Harvard College Ends Use of Cronkhite Center as Overflow Housing for Quad Residents

Harvard College is no longer housing undergraduates in the Cronkhite Center, College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo confirmed last week, ending a four-year arrangement that placed Radcliffe Quadrangle residents in a former graduate dormitory roughly a 15-minute walk from their Houses.

Cronkhite, located at 84 Brattle St., will again house graduate students, with rooms renting for $1,440 to $1,956 a month.

The center, a graduate dormitory that served as a Covid-19 isolation site during the pandemic, was converted to undergraduate use in fall 2022, when a larger student population led the College to place undergraduates from 11 of its 12 upperclassman Houses in additional buildings. It has since housed students from each of the three Quad Houses — Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer — and has a total capacity of 123.

Palumbo wrote in a statement last week that the College stopped using Cronkhite as overflow because it no longer needed the additional space.

“The simple story here is that we did not need the space,” he wrote.

The Quad’s student population has held roughly steady since the conversion, according to a Crimson analysis of House affiliations listed in Harvard’s alumni directory over the past five years. The number of students in the three Quad Houses jumped by more than 160 between fall 2021 and fall 2022 — from 946 to 1,112 — after pandemic-era deferrals led to an unusually large class. In the years since, the figure has hovered between 1,110 and 1,180.

Several of the Quad Houses also appeared to gain some capacity this year. Cabot increased its availability by 37 beds after several common rooms were converted into bedrooms, according to changes outlined in a document on the House website. Room layout changes in Currier yielded one additional bed, according to the House’s housing lottery pages.

Palumbo declined to comment further on the shifts in House capacity.

Cabot Faculty Dean Ian J. Miller said it was “a gift” to have all of the House’s students and tutors in Cabot proper this year.

“We are especially delighted and I think it’s particularly important to be able to welcome our full cohort of sophomores,” Miller said. “This is the first cohort of sophomores we’ve been able to have entirely within Cabot proper in several years.”

Cronkhite drew mixed reviews from the undergraduates who lived there. The facility does not serve hot food, prompting more than 30 students to petition administrators for a change in 2022.

Haley Muñoz ’27 said she felt “isolated” from the Currier community while living in Cronkhite, which sits between the Quad Houses and River Houses.

“It’s like you’re not quite close enough to the River to hang out there so much, or close enough to the Quad either,” she said. “So regardless of which direction you choose, it’s a walk either way.”

Still, Muñoz said she appreciated having a single as a sophomore.

“It was just really nice having a fairly spacious room all to myself,” she said.

Oyewumi M. Oyeniyi ’28, who lived in Cronkhite while participating in a Harvard summer program, said she found the building “big” and “intimidating.”

“I wouldn’t have minded Cronkhite if the dining hall was a thing, or if it was closer to the rest of the Harvard community,” she said. “But once you got used to it, it was like any other House.”

Clarissa Chong ’29, a Cabot resident, said she was “personally kind of relieved” that sophomores would live in Cabot proper.

“I didn’t really know too much about Cronkhite, but I thought of it as a good thing that everyone was able to stay in Cabot,” she said.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.