Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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to be found in this country. Richardson was best known, however, for the exterior of his buildings, and, as well done as the interior of Austin is, it is the outside of the building that is the most striking. Austin Hall is a masonry building, that is, the whole weight of the building is borne by the stone and mortar of its walls without the aid of a supporting skeleton of steel or reinforced concrete. The walls of such a building are necessarily quite thick, and, in Austin Hall, Richardson re- emphasizes this massiveness in his exterior design. The walls are made of dark Longmeadow stone placed upon a sandstone base, and they are obviously stone. There is no attempt to hide their solid nature in the creation of abstract geometric plains, rather, Richardson creates a cliff face. This massiveness is reasserted in the triple arches of the main entrance, dark cave openings whose solid sides are, if any- thing, overly eloquent of the burden they carry. The rear of Austin Hall is simple, but carefully proportioned, the building was designed to be seen from all sides, an isolated jewel set upon what was then an open field. The rear and the front are punctuated with rectangular windows cut into the walls as though chisled by some giant hand. The two smaller lecture rooms are lighted by a row of windows set high in their walls at the front and rear of the building. The windows are evenly spaced and separated by mini-columns. Ther ribbon-like effect of these high windows was apparently one that Richardson was fond ofg he had used an almost identical design earlier for the Crane Memorial Library in Quincy. At the main entrance of Austin Hall, Richardson created on the capitals of the columns supporting the arches some of his most delightful ornamental sculpture. He must have taken a special pleasure in the thought of generations of intense, serious law students passing by wrapped in their own This coiled snake found on Auslin's L- rf ar ,. k is V - Q 1 .X . 1 ,+- b n f Q X xt ,A W f-P-53 is one of Iwo stair tower. A A Q I., -f ' sr Yi f his if W-4 r 7.1 ,fy 4,31 , I ft! 4, l ajax A '?7f'Q , A !:'frii'Q'Q ' g ... x fir-if

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A Rogue's gallery of Richardsorfs gremlins. , - ,- 5'!- ' ' 'r-1 ..,..- ' - .' ' N' f-. 1 .-, Qi A v ' .Q I J-1 5 -5 at, f 1 , U F-, an .LJ N tw ' Jin' 7 a :I .i ' . 'I ' . .W f W-.L -fix V .W .fi 3 f 4..a-any ' QM.-Kf'1- X' , ' , ,- N -. y. v ' , '--1 ' - . 1 fi. L F' if A-, , 'sv we .in '- , Hr! '-- ..- '- 'Su f- Q ' rn -OW ,. ' x,rV . .ga :J I ' s. --P - mi :. -y ,. 3, Jr '5 . Q ' X, . , 1 - :N . . , Wf , . - ,- 5- . 4 f-' 3 ' - - 's :K N X J- V -- 'ff' t I

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terribly important thoughts, heedless of the pixies and gremlins who observed them with less than total awe from the pillars of their own building. Austin Hall is now but a small portion of the structures that make up the physical law school. It is approached primarily from the rear or from be- neath the earth. It no longer commands its site in splendid isolation. It remains, however, the schoo1's most magnificent structure-the heart although no longer the physical center-one of-the finest buildings of one of the Iinest American architects who ever lived. I2