Quincy House Gains Young Neighbors

Harvard will soon have some new neighbors--about 300 Cambridge elementary school children attending their daily classes across the street from Quincy House.

Construction of the temporary building which will house the students is proceeding satisfactorily, Cambridge School Superintendent Edward A. Conley told the School Committee this week, and the children should be able to move in by Nov. 1.

The children, all from the Houghton School, will attend classes in the "relocatable classrooms" for about 2 years, while their new school--The Martin Luther King Jr. School--is under construction. The Houghton School, located near Putnam Ave., will be demolished to make way for the King School on the same site.

The temporary classrooms are being put up on a lot at the corner of DeWolf and Grant Streets. Harvard and the Archdiocese of Boston--the co-owners of the lot--have loaned it to the City for the classrooms.

Last spring, the City government was divided over whether to build the relocatable classrooms, or to adopt the supposedly less expensive course of scattering the Houghton children throughout other City schools for the next two years. Proponents of the relocatable classroom plan argued that it would keep the Houghton children together for the period, preserving the "unique spirit of the school."

About half of the children attending Houghton are white, and half are black. Children of Harvard faculty members attend the school, along with children from residents of the Riverside neighborhood.

After several months of wrangling, the School Committee and the City Council agreed on the relocatable classrooms, and this summer awarded a contract for them to Relocatable Homes Inc. of Winchester. The City is renting the buildings for two years, at a cost of $100,000 a year, from the Winchester firm. The City has an option to buy the buildings and keep them for other uses after the two years are up.

Frank Pastore, production manager for Relocatable Homes Inc., said yesterday that the interior of the relocatable classrooms is almost identical to that of a permanent school. The buildings have conventional plumbing and an electric heating system, he said.