First Round at City Council Goes to Dietz In the Fight to Knock Out Coop Bridge

Sheldon Diets '41 won the Battle of the Bridge yesterday, but the City Council decided to play the whole war over again.

Dietz paraded an architect, a former State Representative from Cambridge, and a landscaping architect before the City Council, which voted 4-4 on the Harvard Cooperative Society's petition for a bridge over Palmer St. A two-thirds vote was required.

But then the Council decided to recommit the petition to the Finance Committee, and the whole process of hearings and arguments between the Coop and Dietz, who is a part owner of a building on Palmer St., probably will begin again.

The Coop wants the bridge to connect the second and third floors of its $2 million textbook annex, now under construction, to its main building.

Dietz has contended that the bridge will block air and light on Palmer St. and make it a second-rate pedestrian way. The Coop has contended that the bridge is necessary for customer and supply flow between its two buildings.

Testimony from Dietz and his cohorts convinced at least one City Councillor to vote against the Coop's petition.

While Dietz, his two architects, and former Rep. William P. Homans Jr. '41 explained their opposition to the bridge, the Coop's lawyer, Phillip M. Cronin '51, sat silently in the audience.

The Cambridge Planning Board had recommended that the Coop's petition be approved after the Coop agreed to some design changes.

However, Dietz's architect, Joseph L. Eldredge '49, contended that the value of the Harvard Square area is its pleasant, little side streets" and that the Coop should work to improve Palmer St., not destroy it by building the bridge.

Homans said he opposed the Coop's petition because it "plainly violates the soning code." He told the Council that only a special bill, passed last year by the Massachusetts state legislature, allowed the Coop to build the bridge. Cambridge's building code, he said, prohibits any building to extend beyond the curb line of the City.

"Is it good public policy" for the Council to permit the legislature to make specific exceptions to the City's building code? he asked. He appealed for uniform code enforcement and said that when exceptions are made, they should be made by the City, not the legislature.

Councillor Alfred M. Vellucci, who moved that the Coop's request be sent to the Finance Committee, said that the new textbook annex would bring the City considerable tax revenue.