Hollis and Stoughton Halls and Holden Chapel

   Two freshman dormitories, Hollis Hall (1763) and Stoughton Hall (1805), face the statue of John Harvard across the Old Yard. Former inhabitants include Al Gore, Tommy Lee Jones, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Charles Bulfinch.
   Dents and pockmarks dot the bricks in front of both halls. Legend holds that before central heating, students heated their rooms with cannon balls warmed in their fireplaces. When spring arrived, students threw their "heaters" out the windows, denting the sidewalks below.
   Nearby Holden Chapel (1744) is the third-oldest building in the Yard. From 1744 to 1766 and again from 1769 to 1772 students used the space for morning and evening prayers. However, the chapel also hosted secular activities. In 1755, John Winthrop, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, delivered two lectures on seismology in the Chapel, explaining earthquakes as natural phenomena rather than as emblems of divine discontent. In 1783 the Medical School used the Chapel as a place to perform autopsies. Today, many of Harvard's choral groups use the space as a headquarters.