Among the new photos in my computerized collection, one stands out for peculiarity.  It focuses on a toilet. Among the thousands in my files, this is the only bathroom view.

My excuse? This toilet rates as an historical object. In the first four years of the twentieth century, it was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

During his college years at Harvard, FDR lived in a suite of rooms in a building then named Westmorly Court. It formed part of an area popularly known as the Gold Coast, because its elegant apartments attracted students from wealthy families.

In about 1930, these apartments would become absorbed into Adams House, one of Harvard’s undergraduate residences. In recent years, the suite where FDR lived has been brought back to its original appearance and is now established as a memorial to the student who became one of our greatest presidents.

FDR’s roommate during the four years was Lathrop Brown, a fellow graduate of Groton School.  Even more than his friend, Brown was a social gadfly, outdoing Franklin in his party-going and gallivanting with charming young girls.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Brown achieved D grades during his undergraduate career. For his part, FDR managed to win what were then known as gentlemen’s C’s.

In his student days FDR set his heart on the most prestigious undergraduate club, Porcellian, but was refused admission. Geoffrey Ward, a well-known historian, describes this rejection as a “deep humiliation.” Fifteen years later, Roosevelt himself called it “the greatest disappointment of my life.”

However, he did become president of the Crimson, the college’s newspaper—a position that presumably put him in touch with some major national issues. This could have offered an entrance into larger concerns than that of life in the clubs.

As historians have reported, FDR’s mother Sara was a frequent visitor to her son’s rooms and took part in decorating them. He seems to have accepted his mother’s role as appropriate, though for all we know he may have quarreled with some of the material she selected.

The suite was not cramped: it offered some 600 square feet of living space with a 14 foot ceiling. The central area provided space for two desks, and featured a fireplace. Opening from this common room were bedrooms for each roommate, and the bathroom.

Visiting the site for the first time, I expected to feel little if any emotion. Just another sight, I thought, of only passing interest.

However, as I listened to our guide, an alumnus of Adams House and now part of the group that has taken over care of the site, I began to feel moved by the significance of the place.

After all, I belong to a generation to whom Franklin Roosevelt once seemed president forever. Never before or since have we had one who served three full terms, much less part of a fourth.

I was only five years old when FDR was sworn in and seventeen when he died. During that entire period I grew used to hearing his voice, as he delivered his famous “Fireside Chats” and on other occasions, and seeing him in his various roles as our country’s leader. In World War II especially, he loomed large as the one who taught me, like other Americans, how to regard our nation’s friends and enemies.

On the domestic front, too, he transformed the way I looked at the role of government toward its citizens. His agencies and programs with their combinations of letters— CCC, NRA,WPA—would shape my notions about how to provide for the wellbeing of our people.

These thoughts ran through my mind as I walked through the young Roosevelt’s undergraduate suite. I could not but contrast the physically able fellow he was then with the disabled adult he became later, after being stricken with polio.

And I also contrasted the young person of aristocratic habits with the man for whom the welfare of jobless and poor people became a chief concern. Could his friends have then foreseen the creator of the New Deal and the rescuer of depression-saddled America?

At Harvard, he had hardly begun his political education. His values, like those of his wife Eleanor, changed dramatically as he made his way toward the presidency, and even after he assumed office. He managed to put the Gold Coast playboy days far behind him, though historians can still find traces of his upbringing.

If the beginning of this column seems lacking good taste, you can attribute that to archeological interest. The guide informed us visitors that some physical details of the FDR site remain uncertain but others can be established historically.

When a renovation of the suite took place, he told us, some things were brought up to date. The toilet, however, was left as it was. The humblest and most prosaic object in the suite is also the most certainly authentic.