16-Month Task of Erecting Library Begun Last Week

One more distraction for the aspiring summer scholar will be the temptation to indulge in sidewalk engineering at the southwest corner of the Yard, where the ground was broken last week for construction of the new $1,500,000 Lamont Undergraduate Library.

Small comfort to Wigglesworth occupants is the information that digging and demolition of surrounding earth, trees, sidewalks, and gates will continue throughout the summer. Construction plans call for four levels of subterranean stacks and reading rooms, necessitating the digging of a 34-foot excavation before actual building begins.

Trucks in and Out

While a steady flow of trucks hauls this excavation to the other side of the Charles, another crew will be at work rooting up the old and hallowed Dana-Palmer House in preparation to moving it bodily across Quincy Street to a position between the Union and the Faculty Club.

Dudley Gate likewise is to be a victim of the new library, and is now in the process of demolition to make way for re-routing the network of paths between the Yard and the Union. The entire process of demolition and building will take an estimated 16 months, with the fall of 1948 called for as completion time.