The Harvard That Never Was

Topsy P. Turvy '76 walked out of his Mather House room perched atop the MBTA car barns and took the elevator down to the Boylston St. exit. As he headed up Boylston St. toward the Square, he passed by the 23-story "Brattle Motel" and continued his trek to a class in the International Studies Center located between Littauer and the Science Center.

Confused? You should be. It would be impossible to take the path followed by Turvy because it quite simply does not exist. The buildings were all planned, but for one reason or another they never made it past the drawing board.

This is the Harvard that never was, the Harvard that might have been. It is a story of false prophets, ill-conceived plans, ideas that fizzled.

Gore Or War

When asked on March 22, 1955, if Lowell House wanted some of Gore Hall, Master Elliott Perkins '23 said, "Such is our desire."

And so, the Gore tug-of-war was in full swing. Before it was over, Adams, Lowell, Leverett and Winthrop all wanted a piece of Gore, and they were ready to fight for it.

The incident began in November 1954 when Winthrop House Master Ronald M. Ferry '12 announced plans to join Gore and Standish Halls with a Georgian connection. Gore and Standish were then, as they are now, the two parts of Winthrop House.

Ferry's plan called for low-cost rooms and communal bathrooms to be built in the extension, making Winthrop a long, curved building with four wings jutting toward the river.

Leverett got into the act in March when Master Leigh Hoadley and the Leverett House Civic Improvement Society proposed a connection between Gore and McKinlock Halls. The new wing over Plympton St. would support a bell tower and include a tunnel for pedestrians, automobiles and a trolley. "If people are going to resist, we shall arm and march tomorrow," Arthur N. Schwarz '56, president of the Civic Society, said.

The next day, Winthrop tutors rejected Leverett's claims to Gore. "The proposed tower, resting upon a feeble arch, would be as shaky as are these fabricated claims," the tutors said.

Before a Masters meeting on March 23, 1955, some House mentors expressed interest in Gore, but only Dunster House Master Gordon M. Fair had anything worthwhile to say: "We don't want any of it."

No Go for Ho Jo

The gleaming orange and blue Howard Johnson's sign never made it to Brattle Square. Ho Jo's had intended to take over the management of a 23-story motel in Brattle Square, but negotiations fell through in June 1964.

The motel's architect was not dismayed by this turn of events. He continued to refine his skyscraper design, which he said would "blend in very well with the architecture of Harvard Square."

The 200-room motel was scheduled to be built at 104 Mt. Auburn St., where the Coolidge Bank and Trust is now located. The plans also called for a swimming pool, a restaurant and five floors of parking. In 1964, an Amoco service station occupied the site.

But Harvard Square residents never got the opportunity to see if the 23-story motel--a skyscraper by Cambridge standards--blended in well with the lowslung Square skyline.

A Coop de Grace

The Brattlewalk with colorful circles on the roadway never quite made it. Neither did the Palmer St. mall.

The Harvard Cooperative Society asked Cambridge in February 1965 to close Palmer St. and turn it into a pedestrian mall. Landscape architects drew a plan calling for two small plazas, an underground parking garage for 200-300 cars, and a path through the First Congregational Church's graveyard as a shortcut to the Square.

No doubt the church did not think much of people tip-toeing through the tomb stones, and the mall plan never got off the ground. Pedestrians still have to dodge cars, except on sidewalk sale Saturdays when they have to dodge people.

A Second-Story Job

WHRB's 1963 search for a new home almost ended when the radio station decided to add a second story to the one-story Masters' garage at Mill and Plympton Sts., next to Winthrop House.

The one-story addition almost became a two-story addition when Harvard Year-book Publications joined forces with WHRB. The two organizations received the endorsement of dean of the College Watson. "I'm willing to do anything I can to get the building up and both of them into it as soon as possible," Watson said on Oct. 4, 1963.

Both WHRB and the Yearbook said that the plans were tentative, pending the outcome of a fund drive to raise $100,000 for the new construction. Either the fund drive failed or someone disapproved, because both organizations found new homes far away from the Masters' garage.

X Marks the Spot

A small concrete pathway separates mammoth Littauer Center from the gargantuan Undergraduate Science Center. It would be difficult to drive a large truck between the giants--nevertheless Harvard wanted to build a $5 million International Affairs Center on that spot in 1965.

The money for the proposed high-rise building came in the form of a $12.5 million grant from the Ford Foundation. The grant set aside $2.5 million for construction of the new center. The other $10 million provided funds for research in the field of international affairs and for nine endowed professorships.

When he announced the grant, President Pusey said that construction would begin when the University had raised an additional $5 million--$2.5 million for construction costs and $2.5 million for maintenance.

The University evidently did raise the money, but decided to put the international affairs offices in Harvard's portion of the proposed Kennedy Library. Presumably that money still rests in some University vault, pending definite plans for the library complex.

Memorial Soup

Four days after President John F. Kennedy '40 was assassinated, The Crimson printed one of its most dubious headlines ever:

Million Mourners Pay Respects to Kennedy; Business School Site Selected for Library

Although the juxtaposition was unfortunate, the bit about the library site was indeed true. The paper reported that Kennedy and President Pusey had signed a formal agreement in August 1962 to build the library at the Business School, but that legal complications forced delay of the formal announcement.

There was much more, but in retrospect little of it makes sense. John Warnecke was to be the library's architect; the building was to be about two stories tall with only 50,000 square feet on each floor; and the library was to "blend in with the general Harvard architecture."

Airspace and the MTA

In the early sixties, the MBTA Yards were the prime proposed location for Harvard's next house--dubbed Tenth House. Immediately after Kennedy's assassination, Winthrop House students asked Harvard to name Tenth House after the late president, but University officials wanted to avoid conflict with the Kennedy Library and deferred on the choice of names, finally selecting Mather.

Kennedy Library plans were, of course, moved from the Business School to the MBTA Yards in 1965, but before that switch the subway yards were considered fair game for Harvard expansion.

In 1957 the University was studying ways to make undergraduates live in noisier rooms. The modest idea: build a House on airspace above the subway yards. At a 1960 hearing in the Massachusetts House of Representatives on a bill requiring the MBTA to sell the yards, Edward Reynolds '15, vice president for Administration, offered to buy the yards for market value plus $1 million.

Reynolds said if the transit authority does not move and the University is able to obtain the property (he meant the air), a "platform" might be constructed over the train-storage area and two new houses built atop the platform.

Reynolds pointed out that no definite plans had been made for the yard area, and that apartment buildings, a large garage, a bank, and offices might be constructed in addition to the Houses.

The Sycamore Saga

No one really wanted Cambridge to build an underpass beneath Boylston St. at the intersection of Memorial Drive. The Metropolitan District Commission came up with the idea; the Cambridge Planning Board, the University, and more than 1000 Harvard and Radcliffe students opposed it.

Student opposition came after it became apparent that the MDC plan would destroy the sycamore trees which line Mem Drive. In May 1964, 1000 students took to the streets, blocking traffic on Mem Drive for more than an hour while they shouted "Save the Sycamores."

Three underpasses--the others were at River St. and Western Ave.--were to be built. But opposition to the plan delayed the start of construction in March 1965, and the underpass, like a few other Harvard area construction projects, went under.

This delightful tale was written by Steven M. Luxenberg and Andrew P. Corty.