LOWER GROUND AROUND NEW FRESHMAN HALLS

In the early spring, when the ground around the new Freshman Dormitories will have been sufficiently cleared of bricks, boards, broken slates and other trash, and soft enough to permit easy digging, extensive grading operations will be begun to lower the ground behind Widener Library and Boylston Hall to a level with the first floor of the new dormitories. The job will probably be done by the present contractors, who excavated the site.

The ground between Wadsworth House and Quincy Street along Massachusetts Avenue is far from level. There is a dip inside the gates of about four feet behind the southwestern corner of Widener Library. On the Massachusetts Avenue side at this point the first floor of the dormitories is on the street level, but thirty feet away, on the other side of the building, the bottom of a door to an entry is three feet below the ground. This uneveness will be corrected throughout, with enough extra grading to allow for a step and threshold to each entry. Where the doors are above the ground will be filled in to allow for an equal number of steps. These operations will allow for daylight in the basements, which now are in places quite under ground.

A considerable section has been cut away from the hill which lies between the southeast corner of Widener Library making a jagged escarpment more than a dozen feet high through the bed rock. This will be levelled off and steps or terraces planted with shrubbery will be constructed. It is hoped that these operations will be completed, and the ground covered with grass at the time of occupation of the new dormitories.