Quincy House
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This is an article about the residential house at Harvard. For the graduate house in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC, see Quincy House (Brookland).
Quincy House is one of the twelve upperclass residential houses of Harvard University, located on Plympton Street between Harvard Yard and the Charles River. Quincy House was named after Josiah Quincy III (1772–1864), president of Harvard from 1829 to 1845. It is the largest of the twelve undergraduate houses.
Quincy House was the first house built at Harvard since the original seven river houses, and opened in 1959. It is made up of three buildings, each in a different style of architecture:
- Old Quincy, a neo-Georgian building originally called Mather Hall, which was part of Leverett House until 1960;
- New Quincy, an eight-story modern residential structure with an adjoining two-story wing that includes the house dining hall and a separate protuberance containing the house library;
- The 20 DeWolfe St. residence hall, a brick structure with a double mansard roof of lead coated copper.
Famous Quincy alumni include Phil Bredesen, Rob Cohen, Lou Dobbs, Douglas Feith, Benjamin Schoefer, Welton E. Blount, Jr., Jamie Gorelick, and Tom Ridge.
The house mascot of Quincy House is the Penguin, which was born unto the house in the spring of 2005, selected in a vote over such nominees as the puma, bull terrier, and horse-thing. Shortly thereafter, the fearless, though not particularly fear-inspiring, Penguin led Quincy house to victory in the inter-house dodgeball championship, to much rejoicing. The penguin mascot comes from the movie Fight Club; in the scenes where Edward Norton's character is told to go to his 'cave' and find his 'comfort animal,' he finds and follows a penguin. The penguin is now Quincy House students' comfort animal.
The current co-Masters of Quincy House are Robert Kirshner and his wife Jayne Loader, but they are on leave for the 2006-2007 academic year. Serving as interim house masters are Lee Gerhke and Deb Gerhke.
