"New contacts, good talk, wide range of friendships flourish when students live in a community, and take their meals in the same dining room, not only with other undergraduates of different classes, types and early associations, but also with the Tutors whom they may meet in off hours at breakfast, lunch or dinner... In short, a House with members of the three upper classes living together, gives an opportunity for contact in cultural surroundings of younger and older undergraduates, and of both with the Tutors, thus promoting a greater interest in things intellectual, supplementing and enhancing formal instruction." ---President A. Lawrence Lowell

Harvard's present House system dates back to the early 1930s, but the idea and ideals behind it stretch back almost as far as the College itself. Across all four centuries of Harvard's history, learning together has meant living together. Ninety-seven percent of all undergraduates live in one of the twelve residential Houses; all undergraduates have a House affiliation. Originally patterned after the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the House system is the product of a long evolution, an adjustment to the exigencies of history, and a constant striving to fulfill those lofty goals of the founders for a true residential college, a "collegiate way of living." The Houses form the foundation for an undergraduate's experience at the College.

From the very beginning, Harvard College has sought to establish a connection between living and learning. The first building erected by Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard, had as its goal "residence and recitation." Called "The Old College," and today known as the first Harvard Hall, commencement was held there for the first time in 1642, with nine graduates, orations in Greek and Latin, and dinner for fifty. The College over the next two-and-a-half centuries grew to a burgeoning population of over twenty-two hundred students.

The outset of the twentieth century saw many of these students living in the well-appointed private dormitories along Mount Auburn Street, the so-called "Gold Coast." These buildings, a dozen of which were built to meet demand, housed the wealthier undergraduates and rented singles for $300 a year and doubles for $500, at a time when College rooms rented for $50-100. As transportation improved, more students lived at home or in other, less costly dormitories.

In 1909, President Lowell assumed office and, with a great dislike of the social divisions he found at the College (which, S. E. Morison wrote in Three Centuries of Harvard, "were based on wealth, school, and Boston Society, rather than on intellectual ability"), he strove to introduce to Harvard a residential system based on those of English universities like Oxford and Cambridge, to halt the College's social disintegration. One of his first actions as President was to require all freshmen to live on campus. As a result, by 1912, the private dormitories' profits fell so much that they entered negotiations to sell their properties to the College. The College thus acquired Claverly Hall, Apley Court, Randolph Hall, and Westmorly Court.

Radcliffe, which was founded as the Harvard Annex in 1879, faced the same crowding questions which Harvard had faced; to accommodate its students on-campus, Radcliffe purchased Philips Field, bounded by Linnaean, Walker and Shepard Streets, and began to build new dormitories. The first, Bertram Hall, was constructed in 1901. Between 1916 and 1928, Lowell built four new freshman halls along the newly-landscaped Memorial Drive, with dining halls, common rooms, and modern suites for one to five students. Lowell's vision of a rich, residential environment was nearing accomplishment. In 1926, however, when the College decided to separate the three upperclasses from the freshmen "to see if some of the old social values of a college education could not be restored," and to build a first "experimental" House (Morison), it did not have the funds to do so. It looked as though President Lowell would have to end his administration without fully realizing his dearest ambition for the College.

The greatest impetus to establishing the present House system came from a Yale graduate. Mr. Edward S. Harkness, Yale '97, had already approached his own school with funds for establishing a system of residential Houses, but found only lengthy debate and no commitment. When Harkness approached Lowell in the fall of 1928, Lowell leapt at the offer and construction began almost immediately. With Harkness's donation of over thirteen million dollars, seven Houses were created: three were newly erected in 1930 (Dunster, Eliot, and Lowell); and in 1931, four new Houses were created from existing halls (Adams, Kirkland, Leverett, and Winthrop). By 1937, Radcliffe had six dormitories. In the next few years, as the number of resident students grew, the main Pforzheimer House buildings were constructed and filled.

As enrollment flourished in the late 1950s, overcrowding in the Harvard Houses threatened the collegiate environment which Lowell had envisioned. The solution came in a major drive in 1957, which resulted in the openings of three new Houses: Quincy in 1959, Leverett Towers in 1960, and Mather in 1970. In 1966, nonresident students began to use Lehman Hall as the new Dudley House.

In 1961, Radcliffe adopted the Harvard House system, regrouping its existing buildings into North, South, and East Houses. These were later consolidated into two Houses (North and South). South was renamed Cabot House in 1984 and North was renamed Pforzheimer House in 1995. Currier House was built in 1970. By 1971, the Houses became co-educational, completing Lowell's dream of forging an institution in which young men and women could come together, free of social divisions, to live and learn together.