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| Tozzer Anthropology Building (2014, Kennedy & Violich Architecture), Harvard University. Photo by Todd Larson. |
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| Tozzer Library (1974, Johnson & Hotvedt), Photo courtesy of Flickr. |
The recent bestowal of the Harleston Parker Medal / People's Choice Award on Harvard University's Tozzer Anthropology Building (above) is thrilling news. It is the apex of the long-time-coming renewal of one of Harvard's most outmoded, poorly designed, badly lit buildings – that 1974 mound of modernism called Tozzer Library (left).I was contemptuous of that bland brick nothing-box, mainly because I had spent two miserable years there on my first post-college job as a front-desk receptionist and stooge under the most grumpy and bored of bosses. My menial tasks (about which he often teased me about how un-challenging they were) included sticking date-due slips and plates and labels on books, alphabetizing index cards, filling out commercial bindery request slips for new book acquisitions, checking out books and collecting fines for overdue ones from patrons, arranging six free library visits for outsiders, fetching books and senior honors theses for students and profs, answering the same old visitor queries about where the Peabody Museum, the MCZ [Museum of Comparative Zoology] Library, the bathroom, the Xerox machine, the nearest Centrex phone, etc., etc., were, and forever redirecting deliveries meant for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology next door (below).  |
| Peabody Museum (1877, Robert H. Slack), Tozzer Library (1974, Johnson & Hotvedt) |
Of course, the library's main entrance (above) fooled a lot of people into thinking that was the Peabody Museum, rather than its distinctively Mansard-roofed Victorian brick next-door neighbor (left), which made its modern progeny look like a remnant of an industrial park by comparison. |
| Tozzer Library (1974, Johnson & Hotvedt), Harvard University. |
Which was a shame, considering that one of its architects was E. Verner Johnson, eminent designer of more than 200 museums, from the MIT Museum to the Smithsonian Institution's Arts & Industries Building to an expansion of Boston's Museum of Science. His "museum touch" was sadly absent from this Peabody Museum extension; its replacement is far more museum-like in its form.And I'm sure you can see how the library externally expressed the ennui of my job (and my hostility toward visitors) with its nondescript exterior, clumsy massing, erratic and sparse fenestration, and awkward continuation of Divinity Avenue's streetscape, all of which made it seem to turn its back on the public – not a very kind architectural invitation inside. But I must say this: it contained one of the first wheelchair-accessible ramps (which has been a construction standard since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990). However, the crisscrossing ramp usurped the reception area, robbing it of vital space for seating, socializing, and art displays.  |
| Interior of Tozzer Library. Photo courtesy of E. Verner Johnson. |
Which may have helped to cramp the rest of the interior as well. Here, the Phoenix seems to reach for more space than it is allotted to fly freely overhead. It is hemmed in by its atrium's narrowness and is illuminated on only one side by a single running clerestory. Glaring fluorescent cove lighting has to make up for the deficit of natural light.
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| Study area in Tozzer Library. Photo courtesy of William M.C. Lam. |
In Perception and Lighting as Formgivers for Architecture (1977), William M.C. Lam explained his lighting of the library: "The book stacks were oriented perpendicular to the long axis of the coffers so that the books would 'see' the brightest portion of the ceiling." |
| Study area in Tozzer Library. Photo courtesy of William M.C. Lam. |
And so did its patrons – too much. The ceiling's brightness permeated the atmosphere with an antiseptic, hospital-like glare that made users miss the warm glow of the natural sunlight, incandescent lighting, and even candlelight Harvard's older buildings had depended on to shed light on the work of its students, professors and visiting scholars.Offices and study rooms suffered from the same. Lam wrote, "Track lighting [provides] supplementary task illumination when the larger coffers are subdivided to form small offices [left]. Local lighting is built into each carrel [right]." Which were fine for administration and studies, but did not amount to a very welcoming work or study environment. The clean lines, cove-lit ceiling, off-white palette, and industrial uniformity of the finish materials suggested the absence of something – which certainly contributed to my ho-hum there.
