Imagine living in a 200-bedroom house with a private courtyard, a team of chefs and a fully equipped gymnasium. It would boast a library with a renowned collection, game rooms, movies, a dining room decorated with enormous chandeliers and an extended family of about 500 people.

You don't have to be Richie Rich to enjoy all this--just the child of a Harvard house master.

"I like to explore and stuff on the fifth floor and try to find the roof," says nine-year-old Antonia M. Nagy, daughter of Currier House master Gregory Nagy. And she says she also likes to roller skate down the halls of Currier.

According to his father, 15-year-old Mark Hanson, son of the Dudley House masters, enjoys playing pick-up basketball at the Malkin Athletic Center. And his brother Nathaniel, 12, says his pool game has definitely improved as a result of his playing at Dudley House's Lehman Hall.

Others masters' children take advantage of the country's second largest library--but not to study.

"The children loved to jump around Widener," says Jana M. Kiely, co-master of Adams and mother of four. "The bench around it was like a gym for them."

She says her youngest daughter Maria, who has spent all her 12 years living in a residential house, still loves to play "stone to stone" in front of the Science Center.

Masters' children also say undergraduates often make great playmates. "Once I was playing Indians with a student, and I got so into it I built a play fire at his feet and then tied him to a tree and left him there," 20-year-old Christina T. Kiely '91 says. The victim missed all of his afternoon classes, and father Robert J. Kiely scolded her, telling her never to tie anyone up again, she says.

In addition to providing the biggest playground and the most patient playmates around, Harvard offers children a unique cultural environment.

"We always took them to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and then to plays and concerts when they got older," says Co-Master Kiely. "The children also loved the Indian exhibit and the glass flowers at the Peabody Museum."

Kiely's third daughter, Christina, is now a Harvard junior, but she got an early start on her extracurricular activities at Harvard: "I was in The Beggar's Opera with my father when I was four or five," she says. She says she never got to see the end of the show because her mother always whisked her off to bed after her brief appearance on stage.

Glass designer Karen R. Hastings, the daughter of North House Master J. Woodland Hastings, sang in the North House Opera while in high school. She says that being a master's child let her benefit from Harvard life, even though she was never a student here. "I was exposed to a broader world at a younger age," she says. "A lot of interesting people were always coming to talk."

Older and More Interesting Friends

And there are social advantages to having older and more interesting friends than their peers.

"In fifth grade I began to really get into it--you know the toga parties and stuff," says Laszlo P. Nagy, 12, whose parents are the masters of Currier House.