Biography of a bronze
The John Harvard Statue has been part of University iconography since 1884. But here are a few things you may not know about the young man depicted in bronze: He has a mustache (look closely); he is wearing a skullcap; there are tassels at his collar, and roselike decorations dress up his plain Puritan shoes. Then there are the hard-to-see books scattered under the statue’s chair, companions to the single volume on his lap. (It’s not a Bible.) Meanwhile, everyone knows that the statue’s handsome features were modeled on those of Sherman Hoar, Class of 1882, a Concord native with deep New England roots. (His great-grandfather, Roger Sherman, signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And he was related to Leonard Hoar, Harvard’s fourth president.) But not everyone knows that Sherman lent only his face to the project; the body was modeled after a cash-strapped Oxford graduate who offered...