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Peabody Terrace, on the north bank of the
Peabody Terrace, on the north bank of the Charles River
The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, is a Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
housing complex primarily serving graduate students, particularly married students and their families.
Designed in the brutalist style and constructed in 1964, its three-story perimeter grows to five and seven stories within, with three interior 22-story towers.
It has been described as "beloved by architects and disliked by almost everyone else."
Description
Peabody Terrace was completed in 1965 at a cost of $8.5million. On , the complex consists of about 500 apartments (a mixture of "efficiencies" and one-, two-, and three-bedroom unitsall with ceilings) plus playgrounds, nurseries, roof terraces, laundromats/laundry rooms, meetings/seminar rooms, study rooms, and a parking garage. In order to maximize usable floor space and speed vertical transportation, the towers' elevators stop on every third floor. The Harvard-affiliated Peabody Terrace Children's Center is housed on the complex grounds.Reception
In the words of architecture critic Robert Campbell, the exterior reflects the desire of its designer,Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...
Dean Josep Lluís Sert
Josep Lluís Sert i López (; 1 July 190215 March 1983) was a Spanish architect and city planner.
Biography
Born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Sert showed keen interest in the works of his uncle, the painter Josep Maria Sert, and of Gaudí. He s ...
, to "bring the color and life of the Mediterranean to the white cubist architecture of northern Europe". It has also been called "an extension of Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
's communal prototype, the Unité d'Habitation
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, key_people = Alexandru Ciubuc CEO interim
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".
Originally designated as housing for married students, the partially completed project appeared in a ''Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at ...
'' photo over the caption, "University Moves to Thwart Early Marriages", and the ''Crimson'' later called it "well on the way to being just as hideous" as another Sert-designed building, Harvard's new administrative high-rise Holyoke Center
Harvard University's Smith Campus Center (formerly Holyoke Center) is a Brutalist administrative and service building occupying the block bounded by Massachusetts Avenue, Dunster Street, Holyoke Street, and Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Mass ...
. Nonetheless it received the Boston Society of Architects' Harleston Parker Medal
The Harleston Parker Medal was established in 1921 by J. Harleston Parker to recognize “such architects as shall have, in the opinion of the Boston Society of Architects
One of the oldest and largest chapters of the AIA, the Boston Society of ...
and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture.
Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...
.
In 1965 ''Progressive Architecture'' said Sert had achieved "an efficiently workable interior arrangement, a lively sequence of exterior spaces, and a fluent continuity from low to high, and from old to new structures." But by 1994 the same publication saw Peabody Terrace as "an embarrassment to Harvard, and the last resort of graduate students who couldn’t find a better place to live." (The living units were renovated between 1993 and 1995 and the common areas overhauled in 2013.)
References
{{Harvard, state=collapsed Harvard University buildings Harvard Square Residential buildings completed in 1965 Apartment buildings in Massachusetts Brutalist architecture in Massachusetts Skyscrapers in Massachusetts Residential skyscrapers in Massachusetts