Sert Will Retire In 1969 as Dean Of Design School

President Pusey has announced that Jose Luis Sert, renowned architect and Dean of the Faculty of Design, is retiring as dean in June 1969.

Sert, who has been dean since 1953, said yesterday he will return full time to his private practice with the Cambridge firm of Sert-Jackson, which has designed Holyoke Center and Peabody Terrace.

With Sert's retirement, there will be no deans left at Harvard who were appointed by President James B. Conant. Law School Dean Erwin N. Griswold, another appointment of the Conant era, is resigning this month to become United States Solicitor General. When President Pusey, who came here in 1953, names replacements for Sert and Griswold, all of Harvard's deans will be Pusey appointments.

Under the leadership of the Spanish-born architect, the School of Design has expanded in 15 years from 170 students to 270, and from a faculty of under 20 to more than 60. The school's endowment has more than doubled, the yearly budget has been quadrupled, and the amount of money in outside grants has increased about tenfold.

Sert has also worked to make the Design School a national leader in "urban design," a phrase which he belives was coined here. For the past 11 years, Harvard has annually hosted international urban design conferences, "in an attempt," Sert says, "to bridge the gap between city planning and architecture."

"Changes in the Design School must parallel changes in life," Sert said. "With congestion, pollution, and unfit housing in our cities, the architect must team with a cleaned-up waterway--and visions of the utopian sewer society of the future looms before his listeners.

His plan for flood control sounds just as other-worldly. He hopes to build an immense "deep tunnel" 700 feet below ground. Water would flow down there during a storm and would be pumped back up when the danger of flooding had abated. The tunnel would double as a power generator with water being pumped up during slack hours and running down during hours of peak demand for electricity. Engineers say the scheme is feasible, according to Bacon.

On a more modest level, the district is annexing land in Chicago suburbs to build small flood basins. These will only begin use about 20 days a year, Bacon says, and can be used for playgrounds the rest of the year. The project raises an eerie image of a little league game, postponed because the diamond is under 15 feet of water.

Not all the district's difficulties yield to the dramatic plan approach so easily. Even the most efficient treatment plant faces the problem of "sludge disposal"--what to do with the stuff that is taken out of sewage being treated. The conventional approach has been to deposit the good in what are euphemistically called "sanitary lagoons,"but these are understandably unpopular with the lucky ones who live nearby.

The district has been turning its sludge into fertilizer, but the manure demand is declining and this is a losing business to the tune of $45 a ton. And a system of underwater burning which will be installed soon is hideously expensive. The district is buying up farmlands in rural Illinois where they may ship the sludge as land fill, though some trustees think that even talking about this kind of solution frightens residents and makes the problem worse.

Even more serious than the sludge dilemma is Bacon's inability to clean any doorsteps except his own. He points with great pride to the district's record of not adding a drop of pollution in recent years to Lake Michigan, but ten blocks above the district's northern border sits a treatment plant which daily dumps half-cleaned sewage into the lake. And in Gary, Indiana the huge U.S. Steel plant continues to empty its industrial wastes. U.S. Steel has been ordered to stop by the end of 1968, but Bacon doesn't think the date can stand up in court. Last summer, millions of dead alewives mysteriously washed up on the shores of Lake Michigan, and Bacon admits that the dead fish could easily cause more pollution than all his ingenious polices have prevented.

Despite his squabbles with the board this summer, Bacon seems to be getting along with his trustees better than ever before. That's what he says, and the record backs him up; his 10- year program was approved by a 9-0 vote in July.

But the tension is still there. Bacon still wants to rule with an iron hand and still thinks his autocratic personal style necessary to the district's well-being. Asked about one of the trustee's criticism that the ten-year program might cost more than twice Bacon's estimate and might not get his promised federal support, the superintendent snapped, "What the hell does he think it will cost? He ought to say or keep quiet--this is just nitpicking. With the kind of help we've been getting from him we may have trouble getting from him the federal money. But we already have $5 million and the rest of the trustees are helping us along."

And Bacon says, "It may sound immodest, but unless there's somebody in here willing to fight to keep the district clean, it could slip back (into corruption) in six months. Everything is still here--the money and the power to misuse it."

So Bacon continues to hold back the pressing armies of bad government while leading Chicago to a better, cleaner life. If he is scarred by the bomb scare, the tension of often being close to losing his job, and the continuous personal criticism, he does not outwardly show it. All he has to say to the problems his personality creates is "We don't have any solution but to get to work before seven and quite after six to allow time for this silliness and our real business."

The danger lingers though that the board may develop a few more Captain Veres to play opposite his Billy Budd and that the marina-by-the-sanitary-canal may get no farther than the artist's sketch.Vinton W.Bacon isn't as mild-mannered as he looks. His iron hand tactics cleaned up Chicago sewer politics but now threaten to alienate the board whose support he needs.