Vanserg Hall

NESTLED in a small tract of land off Francis Ave. behind the Biology Labs and in front of the Divinity School sits Harvard's strangest building. Outside, in the shadow of the labs, a little mob of preschool children are running around a makeshift, fenced-in playground. "YARD RULES," a nearby sign reads: "Smacking the windows is not allowed. Sand stays in the sandbox and off the slide...."

VANSERG HALL was hastily built in 1943 by the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development as a radar laboratory. The architectural firm of Coolidge, Shepley, Bullfinch and Abbott, which under one name or another designed all the River Houses, departed from the neo-Georgian elegance that characterized their earlier work for Harvard and put together a plain three-story structure with a flat roof and red shingles.