Stilts

Thre is something magical about a fifteen story building on stilts, somethings that incites usually complacent city planners and historians almost to wrath, that brings a far-off look to the eyes of businessmen. Think now, a solution to the MTA bus problem with elevators and a terminal, a solution to the Square parking problem by addition of nearly 150 spaces. Think now, fiften stories to bring over one thousand more consumers and friends to Cambridge, to add great sums to the tax base. Think, all this at the cost of a walled-in strip of grass, where cows cannot possibly graze without imperiling their lives, grass whose only value is that once a handful of troops gathered there to march to Bunker Hill. Nothing could be more in the public interest than John Briston Sullivan's proposal.

Few people with a sense of civic responsibility can oppose the idea of such an enterprise. No one untainted by hypocrisy can oppose the building on aesthetic grounds. Architecture in the Square is not part of a scheme whose innate unity would be destroyed by the addition of even a very small eyesore. A fifteen story building on stilts would probably not help, but could hardly hinder, the classic beauty of the area.

The only practical objection to the Sullivan building is that of location. With or without the buses, the traffic situation in the Square is a shambles. Without studying traffic patterns, as the University has suggested, one would think that the situation at rush hours could hardly degenerate. Yet it could. Over 200 cars entering and leaving a structure almost in the middle of the Square, and still others stopping to take home another part of the building's occupants added to those merely passing through would just jam.

The traffic snarl that such a building would obviously generate is sufficient reason for its construction elsewhere. If Mr. Sullivan is really interested in helping Cambridge, and, more particularly the Square, to solve traffic problems, to attract more business, and to develop parking facilities, he might consider erection of his building on stilts in one of the nearby undeveloped areas of the city. Of course, public land costs somewhat less than private holdings. But the difference in price is not so great as to warrant abandonment of the project. It is a wonderful idea.