Garage Spurs Area Tenants' Dissatisfaction

A group of Cambridge tenants will meet with Harvard officials today to protest Harvard's building of a parking garage on property adjacent to their apartment house.

The garage, which is being erected on the corner of Broadway and Felton Streets, will provide parking space for the new science center and Gund Hall.

The tenants living at the corner of Broadway and Prescott Streets are particularly upset about the fact that the wall facing their building will have two-foot-high slits in it, which will allow automobile noise and fumes to be blown toward their apartments. The tenants have been complaining to Harvard about the garage since early this fall.

"These are not the first complaints (about the building)," city councillor Francis H. Duehay '55, chairman of the subcommittee on Transportation and Parking, said yesterday. "Complaints were filed with the School Committee last summer because of the congestion the garage will cause in an area next to a public school."

Duehay said that he has called a special School Committee hearing scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday night at Rindge Technical School to discuss the parking garage. He also said that he will sit in on today's meeting with Harvard.

Last June, Harvard sent the Prescott Street tenants a letter informing them of the plans for the garage. In the letter, Harvard said that it was being built in compliance with Cambridge zoning ordinances requiring the provision of off-the-street parking for all new institutional buildings.

In November, after numerous complaints by Sheldon L. Glashow and Sidney R. Coleman--both professors of Physics and tenants of the building -- Donald C. Moulton, coordinator for Community Affairs, met with a group of tenant representatives.

Following that meeting, Moulton sent a letter to the tenants explaining that it would not be possible to block off the wall facing the tenants' building because the two-foot slit opening on each floor "provides the bare minimum amount of space to qualify under the requirements of a naturally-ventilated garage."

"The requirements of the fire department are involved, as well, as they stipulate that fires in this type of garage are to be fought from the outside," Moulton's letter said. "The two-foot slits and the amount of wall surface completely blocked up have caused them concern as they would like to see more open space."

The letter added that the prevailing winds in warm weather are from west to east, and would cause the fumes to escape through a wall not facing the Prescott Street building.

However, Alan H. Kaufman, another of the building's tenants, decided two weeks ago that the case merited further investigation.

Kaufman said that he called Francis J. Connelly, Deputy Chief in Charge of Fire Prevention, and read him Moulton's letter. According to Kaufman, Connelly denied the letter's assertions about fire regulations.

Yesterday, Connelly confirmed Kaufman's report.

"To begin with, we don't talk about fighting fires from the outside," Connelly said. "What is more, I don't recall having a discussion about slits in the walls. I think we have been misunderstood."

"I told Kaufman essentially the same thing as I told you," Connelly added. "I would just as soon see a plain blank wall on that (the tenants') side of the garage."

Kaufman said that he also checked with the weather bureau, and was told that winds classified as "prevailing winds" only blow from the west up to 50 per cent of that time.

"So essentially that it means is what about half the time we're going to have winds from the other direction blowing fumes into the apartments," Kaufman said. "It's a bit disturbing."

"Then I started thinking about noise," Kaufman added. "That thing (the garage) is going to be open all night. If one guy sits on his horn, it's going to wake up the whole building. It's a common practice in parking garages to honk your horn as you come around a corner. Even if it happened only 15 nights a year, we would consider it an imposition."

The tenants also have some more general complaints about the landscaping and aesthetics of the site.

"I told him (Moulton) 'When you put up a building that you have to look at you do a nice job, when you put it in our backyard you use concrete block,'" "Kaufman said. "(He) couldn't fathom why we didn't want to look at a concrete wall."

Kaufman said that in the November meeting he suggested putting the garage across the river at the Business School, and running shuttle buses back and forth.

"They said that the professors get very upset when they have to walk a long way from their cars to the buildings," Kaufman said. "They (professors) don't read what they publish. They are unwilling to discipline themselves for the sake of the community."

On March 3, Kaufman sent a letter to Harvard requesting a meeting to discuss cancellation or modification of the plans for the garage, as well as landscaping plans for the area. The letter particularly expressed the tenants' disquiet at being presented with a falt accompli in Harvard's letter of last June.

Charles U. Daly, vice president for Community Affairs, said yesterday that he wanted to go over the tenants' letter line by line "and see what constructive suggestions can be reached."

When asked about Moulton's letter, Daly said. "All I know is that I assume the plans were carefully drawn. If there is a point of difference there, we'd be glad to go over it, as well as any other points.