The History of the North House Shield

In the spring of 1983, Woody Hastings, the Master of North House, decided it was time for North House (now named Pforzheimer House) to have a house shield. North House was the only Harvard house that did not have one. He appointed Tim Oey to run a contest to design and choose a new house shield.

By the way, Tim has spent most of his career after Harvard as a project/program manager, but the results of this particular project will probably outlast those of all his others (information systems, PowerBooks, Adobe Acrobat).

From a ballot of 4 or 5 entries, the students of North House selected the winning shield. It is depicted below in GIF format in black and white and in color.

Anne Dowden '85 designed the winning shield. It combines various themes including the melding of Harvard and Radcliffe, the balance between men and women, the four major buildings of North House (Comstock, Holmes, Moors, and Wolbach), and the location of North House at the Radcliffe Quad.

This shield rendition came from a scan of the first known official printing of the shield (in black and white) in the 1983-84 North House "face book." Black and white and color vector line art versions are also available. Tim used Abobe Streamline and Adobe Illustrator to create these and the above GIFs. These renditions of the North House shield are all of higher quality then any others Tim has been able to locate.

Permission granted to reprint or excerpt as long as it is attributed to Timothy S. Oey.

Last updated 2001/04/08