We stayed at the Sheraton Commander Hotel. It was a great choice! Not only was it a lot less expensive than most hotels of the same star value in downtown Boston, but it was right next to Harvard campus and a few blocks away from the T.
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| Sheraton Commander Hotel |
One thing to note about visiting Harvard and MIT is that the official campus tours only occur on weekdays. Sure there are plenty of tours not actually affiliated with the universities, but those cost money. In any case, I like going at my own pace, so I went to the university websites, checked out their virtual tours, and made my own walking tour. Just call me Tour Guide Alexa!
The good thing about having a self-guided walking tour is that you have no time constraints! We decided to start our day at MIT and finish at Harvard, as the only thing on our agenda with a closing time was the MIT Museum. I found MIT really unique for a university campus, because instead of having all their buildings uniformly built and matching, they had different waves of architects come in and build with different styles. Another interesting fact about MIT buildings is they are all assigned a number, and most students refer to the buildings by their number rather than by name. Some notable MIT buildings include the following:
- Rogers Building (7): This building is the official address of MIT and the entrance to the Infinite Corridor, which is the main pedestrian path connecting east campus with west campus. Walking into the Rogers Building and following the Infinite Corridor path will take you to ...
- The Maclaurin Buildings (3, 4, 10), the Great Dome, and Killian Court: This is the classic view of MIT you see in everyone's pictures. Built in 1916, these are the oldest buildings at MIT.
- The Great Dome was designed like the Parthenon with columns not quite in a straight line to make the lines of columns appear straight. If you are having trouble following that logic, check out this easy to follow description of the Parthenon's design. Please excuse my nerdiness, but I find this kind of thing really cool! I was a math major, so it is no surprise that I can find the fun in Geometry.
- The buildings around Killian Court are carved in large Roman letters using the latin alphabet with names of notable people including Aristotle, Newton, Franklin, Pasteur, da Vinci, etc. I didn't get any pictures of this, because there was construction being done, but it is kind of fun trying to spot all the different names hidden around.
- MIT Chapel & Kresge Auditorium (W15): these mid-century modern buildings were designed by Saarinen.
- Stata Center (32): This building features deconstructionist architecture designed by Frank Gehry. I felt like I was in a Dr. Seuss book wandering around here! MIT students are known for their "hacks," or pranks. You can find some past hacks on the ground floor of this building. Unfortunately, the doors we tried were locked. Another cool little fact is that this building was built over former building 20 which housed the Rad Lab using during WWII!
- Lastly, my favorite part of our make-shift MIT tour was the MIT Museum (N52)! Again, feel free to call me a nerd, but this was a really fun way to spend a couple of hours in a museum different from the usual art and natural science or history museums. Exhibits I liked the best included the Holography Enthusiasts showcasing the world's largest and most comprehensive holography collection, Images of Discovery where we got to play with science to make cool photographs, Robots and Beyond (remember Kismet?!), and Gestural Engineering where we got to see and play with machines in motion AKA kinetic sculptures. I'd highly recommend coming here for adults or children!
We concluded our afternoon with ice-cream from Toscanini's (super yum!) and made our way back to Harvard. Tour Guide Alexa back in action!
We naturally started our self-guided walking tour in Harvard Yard. First up was the John Harvard Statue, or the "statue of three lies":
- John Harvard was actually only a benefactor, not the founder of Harvard.
- Harvard was founded in 1636, not 1638.
- No actual likeness exists of John Harvard, so who knows where they got the face for this statue.
Next up was Widener Library, the largest university library in the world! Cool, huh? Well, everyone else visiting Harvard thought so too, so this area was full of people taking pictures.
Luckily, I am more into really old stuff, so I walked across Harvard Yard to Massachusetts Hall and took my picture there. This is the oldest surviving building at Harvard that was used as a dormitory and housed super important people like John Adams, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams! Also as a bonus, since everyone was too busy taking pictures in front of Widener Library and the statue of John Harvard, I had this building all to myself!
Some other buildings we checked out on our self-guided walking tour included the Science Center which has Mark 1 (the 1st programmable computer!), Annenberg Hall where freshmen dine, and Memorial Hall which was built to honor peers who died in the Civil War and contains the biggest collection of secular stained glass in the US.
We ended our tour at the Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory, part of the school of engineering that was featured in the Social Network. Look familiar?
And here is where our Cambridge tour comes to a close. Naturally we checked out a few restaurants and bars in the area. Here are ones I can recommend:
- Toscanini's for ice cream near MIT: skip the famed burnt caramel and try one of their other flavor options
- Park Restaurant: a nice atmosphere with good gastropub style food and yummy cocktails. Definitely order the crab and lobster dip!
- Charlie's Kitchen: along Mt. Auburn Street where many Harvard students hang out to unwind. A little too divey and crowded for us, but it had a decent beer garden.
- Cambridge Commons: cool beer bar/pub with a huge craft beer selection
That's all for now. Thanks for tagging along on a virtual walking tour of Cambridge with me!
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