University Might Build Apartments for Faculty

The University will build a co-operative apartment house for members of the Faculty if it finds that they are sufficiently interested in the idea.

A questionnaire being prepared in the planning office will be mailed to younger Faculty members near the end of January. Most of the questions in the poll will be the same as those put to graduate students before the construction of the Married Students Center.

"I have a strong feeling that it would be good to have more Faculty members living in Cambridge," President Pusey said yesterday at a press conference. He noted that a number of Faculty members had shown themselves anxious to move back to Cambridge from the suburbs.

Present Facilities "Miniscule"

The new co-op apartment would dramatically enlarge Harvard's Faculty housing facilities, described by L. Gard Wiggins, administrative vice-president, as "miniscule." The University owns about 15 houses that it rents to Faculty members and also operates the Botanic Garden Apartments on Garden St.

In an interview yesterday, Wiggins said that plans for the new apartment were still in the preliminary stages, although the project had been under discussion for five or six years.

He said, however, that the Administration favored two- or three-story garden apartments rather than another high-rise building like the Married Students Center. Rents will probably be set at commercial levels, he said, since the apartments are expected to be self-supporting.

No site for the building has only been chosen, but the University has only a limited choice because few of the lots it owns are suitable. Two possible locations are in the Houghton district, south-east of the Square, and near the Divinity School.