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(Note the FDR Suite Restoration Project respects your privacy. Your email address will not be shared, with anyone, period.)

Study and Research Opportunites

We are actively seeking students, scholars, faculty and other members of the Adams House and greater Harvard communities to help us complete the Restoration Project. Specifically, we are looking for:

• Harvard Athletic life, 1900-1904
• American Interior Design, 1900-1904
• Cambridge/Boston social history 1900-1904
• Cambridge/Boston architectural history 1890-1910
• Harvard Final Clubs
• Harvard/Boston Social History, 1900-1904
• Presidential Politics, 1892-1904
• World Events 1890-1906
• Gender Issues and Development, 1890-1910
• Scientific/Technological Advances 1890-1910
• American Popular Culture 1890-1904
• Art and Art History 1890-1910
• Transportation Advances 1890-1910
• Harvard Academic History, 1890-1910
• Harvard Student Life, 1890-1910
• Harvard Journalistic History, 1890-1910
• Research on music and popular fiction 1900-1904
• A culling of all the references to the Suite from FDR's letters to his parents for online posting
• Research on American Interior Design 1900, especially student rooms
• Harvard Student Life in 1900 culled from the Harvard Archives
• FDR's years at Harvard, a synopsis
• Research help with the actual restoration process; i.e. locating and cataloguing objects for the Suite
• Web help with scanning, editing and posting material
  

We also have quite a number of possibilities on the "back-end" of the project: archival data gathering, web input, architectural design, PR, and other organizational aspects of the effort.

If you would like to participate, please contact Michael Weishan at 508.481.2244 or the Adams House Office at 617.495.2259. You may also email to mweishan at fas dot harvard dot edu.

Fortunately Harvard students were avid scrapebookers during FDR's years, and the Harvard University Archives contains a dozen or so examples brimming with mementos of College student life from 1900-1904, including newspaper clippings, club badges, grades, entrance examination, theater programs, sporting awards, dance cards, even dinner menus. Without primary resources like these, it would be impossible to reconstruct any semblance of FDR's Harvard experience; in fact, most of the illustrations for this site come from scrapbooks like the one above. Which begs the question: without collections of such ephemera, how will historians of the future catalogue the modern generation of students? Somehow an email list pales in comparison to "Cambridge Damsel Causes Riot at Harvard by Removing Circlet and Hurling It From Gallery Into Dining Hall," or an original theater program featuring an up-and-coming actress named Ethel Barrymore in "Cousin Kate." Courtesy: Harvard University Archives