Isaiah 26:2 (Holy Bible, King James Vers.) - 1875 Gate, Harvard University - Cambridge, MA - Etched in Stone on Waymarking.com

In Cambridge, along Massachusetts Avenue, is the 1875 Gate allowing access between Harvard Square and Harvard University, that has a quote from the bible on the outside face.

The gate is part of the brick wall that separates the main campus of the academic institution from the bustling commercial establishments. It is on the east side of Massachusetts Avenue.

There is text on both sides. the quote is on the face toward Massachusetts Avenue, over the arch. The text is as follows:

"Open ye the gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in"

This quote is from the Holy Bible, King James Version, Isaiah 29:2.

The following is from an article about the gates:

"1875 Gate . . . Its designer, Charles F. McKim of the Boston architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, may have had in mind a symbolic union of the two great sources of Western civilization – Hebrew and Greek – when he chose to combine the words of the prophet with an emphatically classical style of architecture.

Two Doric columns frame the gate. As a student at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, McKim would have had a thorough grounding in the history and meaning of the architectural orders and would have known that the plain, sturdy Doric is considered masculine in style and appropriate to structures with military connotations. In 1900, when the gate was built, Harvard was still an intensely male place, and perhaps McKim envisioned the gate as an invitation to young men to take on the rigorous intellectual, moral, and physical training that would prepare them to soldier on through the vicissitudes of life.

Another interesting thing about the 1875 Gate is that when Strauss Hall was built in 1926, the gate was moved 50 feet to the south."

Address: Harvard University Massachusetts Avenue Website: [Web Link]

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