Picture Daniel Chester French, working in bronze in 1884, imagining a face for John Harvard with no likeness to guide him. It honors clergyman John Harvard (1607–1638), whose substantial deathbed bequest to the "schoale or Colledge" recently undertaken by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the Colony resolved "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge. There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French took inspiration from a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president.
The statue's inscription — JOHN HARVARD • FOUNDER • 1638 — is the subject of an arch polemic traditionally recited for visitors, questioning whether John Harvard justly merits the honorific "founder. According to a Harvard official, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many, and John Harvard is therefore considered not the founder, but rather a founder, of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution have made him the most honored of these. Tourists often rub the toe of John Harvard's left shoe for luck.
Notice Harvard University's campus stretching out beside you in Cambridge.