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| Reception area, Tozzer Anthropology Building, Harvard (2014, Kennedy & Violich Architects). Photos by John Horner. |
This is the reception I would have preferred to be greeted with every morning. It's spacious, fluid, comfortable, clear in its direction to other parts of the building, softly hued and shaded, brightly illuminated by sun, and very conducive to stopping to study, socialize, or gaze at the displays. In fact, the two-story Mayan stela, once nestled in a tight corner at the base of the old Tozzer Library's entry ramp, is now given more room to assert its historical identity and beauty, presenting the Tozzer Anthropology Building as one of the world's most renowned repositories of anthropological, archaeological and ethnological artifacts, scholarship and records.
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| Atrium/lightwell, Tozzer Anthropology Building, Harvard (2014, Kennedy & Violich Architects). Photo by John Horner. |
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| Atrium lounge, Tozzer Anthropology Building. Photo by John Horner. |
Copious, opulent sunlight cascades from a far-reaching skylight, blessing studies or lounging with the radiance of nature as an enlightening stimulus, and leaving a fiery glow upon the birch panels, expressing the sun and nature dependency of ancient cultures. Rafters cast diagonal shadows on the woodwork, adding to the angular drama. The old library's cubic confines couldn't present patrons with such a soaring spectacle. The running balcony corridor invites faculty and workers from all corners to partake of this wonder, unlike the "siloing" in the old library. |
| Peabody Museum and Tozzer Anthropology Building, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Photo by John Horner. |
What accounts for this wonder? The building's polygonal form, suggesting a prehistoric artifact or ziggurat. The copper-paneled hip roof's angled top creates the diagonal skylight that suns the study lounge, while complementing the Peabody's old roof gables – which Tozzer Library's flat, low roof certainly couldn't do. |
| Entrance to Tozzer. Photo by John Horner. |
The quirky entrance, diapered in patterned brickwork to evoke the spirit of ancient masonry, gives us the sense of entering a cave for an archaeological discovery, while creating engagingly angled light-and-shadow patterns when the sun hits it.
This is a much more enticing, intimate entry into the wonderland of anthropology, archaeology and ethnology than Tozzer Library's blandly square, spatially cumbersome entrance was, which was little different from entering a corporation in a suburban office park every morning. Now we enter an academic/artistic realm, and the relatively small entry door, framed by the angular lines of crafted brick, piques our fascination about the knowledge and culture that lie within.
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| Tozzer Anthropology Building (2014, Kennedy & Violich Architecture), Harvard University. Photo by Shelley Zatsky. |
The unusual rhythm of fenestration on the front and rear facades adds to the playfulness that was sorely lacking in the old library's square sobriety. The variation of window placement among the levels complements the skew diagonals of the skylight roof and entrance, giving the building a sculptural street presence that complements the archaeological stonework on display inside the building and on its grounds. Furthermore, the windows protrude, rather than recede, from their façade, which suggests that the building is bursting with anthropological activity and sunny, sumptuous study space, unlike the boxed-in feeling Tozzer Library gave its workers and patrons. |
| Tozzer Anthropology Building (2014, Kennedy & Violich Architecture), rear, by the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. |
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| Peabody Museum, Tozzer Anthropology Building entry. Photo by Nicholas Ruhland. |
Tozzer Library and the Tozzer Anthropology Building demonstrate how architecture can foster a community and symbolize its academic goals, in the latter case, and can distance its users and spaces from one another and reduce them to do-the-job utility, in the former. Even the ramp distanced the library from the museum, relegating us library staff to the dull side of the tracks.
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| Peabody Museum (1877), Tozzer Anthropology Building (2014). |
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| Tozzer entrance sign. Photo by Kent Borg. |
The new Tozzer – a finalist for the actual Harleston Parker Medal in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2025 – unifies Harvard's anthropology, archaeology and ethnology departments and their library into a coherent entity, blended internally by atrium light and fluid circulatory spaces and externally by artful brickwork and regular rhythms of fenestration along Divinity Avenue and in the rear courtyard it shares with the museum. This goes beyond thinking outside the box and correcting a big mistake made by an architect who should have stuck to museums. It bridges the Peabody Museum and its new neighbor into the centrally coherent center for studies and exhibits of ancient cultures Harvard needed all along — as did I.
Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!
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