Construction of New Scientific Lab, GE Building Will Start This Spring

Construction plans on the new General Education Building and a new laboratory received final Corporation approval this week, the University announced yesterday.

Funds to finance the GE building will come from the unrestricted bequest, of Allston Burr '89, and the classroom structure will be named the Allston Burr Lecture Hall in his honor.

The laboratory will be called the McKay Applied Sciences Laboratory. Construction on both buildings will begin in the spring, and the contractor's schedule calls for completion within a year.

Varsity Club

Naming the new lecture hall for Burr makes further action on the new Varsity Club which the University announced last spring still less likely since the new hall would in part fulfill the "moral obligation" that proponents of a new Varsity Club claimed the University owed Burr's memory.

Provost Buck said yesterday that the GE building would not consume all of the Burr bequest, and that this use of the funds in no way affected the Varsity Club one way or the other. Estimated cost of the Varsity Club was $250,000.

The only word from the University since last spring on the Varsity Club came from vice-President Reynolds in November, when he said that a government ruling limiting recreation halls "may well prevent the building of the new Varsity Club."

The lecture hall will be built on Quincy Street, facing Fogg Museum and the Cambridge Fire Station.

One School of Education building, and the building which houses the Russian Research Center will be torn down to make way for the new General Education building.

Of modern design, the building's two large lecture halls will appear as interlocking arcs in the exterior form of the structure. Burr will be the Colleges first new classroom building since 1905, when Emerson was built. Two large lecture halls will accommodate 377 and 210 students.

The McKay Laboratory will be built opposite Mallinckrodt. It is being paid for out of interest from the Gordon McKay bequest for the support of applied science, one of Harvard's largest endowments. The building will provide three floors of flexible laboratory space, devoted primarily to advanced study and research in engineering and applied science