Harvard's hideaway

What does "Harvard" bring to mind?

The High Victorian Gothic soar of Memorial Hall?

The glimmering white spire of Memorial Chapel?

The Teutonic clock tower of Adolphus Busch Hall?

The crimson-crowned cupola of Dunster House?

The colossal columns and spine-tingling steps of Widener Library?

The twisty-turny paths and exploding brises-soleil of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts?

Do a glass pyramid, a copper cylinder, and a golden-ball clock tower come to mind at all? If not, no worries. These sculptural components of the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel are so far off the beaten path, literally and figuratively, that they're the university's best-kept secret: a little-known hideaway in nature, peace and light enveloped in pure geometric form.

Built in 1992 from a maverick design by Moshe Safdie and the vision of Dean John H. McArthur to introduce a community-generator to the otherwise corporate, business-as-usual Harvard Business School, the Chapel combines variations on the glass polygon of I.M. Pei's Louvre Pyramid, the cylindrical drum of Eero Saarinen's MIT Chapel, and the scintillating orb of the Times Square Ball in a confounding contrast of forms, surfaces, curves, angles, solids and voids that makes you stop and stare, especially if you've never been in these parts before.

Then again, unlike the perpetual pedestrian crisscross through Harvard Yard, Harvard Business School isn't exactly a tourist mecca, being far and away across the Charles in Allston.

But if you've come this far and think you're seeing things when this it-came-from-another-planet contraption crosses your path, think again as you enter its spatial dimensions – the light-filtered chapel in the patina-green cylinder, the terraced garden in the glass pyramid, or the bronze ball that drops like the sand in an hourglass as the hours pass.

The multitiered sunken garden offers a panoply of peace-inducing transports of delight: terraces of lush garden beds and flowering trees, a bubbling waterfall, a koi pond replete with rainbow-hued fish, shallow pools teeming with aquatic flora, square steppingstones along the groundcover, stair-flights to the balcony entrance to the chapel, window panoramas of the metamorphoses of seasons and sunrises and sunsets, and lots of places to sit and assimilate the restorative powers of nature, study amid the calming trickle-splash of the water, or contemplate the tensile crisscross of the diamond panes and the circular structure of the chapel. This is how the pyramid bridges the gap between outside and inside, with the garden as the intermediary and the verdant and patina greens as the binding elements.

Other tropical delights that merge outside with inside include plants that grew in Cyprus, Greece, during the childhood of Chapel Caretaker Agni Thurner, now Manager of Executive Education Building Services; native vegetation from the Americas; and arboricola, ferns, liriope, lemons, oranges and tangerines. All form a miniature arboretum that thrives all seasons.

The nondenominational chapel with Shaker-style chairs filters raking light and rainbow effects through a skylight of thin windows and long prisms. Designed by Charles Ross, this light-sculpture radiates the refracted sunshine across the 27-foot-high scalloped concrete walls, creating an illusion of soft, billowy curtains. 

This effect creates a serene spiritual ambiance for weddings, chamber music, prayer, contemplation, meditation, or just winding down.

The 26-foot, 11-inch-high "sun clock" tower, designed by German artist Karl Schlamminger, is inscribed on its black granite base with the names of the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 – Dean McArthur's graduating class – that donated the chapel and clock to the campus. 

This innovative timepiece marks the hour by ascending and descending its golden bronze ball by an electronic motor gradually throughout the day, such that the ball's arrival at a particular line on the glass enclosure indicates the time of day. 

Like a sunrise and a sunset, the ball reaches the summit of the tower at high noon and sets at the base toward the evening.

Beyond relaxation, meditation, contemplation, and reminders of the time of day, the Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel aimed to "recognize the wholeness of its members’ lives — people who may be grieving for a parent, or worried about their children, or in need of withdrawal from the pressure of work or study, or who wish to celebrate their religious traditions,” chapel planners told Harvard Magazine in 1993. 

Or, in the Chapel's engraved words, "...to make our community complete and remind us of our higher purpose and ideals." Harvard's many landmarks fulfill that purpose, from Victorian to Neoclassical to Germanic to Georgian to Modern, but none rebalance the soul and refresh the spirit like the Class of 1959 Chapel.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

Cautela, Mark, "School News: Historical Places and Cool Spaces," Harvard Business School, September 1, 2026, https://www.hbs.edu/news/historical-places-and-cool-spaces

"Class of 1959 Chapel," SmartGuide, https://app.smartguide.app/en/destinations/f0976a22-07ea-40fb-ab21-b9d6d42e3c12/harvard-business-school/places/6f16eb44-97b8-43da-8a8b-c312c997869a/class-of-1959-chapel

Grandaw, Sam, "Class of 1959 Chapel," Atlas Obscura, July 26, 2019, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/class-of-1959-chapel

"Harvard Business School Class of 1959 Chapel," Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992, Safdie Architects, https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/harvard-business-school-class-of-1959-chapel

Lincoln, Rose, "Hidden spaces: The Class of 1959 Chapel at HBS," The Harvard Gazette, April 30, 2014, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/04/hidden-spaces-the-class-of-1959-chapel-at-hbs/

"MBA Class of 1959 Chapel," Harvard Business School, https://www.hbs.edu/about/campus-and-culture/campus-built-on-philanthropy/class-of-1959-chapel

"The Class of 1959 Chapel," Wikipedia, last edited on 31 August 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Class_of_1959_Chapel