid aviator, William Bossert, moved into Lowell House in 1975 along with his wife Mary Lee. During the Bossert’s twenty-three year tenure the weekly teas, High Tables, and opera galas blossomed and multiplied. Under the recent leadership of Comparative Religion professor Diana Eck and the Rev. Dorothy Austin, the first same-sex couple appointed masters of a Harvard House, these traditions of music and hospitality continued. In 2019, David Laibson, professor of Economics, and Nina Zipser, FAS dean of Faculty Affairs, took the reins of Lowell as the sixth set of leaders in 90 years.

For more information about Lowell House, please visit lowell.harvard.edu.