The Quad was built on farmland, basically.
In the area.
And it was the urging of two alumni
that lead to its being placed here.
The marble and granite came from Vermont
and was sent to-- not Harvard, but to New York Public Library.
The public library was about to build, needed the material,
and rejected it because it was of inferior grade.
Vanderbilt and Morgan, in New York,
knew that Harvard was about to build
a new facility because each had given money to it.
So they rescued the granite and marble from Vermont,
brought it via New York City, to this area.
And this building was built on this basis.
When Eliot retired and there was a tribute here in 1909 to him,
they said of him, Mr. President, you
found us brick and left us marble,
a gorgeous statement which you would think
would be a historic first.
Not quite.
We had a woman who was a professor of art history
who worked here.
And she, in fact, remembered that that phrase was first
used in 1200 AD as a tribute to the abbot
of a famous church in France.
Here we were in this new school building,
this gorgeous location, five marble and granite buildings
ringing a quadrangle in a previous farmland.
We had to draw on, if we would, Aristotle, Vesalius, Galen,
Darwin, Mendel, Harvey, the list would be endless.
We had the most famous faculty of Arts and Sciences
in Cambridge for their assistance.
And what could we come up with for these five buildings?
Buildings A, B, C, D, and E. Absolute
disgrace intellectually.
Reversed by Dan Tosteson.
And he was the one who realized that these buildings
and this legacy should have real names connected with it.
So it was he who got this building changed from building
A to Gordon Hall, in honor and gratitude to Alan Gordon, who
was the principal donor.
He was the one who attracted the gift from the Goldenson family,
which will replace Building D, from several other named donors
and started the process of recapturing
the potential naming opportunities here.