Room by Room: Adolphus Busch Hall at the Harvard Art Museums

Located just steps away from the Harvard Art Museums’ new building at 32 Quincy Street and across from Harvard Yard, Adolphus Busch Hall is a spectacular indoor-outdoor venue in Cambridge.  It’s a memorable space, with a stone-paved outdoor garden with a petite bubbling fountain, vine covered walls, and statues overlooking the garden’s greenery. Step inside the hall and the arched ceilings and medieval-inspired architecture, statues, and echoing rooms will command your attention.

Adolphus Busch Hall was designed in the early 1900’s for Harvard’s Germanic Museum and is near Harvard Yard. When the building opened in 1921, the museum had evolved into the Busch-Reisinger Museum, the only museum in North America dedicated to the study of all modes and periods of art from central and northern Europe, with an emphases on German-speaking countries.

Today, the bulk of the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s collection, renowned for its Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, 1920s abstraction, and materials related to the Bauhaus, is housed at 32 Quincy Street.  Adolphus Busch Hall continues to house the founding collection of medieval plaster casts. The hall is also a venue for daytime concerts during the academic year on its famous D. A. Flentrop pipe organ.

For an after-hours event at the hall, the possibilities are limitless. The hall is as unique as it is enchanting and this unique wedding venue and corporate venue can accommodate intimate groups of up to 80 people. Guests can explore the recently restored murals by Lewis Rubenstein in the front room and the medieval and Renaissance statuary throughout the adjoining other rooms while they dine on a custom menu reminiscent of medieval times or play with a juxtaposing theme of modernity and Renaissance. Celebrate a VIP dinner within the hall with a mix of colorful linen and flatware and wow your guests with an elevated evening. Or, have a one-of-a-kind wedding ceremony that utilizes the surrounding metal woven gates and stone arch that encircles the organ as the wedding aisle.

Adjoining the inner Adolphus Busch Hall, the lush and blossoming courtyard is a beautiful oasis filled with charm and serenity. With a gentle fountain, open greenery, and intricate statues throughout, it’s the perfect place for a garden party-style reception with a raw bar station or an elegant space for cocktails and networking. Available seasonally, guests can look forward to enjoy this outdoor addition or separately as a warm weather respite and twist on traditional cocktail reception, garden party, or outdoor wedding ceremony.

Contact Us