Porcellian Club
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Porcellian Club
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| Location | 1320-24 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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| Part of | Harvard Square Historic District (#86003654) |
| MPS | Cambridge MRA |
| NRHP Reference # | 83000824 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | June 30, 1983 |
| Designated CP | July 28, 1988 |
The Porcellian Club is a men-only final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts," or as 1794, the year of the roast pig dinner at which the club, known first as "the Pig Club" was formally founded. The club's motto, Dum vivimus vivamus (while we live, let us live) is literally Epicurean. The club emblem is the pig and some members sport golden pigs on watch-chains or neckties bearing pig's-head emblems. The club was originally started by a group of 30 students from Massachusetts who wanted to avoid the dining halls and their food by roasting pigs.
The Porcellian is the iconic "hotsy-totsy final club," often bracketed with Yale's Skull and Bones, Princeton's Ivy Club, Dartmouth's Sphinx Club, Cambridge's Pitt Club, and Oxford's Bullingdon Club. A history of Harvard calls the Porcellian "the most final of them all."
According to a Harvard Crimson article of February 23, 1887:
This society was established in 1791. It occupies rooms on Harvard street and owns a library of some 7000 volumes. Its members are taken from the senior, junior and sophomore classes about eight from each class. The origin of its name is popularly supposed to be as follows:
In the year 1791, a student brought a pig into his room in Hollis. In those days the window-seats were merely long boxes with lids, used to store articles in. Said student having an antipathy to the proctor who roomed beneath, was accustomed to squeeze piggy's ears and make him squeal whenever said proctor was engaged in the study of the classics. The result would be a rush by the proctor for the student's rooms, where the student was to be found studying (?), peacefully seated on his window-seat. Piggy, in the mean time had been deposited beneath, and no sound disturbed the tranquillity of the scene. On the departure of the hated proctor, a broad grin would spread over the countenance of the joker and in a little while the scene would be repeated with variations. But when it was rumored that his room was to be searched by the faculty, the joker determined to cheat them of their prey. So he invited some of his classmates to the room and the pig being cooked, all present partook of a goodly feast. They enjoyed their midnight meal so much that they determined then and there to form a club and have such entertainments periodically. In order to render historical the origin of the club and also to give it a classic touch, they decided to call it the Porcellian from Latin "porcus."
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