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 LANGDELL HALL

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LANGDELL HALL AND THE EARLIER BUILDINGS OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL BY EUGENE WAMBAUGH ANEW building, Langdell Hall, was in the autumn of 1907 added to the facilities of the Harvard Law School. It is about seventy-five feet to the northeast of the old building, Austin Hall, and con nected with it by a subway. As the law school uses both of these buildings, and as Walter' Hastings Hall, about seventy-

rapidly over the buildings and the history which preceded it. It was in 1815 that the first professorship of law was filled at Harvard. This pro fessorship was the fruit of a gift by a testator whose will, made many years earlier, had been influenced by the creation of the Vinerian professorship at Oxford. Naturally enough,

DANE HALL, 1832 TO 1845 Gift of Hon. Nathan Dane

five feet to the northwest of Austin and parallel with Langdell, is largely occupied by law students, there is now something like a law school quadrangle, giving an approxi mation architecturally, as there has long been an approximation otherwise, to the attitude of a distinct institution within the university. In fact, the buildings successively occupied by the law school have always borne some relation to the school's history and condition. Hence, before describing Langdell Hall, it seems worth while to run

the first Royall professor at Harvard, Isaac Parker, like the first Vinerian professor at Oxford, Blackstone, began his professorial career by addressing somewhat popular lectures to college undergraduates, who may or may not have intended to enter upon the profession of law. This was not professional training, did not call for the segregation of students, did not call for a collection of books, and did not call for a building; and hence there was no building for several years.