Buildings and Grounds: A Key for Every Door

The steeple jack, painting the spire of Memorial Church, is a rare sight in the Yard, not because the University allows its buildings to become run down, but because he is not a regular employee of the Department of Buildings and Grounds. With a year-round crew of 350 workers and a budget of over a million dollars to finance maintenance operations, the Department seldom has to contract outside help for any type of repair work on University property.

In its unimpressive converted factory building across from Dunster House on Memorial Drive, a staff, is always on duty, ready to meet any University catastrophe--broken water pipes, faulty electrical circuities, and crossed telephone wires. Equally important, however, are the constant long-term alterations and improvements of University buildings and grounds.

The main building of the University's vast maintenance system, remodeled after its purchase from the Sterling Knitting Mills in the 1930s, is the headquarters of an organization so large that is cannot keep statistical records of the supplies it requires each year.

"Anything you mention around here is the thousands. It would be too costly and impractical to keep track of all the pipe, lumber, and other materials we use," explains Cecil A. Roberts, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. Thus, while maintenance crews record the supplies they use on individual jobs, the central office does not tally the totals from the forms turned in each day.

Every field of maintenance necessary to run and improve the physical make-up of the University is represented in the Memorial Drive building. From the basement to the third floor, separate shops handle painting; upholstery, shades and furniture; refrigeration; pipe and plumbing; roofing.

In addition, there are machine, electric and sheet metal shops, and a wood-working mill. A key shop, which makes thousand of keys each year, contains a copy of every one of the keys in the University--estimated in the tens of thousands, is located on the second floor. "A student could go anywhere if he ever got into this vault," Roberts notes.

Three other centers supplement the headquarters, and spread out the system's manpower so that there are rarely more than forty workers in the main building at any one time. These offices, located in the Medical School, the Business School, and in the basement of Walter Hastings Hall, have repair shops of their own, and take most of the load off the central plant's facilities in their respective areas, besides serving as base points for the buildings and grounds maintenance crews.

It is impossible to estimate how much Buildings and Grounds saves the University each year. The Department is in charge of 194 buildings, ranging in size from Widener to the Nursery School on Kirkland street. "We have so many jobs and so much to do that we are unable to estimate how much more efficient we are than private firms would be under similar working conditions," Roberts says.

"At present, I am attempting to raise our efficiency, however," he adds. During the past month, Roberts has been moving the offices of most of the department, which he will head after present director Irving B. Parkhurst retires on July 1, into the Memorial Drive building. Only the three supplementary maintenance centers, and one connected office will remain outside the plant; offices in Dudley and Grays will be vacated. This reorganization will place the University's engineers, construction designers, telephone supervision crews, and office workers under his personal direction. A windowless cement blockhouse will be added for storage.

The Department is now engaged in its second year of a three-year furniture refurbishing program in the Yard and Houses. Desks, tables, chairs are either being replaced by new furniture, or are being completely overhauled. Although the new furniture is purchased, the Department would make it, too, if it could do so more cheaply. "We are constructing special desks right now for the Medical School for less than purchase price," Roberts explains.

"There will always be work for us to do," he adds. "The physical plant of Harvard is a very dynamic thing. It will never stand still." Besides their long term projects, crews must constantly inspect the University. Chairs, and sometimes desks and doors must be repaired after big weekends--at the expense of the students involved,--and equipment which simply succumbs to old age must also be replaced or repaired.

The Department's employees, paid on an hourly basis, never face the possibility of being laid off in a slack period--one never occurs. Because of this constant work, the University rarely calls on outside help, except in such unusual cases as the Memorial Church painting, when special skills are required.

Mistakes in such a large organization are unavoidable. Last fall, for example, the keys made for the new Yard mailboxes, did not fit. But the error, like others, has been rectified, in the usual efficient manner and the Department of Buildings and Grounds' day-to-day work continues; from a new coat of paint for a faded room in Weld, to the remodeling of a wing at the Medical School.