Currier House is one of twelve undergraduate residential Houses of Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Opened in September 1970, it is named after Audrey Bruce Currier, a member of the Radcliffe College Class of 1956 who, along with her husband, was killed in a plane crash in 1967. The area was formerly used as housing for Radcliffe College, and as such the four towers of Currier House are named for distinguished alumnae of Radcliffe, including the author Barbara Tuchman and composer Mabel Daniels. Along with Cabot House and Pforzheimer House, Currier is part of the former Radcliffe Quadrangle, known colloquially within the college as simply, "The Quad".
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Beginning in September 2008, Currier House will welcome new Housemasters Richard Wrangham and Elizabeth Ross. Wrangham and Ross first came to the United States after living in Great Britain. Wrangham has taught courses in human evolutionary biology and anthropology since 1989. Ross, whose academic background is in immunology, is the founder and executive director of the Kasiisi Project, a non-profit in western Uganda. The Allston Burr Resident Dean is Laura Johnson. Previous masters have included scholar of Islam and current Dean of Harvard Divinity School William A. Graham, chemist and Nobel laureate Dudley R. Herschbach, and classicist Gregory Nagy.
Because of its distance from most of the other residential houses, its physical layout (which places most of the house's social space near the entrance), and its small size (it has the smallest population of any house), many Currier residents consider the house to have one of the strongest and most cohesive house communities of Harvard's residential houses. Students routinely rank Currier's dining hall highest among Harvard dining halls in food quality. In 2005, Currier renovated a common space known as the "Fishbowl" to create an entertainment center complete with a big screen projector and surround sound system. In early 2006, Currier painted many of its interior walls to produce a more colorful atmosphere.
Most of Currier's bedrooms are single bedrooms connected by a sinkroom or full private bathroom, a rarity at Harvard (where most dormitories date to the 1920s and are now relatively crowded.) The house is also known for the "Ten-Man," a suite of ten single bedrooms surrounding the largest in-suite common room at Harvard College.
In 2004-2005, Currier House won the Straus Cup for the first time in over twenty years. The cup is given to the house that scores the most points in intramural athletic competition during the school year.
Student Government in Currier House consists of the Currier House Committee, of which all house residents are members. The committee operates separate from the Harvard Undergraduate Council, to organize student events and manage funding. The Currier HoCo, as the other student government organizations in the Houses, are funded by the UC and maintained by an executive council run my students in leadership positions. Elections for the two Chair positions, as well as all other social organization positions, are held every January during the Super Bowl Halftime show, broadcast in the Fishbowl common space. The two HoCo co-chairs are James Sanghyun Yoon and Archana Vamanrao.
Famous alumni include Paul Attanasio, Michael Chertoff, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Caroline Kennedy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Alan Khazei, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Gates and Ballmer met in Currier House, where the two lived on the same floor,[1] and formed a friendship that later led Gates to recruit his college friend to join his budding software company.[2] Gates also described during his 2007 commencement address at Harvard how he initiated one of his first software deals while making a call from his room in Currier House.[3]
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