Bleak House

The eighth House, until recently but a gleam in the eye of expansion, is fast becoming a tangible if somewhat dubious architectural reality. Judging from recently approved preliminary drawings, Lamont Library and the colossus of Harkness Commons seem to be gaining a spiritual kin.

Those freshmen who survive their first year without acquiring the uncomfortable sensation that Lamont's glassy exterior has begun to grin diabolically at them, will probably regard the prospect of three years in this new edifice with equanimity.

Legend has it, however, that residents of Harkness have taken to the practice of attaching long chains of paper clips to that immense ornament called "The World Tree" for the purpose of dancing ritually about it each spring. They are reportedly spurred on to these rites by growing exasperation at walls which no longer see things molding-to-molding with their respective ceilings, and at the whispered but audible conversations of their next-door neighbors.

Such deficiencies may well be corrected in the new building. What seems unavoidable, however, is that like Lamont and Harkness, the architecture of the eighth House will be hopelessly at odds with the character of New England in general, and Harvard in particular.

Functional planning and flexibility of design are the proudest claims of modern architecture. The era when a Matthews or Weld Hall might rise like some disoriented Phoenix from the bosom of Harvard Yard is supposedly gone forever. Then, in the midst of enlightenment, a great seven-story cliche makes its way to Plympton Street, somewhat naked and completely out of character.

Certainly, the Eighth House has its unique potentialities. There may come a day when all members of the College will come to its walls to contemplate, with humility and compassion, those equally sincere souls who, a century ago, erected Memorial Hall upon the face of the earth and said it was good.