Austin Hall (Harvard University) Austin Hall (Harvard University) Austin Hall is a classroom building of the Harvard Law School designed by noted American architect H. H. Richardson. The first building purposely built for an American law school, it was also the first dedicated home of Harvard Law School. It is located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The hall was built 1882–1884 in Romanesque Revival style. Single-story wings flank a heavy, two-story central mass, with the reading room extending rearwards to form an overall T shape. A central entryway framed
Academic regalia of Harvard University matching waistcoat. Members of the University Council, not doctors, or holding no degree from this University, are authorized to wear the doctor's gown with double crow's-foot of the color of the department to which they belong. All graduates' hoods are black lined with crimson silk, and are cut in the Edinburgh simple shape. Unlike most other United States universities, there is no velvet trim. Rank is indicated by the hood length: master's hoods are 42", doctors 48". Harvard bachelors do not wear hoods. The hood was actually the same hood of the Oxford MA that became fossilized in Harvard before