University, 1942-1956, 1942-1956

Includes 40 duplicate contact prints not mounted on binder pages of U491-U530 covering Churchill's visit to Harvard in 1943; and one of U556 covering the Duke of Windsor's visit in that same year.

Photographs depict Harvard University facilities, people, and events. A few images are accompanied by typewritten caption sheets.

Subjects include Harvard campus views showing Harvard Yard and its gates, the John Harvard statue, winter scenes and rainy days, Memorial Hall, Memorial Church, Holden Chapel, Christ Church Cambridge cemetery,Weld Boathouse, Anderson Memorial Bridge, rowing and ice skating on the Charles River, Harvard Stadium, Hemenway Gymnasium, the Faculty Club, Harvard Union, University Hall, Lehman Hall, Kirkland House, Phillips Brooks House, Lowell House, dormitories, dining rooms, Widener and other libraries, Fogg Art Museum, the School of Public Health, the Medical School, Austin Hall, Langdell Hall, the president’s house, Arnold Arboretum, and a few aerial photographs; also, views of Cambridge and Boston showing Harvard Square, the Harvard Club, Weeks Memorial Bridge, downtown, Eliot Bridge, University Theatre, The Coop, and the dedication ceremony for John Harvard Mall in Charlestown.

Harvard administrators, faculty, librarians, staff, and students; also, guests and foreign visitors, including journalists, academics, librarians, scientists, clergy, military officers, diplomats, royalty, and heads of state. Notable people depicted include: Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands; Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg; Walt Disney; American anthropologist Earnest Hooton; Leverett Saltonstall, Massachusetts governor from 1939-1945; Joseph C. Grew, American ambassador to Japan; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; Edward, Duke of Windsor; James Bryant Conant, Harvard president from 1933-1953; Duke Ellington; Howard H. Aiken, computer pioneer and mathematics professor; Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM; former Premier of China H. H. (Hsiang-hsi) Kung; V. K. Wellington Koo, a prominent Chinese diplomat; He Yingqin, general of the Kuomintang of China; E. J. Forsdyke, director and principal librarian of the British Museum; Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos; Sumner Welles, foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley; British Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson, Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., Harvard professor and women’s history pioneer; composer Aaron Copeland; Archibald Clark Kerr (Baron Inverchapel), British ambassador to the U.S.; Robert F. Bradford, Massachusetts governor from 1947-1949; Crown Prince Olav of Norway; Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach; head of the Irish Free State, Éamon De Valera, and Taoiseach John A. Costello; U.S. Senator and Supreme Court Justice Harold H. Burton; George H. Chase, art historian and Harvard professor of classical art; 1950 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph J. Bunche; General Lucius D. Clay; King of Yugoslavia Petar II Karadordevic; Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi; Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Muhammad Zafarullah Khan; Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie; West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer; architect Walter Gropius; Japanese Crown Prince Akihito; Godfrey L. Cabot, industrialist, philanthropist, and founder of the Cabot Corporation; Nathan M. Pusey, Harvard president from 1953-1971; American sculptor Alexander Calder; poets Stephen Spender, Louis Untermayer, John Ciardi, and Marianne Moore; Roscoe Pound, Harvard Law School dean from 1916-1936; and U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Events and activities related to Harvard, including commencement ceremonies, funerals and memorial services, alumni reunions, military ceremonies, parades, V-E Day, and holiday celebrations; meetings, formal dinners, lectures, performances, and concerts; a radio broadcast on campus of America's Town Meeting of the Air, a dedication ceremony for the John Harvard Mall in Charlestown, the Harvard-Yale Boat Race of 1949, and Eleanor Roosevelt's address on "The World Struggle for Human Rights" at Sanders Theater in 1950.

Promient subjects from the war years include images of Harvard "Yard cop" John Connolly, who served from 1906-1942; and a photo feature on United Nations war heroes stopping at Harvard while on a U.S. tour in 1942, including Chinese film star Yung Wang and Vladimir Pchelintsev, a Russian sniper "credited with having shot 152 Nazis with 154 bullets" ( Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 7, 1942). Images from a demonstration on fighting fire bombs given by students in front of Widener Library. Photo coverage of the Jan. 18, 1943, funeral for former Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell at Memorial Church. Photographs of filmmaker Walt Disney consulting with Professor of Anthropology Earnest Hooton "on the subject of Nazi racial theory, in preparation for his new movie which will blast the myth of Nordic supremacy" ( The Harvard Crimson, February 4, 1943). Photographs of Winston Churchill’s visit to Harvard, Sept. 6, 1943, to address “the troops” in the Yard and receive an honorary LLD degree; followed by the Duke of Windsor’s visit, September 24, 1943. Images of Duke Ellington sitting at a piano for his lecture "Negro Music in America" at Paine Hall, March 13, 1944. And views of General George S. Patton passing through Harvard Square in 1945.

Post-war features, 1946 through 1949, include the Harvard Music Symposium, with Aaron Copeland, Otto Kinkeldey, A. Tillman Merritt, and other Harvard faculty. Images of a celebration at Philip Brooks House to commemorate India's independence from British rule in 1947, with Indian students, Harvard Professor Robert Ulich, and Museum of Fine Arts Curator Ananda Coomaraswamy. Photographs documenting the relocation of Dana-Palmer House and Lamont Library construction. Images of Theodore B. Pitman constructing his diorama depicting Harvard during the American Revolution. A 1948 photo feature on housing for student veterans and their families showing “a day in the life of a Harvardevens Village dweller." Views of a rally outside Memorial Hall for 1948 Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. Photographs of one of the first TV aerials to appear at Harvard, Life magazine photographer Martha Holmes photographing an owl in Harvard Yard, the first women to receive medical degrees at Harvard in June 1949, and alumnus Ralph R. Kent, possibly the first to yell “Oh Rinehart!” Also, images of a 1948 Fogg Art Museum symposium in honor of Assistant Director P.J. Sachs (formerly of Goldman, Sachs & Co.), with various art museum directors, Harvard faculty, and others. And filming on Harvard's campus in 1949 of MGM’s Mystery Street directed by John Sturgis.

Subjects depicted in photographs dating from the 1950s include the conservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls owned by Assyrian Archbishop of Syria and Transjordan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel at Fogg Art Museum Conservation Department by Department Head Rutherford J. Gettens, filming of Harvard President James Conant in Harvard Yard for The March of Time newsreel series in 1951, Louis C. Bierweiler working on glass flowers, Nathan M. Pusey’s inauguration as president of Harvard in 1953, the Adams Papers Project, established in 1954 with the Massachusetts Historical Society, and WGBH’s radio and television transmitter at Great Blue Hill. Also included are a photo feature on a 1955 exhibit in Robinson Hall by American sculptor Alexander Calder, photographs of Harold Allen, the last bell ringer at Memorial Church, and portraits of poets Oscar Williams and Archibald MacLeish, along with William Jackson of Houghton Library, posing with paintings and documents by Dylan Thomas.