Annual Summer Picnic--In Person!

Sunday August 8,  4:30-6:30 pm
Dogwood Park in Mariemont, Pleasant Street off of Rt. 50/Wooster Pike 
FREE this year to everyone, thanks to our 150th year patrons and member support.

Welcome back to our signature summer event, the Picnic for alumni and students!  Renew ties with alums of all ages. Meet our new freshman class and say hello to our upperclassmen before they all head out to Cambridge.  The event is outdoors with plenty of space.  Sit under the pavilion or bring your  lawn chairs to spread out under the trees.  We recognize there is a mix of vaccination status in our community and viral variants are still circulating.  Use your own discretion for participating in the picnic. Since this is an inclusive event and our first in-person meeting, let's keep a little extra distance and please wear a mask if you are unvaccinated.
 

The Harvard Club will provide hamburgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers hot off the grill along with chips, side dishes, lemonade and tableware.
Alumni please bring a dessert to share.

Please RSVP the number in your party by August 6 with the online RSVP below or by email to Robert Sorscher.

All Harvard University graduates, affiliates and students along with your families are cordially invited. Look for us in the shelter under the Bell Tower after you turn onto Pleasant Street.  Parking is available at the park, at the softball field, on the left side of Pleasant across from the park and on Field House Way.
 

Dogwood Park is in the charming Village of Mariemont, just 15 minutes from Downtown.  Designated a National Historic Landmark community, its tree-lined streets and Tudor-style buildings will remind you of quaint English garden neighborhoods.  Local philanthropist Mary Emery used the fortune she inherited at her husband's death to support the Cincinnati Zoo, catalyze the creation of Children’s Hospital, and build an entire wing of the Cincinnati Art Museum to house art she had collected. Her biggest undertaking, however, was the creation of the “model town” of Mariemont.  Appalled by the unsanitary housing conditions in downtown Cincinnati, she funded a “national exemplar”, which would be planned in every detail to provide its residents with a high quality of life. Mrs. Emery and Charles Livingood, her business manager, hired John Nolen, an internationally known town planner. The village was built in just two years, 1924-26.  Originally intended to include all economic classes, cost overruns drove rents higher than expected and Mariemont developed as a middle-class enclave linked to the job-dense industrial areas of Oakley and Norwood.  Click for a  Walking Tour of Mariemont

Harvard has a strong connection to the area just south of Dogwood Park. This is the Madisonville archeological site, one of the most famous in North America. The site was excavated by Dr. Charles Metz, with financial support and able-bodied students from Harvard's Peabody Museum from around 1887-1913. Miami Bluff Drive follows what may be an ancient serpent mound, with the head surrounding a Native American cemetery at the current site of the Mariemont pool. In 2013, the University of Cincinnati uncovered a Fort Ancient long house just under the bluff dating from 1610-1670.  Mariemont has built a museum to house artifacts from the UC excavations and would like Harvard to return artifacts currently in storage at the Peabody (of course, so would the extant tribes whose ancestors are buried here).