Adams House is one of the twelve undergraduate houses at Harvard University, located between Harvard Square and the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It consists of five buildings, three of which were originally private "Gold Coast" dormitories built around 1900 to provide luxurious accommodation for rich Harvard undergraduates. These three, Randolph Hall, Claverly Hall, and Westmorly Cou
rt, along with the white clapboarded Apthorp House (1760), one of the most distinguished Colonial residences of Cambridge – and now the Master's residence – predate the rest of Harvard's Houses by several decades, and are among the most interesting and architecturally significant structures in the House system. The fifth building, Russell Hall, completed in 1932, was the last one to be funded by a gift from Edward Harkness. Its former residents include Franklin Roosevelt, Buckminster Fuller, William Burroughs, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., Henry Kissinger, Bernard Law, Martin Feldstein, and William Weld. John Kennedy met with his senior thesis adviser in the Coolidge Room. Aaron Copland lived in the House as a guest. More recently, Fred Gwynne, Peter Sellars, John Lithgow, and Donal Logue have lived in Adams and added to its reputation as a haven for the performing arts. Like all the other Houses at Harvard, Adams possesses its own coat of arms: Adams' is derived from an 1838 seal ring of John Quincy Adams. James Finney Baxter, the House's first master, changed the background to gold to symbolize the Gold Coast, and added four additional oak sprigs to the original one to represent the five buildings of Adams House. Its official heraldic designation is: "Or, five sprigs of oak acorned in saltire, Gules." The House motto, "Alteri Seculo," is taken from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations: "He who plants trees labors for the benefit of future generations."
