1916 View of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge

This is an extremely rare and possibly the only obtainable example of this c. 1916 William Welles Bosworth bird's-eye view of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The view looks on the original main campus from across the Charles River. Buildings 1-10 (excepting 9) are illustrated to the left of center, with the Great Dome holding a prominent place. The engineering lab is illustrated on the right, with the original athletic field behind it. Large portions of the buildings shown here were never constructed, including the complex behind the main campus buildings and the complex between the engineering building and the main campus.

Dating This View

We believe this view dates from the 1916 alumni reunion organized by the Alumni Association celebrating the Institute's move from the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston to its current location in Cambridge on the banks of the Charles River. The three-day reunion took place in June of that year and celebrated the newly constructed campus as well as said goodbye to the buildings in Boston that had housed MIT for its first fifty years. A souvenir program was created to commemorate the event that included a view of the campus that resembles but is not identical to the view offered here. Because of the commonalities between the view published in the souvenir program and the present view, such as the inclusion the buildings that were never built and the fact that both were published by the Alumni Association, we believe that it is likely that this view was published at the same time.

Publication History and Census

This view was drawn by William Welles Bosworth, the architect responsible for designing MIT's Cambridge campus, and published by the Alumni Association c. 1916. This view is not catalogued in the OCLC and we are aware of only one other example in private hands.