Architecture
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
The only building in North America designed by Le Corbusier — a brutalist masterpiece.
Harvard Square
30 minutes - 1 hour
Free
All Attractions
Architecture
Explore Cambridge's remarkable architecture — from MIT's Frank Gehry Stata Center to Harvard's Memorial Hall and colonial homes along Brattle Street.
5 attractions in Cambridge
Cambridge is an open-air architecture museum. You can walk from a 17th-century colonial house to a Frank Gehry building in ten minutes. MIT alone has buildings by Gehry, I.M. Pei, Eero Saarinen, Alvar Aalto, and Steven Holl. Harvard's campus spans 400 years of architectural styles.
Insider Tip: Walk Brattle Street from Harvard Square to see "Tory Row" — grand colonial and Federal-style homes that once belonged to wealthy Loyalists during the Revolution. Longfellow's house is the highlight.
Architecture
MIT Chapel
Eero Saarinen's luminous cylindrical chapel — a modernist meditation on light and water.
Kendall Square
15 - 30 minutes
Free
Architecture
Kresge Auditorium
Eero Saarinen's thin-shell concrete dome resting on just three points — engineering as art.
Kendall Square
15 - 30 minutes (exterior); varies for events
Free to view exterior; event tickets vary
Architecture
Baker House (Alvar Aalto)
Alvar Aalto's serpentine dormitory along the Charles River — Finnish modernism in Cambridge.
Kendall Square
15 - 30 minutes (exterior)
Free (exterior only)
Architecture Featured
Ray and Maria Stata Center
Frank Gehry's wildly deconstructivist building — tilting towers that look ready to topple.
Kendall Square
15 - 45 minutes
Free
Frequently Asked Questions
MIT Stata Center (Frank Gehry), MIT Chapel (Eero Saarinen), Harvard Memorial Hall (Gothic Revival), Baker House (Alvar Aalto), Simmons Hall (Steven Holl), and the Carpenter Center (Le Corbusier's only building in North America). It's one of the densest collections of notable architecture anywhere.