BLUE COLORING IN YARD RETURN TO OLD CUSTOM

The sky blue paint which has just made its appearance on the dial on the walls of Massachusetts Hall and under the eaves of Holden Chapel, startling as it seems to passersby on Massachusetts Avenue, is in reality no innovation but a return to the color scheme originally employed when the buildings were first constructed two centuries ago.

The original bright blue paint faded long ago. Then it was covered over with the brown or white paint common to the buildings of the Yard during the past century.

It was only recently that the architects in charge of cloistering the Yard, feeling that some contrast to the brick red and slate gray of the new dormitories was necessary, inspected some eighteenth century prints of the Yard, now hanging in the President's office in University Hall and discovered that the tympanum of Holden and the clock on Massachusetts were there depicted as blue.

The painted dial on Massachusetts is, however, but an imitation of the original clock which was long since, transferred to the tower of the First Parish Church across the street.

At present the background of the space formed by the eaves of Holden Chapel are being painted this same light blue, the elaborate scroll being left white. The same combination of colors will also be carried out on the lintel of the entrance to the chapel. Here again the background will be blue while the bas-relief oxheads will be painted in the contrasting white.