Corporation Approves Initial Mather Plans

The Harvard Corporation has approved preliminary architectual plans that would make Mather House a combination of high and low rise modern buildings.

The House will be constructed behind Dunster House and will include, at one corner of the building site, a tower of about 20 stories. A five-floor smaller structure will be constructed around most of the site's perimeter to form a large inner court yard. Completion of the House is expected by the fall of 1969.

The Corporation had considered moving up the occupancy date to either September 1968 or January 1969. "The Corporation settled on the later date because the architects said that any attempt to push up the occupancy date would mean that there would be less time to spend on the design and to look for the most economical way of building," L. Gard Wiggins, Administrative vice-president, said yesterday.

Finishing the House earlier, however, would have helped relieve an acute room shortage in the eight other residential Houses. The shortage has forced more than 200 undergraduates to move into off-campus apartments this year.

The overcrowding and the movement of students off-campus will almost certainly continue until the new House is finished. It will accomodate about 400 students, with present plans envisioning 30 single rooms, 68 two-man suites, 48 four-man suites, and 8 six-man suites.

$8 Million

The building is being designed by the same architectural firm that did Leverett and Quincy Houses--Shepley, Bullfinch, Richardson, and Abbott.

Cost of Mather House is now estimated at $8 million--exactly $2 million more than the first estimates of expenses when the House was planned in the early sixties. The architects are working to keep the cost within the $8 million limit, but some Harvard officials believe that it will eventually go higher.

Trouble With Estimates

Wiggins emphasized yesterday that the $8 million figure was only an estimate. "It's just a preliminary estimate based on the architects' experience with recent building costs," he said. Harvard has recently had some trouble with estimates; construction of the Cambridge St. underpass, for example, was estimated at $2.8 million, but when actual building bids came in, the lowest was $3.4 million.

Under present plans, complete architectual drawings would be ready by the early summer of 1967. Then the University would ask for bids, and construction should begin by mid or late summer.