Institute of Geographical Exploration

Alexander Hamilton Rice was a geographer and explorer with two Harvard degrees (A.B. 1898, M.D. 1904), who specialized in rivers. It was said of him that he knew headwaters as other men knew headwaiters. In 1915, Rice married Eleanor Elkins Widener, a survivor of the Titanic, whose money had given Harvard its Widener Library.

In 1929, Rice offered to build Harvard an Institute of Geographical Exploration at 2 Divinity Avenue if in return he was named its director and appointed a professor. The Harvard Corporation and President Lowell agreed to this deal.

In 1948, Harvard President James B. Conant declared that geography was not a proper subject for the university, and closed the Geography Department. In anger, Rice withdrew his support of the Institute and the university closed it down in 1952. The Harvard-Yenching Institute and Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations took over the building around 1957.