Ballou Hall

Ballou Hall features a prominent, tiered white spire that rises above the trees on the highest point of the Tufts University campus. Constructed in eighteen fifty-seven, it served as the original building for the college. Hosea Ballou, the university's first president, worked from these rooms when the entire school consisted of only a few professors and a handful of students. During the Civil War, the building provided a rooftop perch for students watching for smoke from distant fires in Boston.