THE HARVARD ANNEX 221 
of the Executive Committee again made an appeal which 
met with a sufficient response to enable the Annex by the 
following September to leave Appian Way and begin the 
year in the Fay House. 
It would have been difficult to find in Cambridge at the 
time more suitable quarters for an institution of which Mrs. 
Agassiz was the president. Associated with the traditions 
of such a life as she herself represented, it made an admira- 
ble setting for the young college that she was fostering. No 
Radcliffe building of later days can have the indescribable 
charm that the Fay House possessed when the Annex was 
first domiciled there. As had been intended its character 
as a private dwelling remained so far as possible unaltered 
and stimulated those qualities in the students that were 
most desired for them by the wise administrators of the 
simple arrangements. For a time before Judge Fay had 
bought the house, it had been somewhat romantically 
called “Castle Corner,” but the Annex preserved the 
name of Fay, which has been retained throughout the 
history of the college. 
The investment in this piece of property inaugurated a 
distinctly new phase in the development of the Annex. Its 
importance is explained in Mrs. Agassiz’s address at Com- 
mencement in 1886: 
I cannot meet you on this first commencement in 
the new house which has given us all such a sense of 
security without feeling that this has been an event- 
ful and happy year in our little community. There 
are some few of the students here who remember with 
me the poverty of our earlier years. And it was per- 
haps well that our experiment began under such bare 
