What Are They Doing to Harvard Yard?

In order to discuss and evaluate the impact of Canaday Hall and the Pusey Library, the two buildings currently under construction in Harvard Yard, one must first define the elements which make the Yard a unique environment, then project a design ideal for its future development.

On the macroscale, three elements work together to create a strong and satisfying environment. These are large, freestanding buildings which define the spaces around them; a level plain of grass; and a canopy of trees. Each of these aspects has myriad levels of refinement which further enrich both the entity and the totality. For example, the buildings in the Yard are consistent in scale, materials, and architectural treatment--eaves line up, windows and roofscapes have similar rhythms. There is, however, considerable variety within these limits, and the result is never dull. The grass is enlivened by a rich pattern of pedestrian paths. And the trees--with the exception of three, one in each major yard--are deciduous, so full in summer that one can barely see the sky, so bare and graceful in winter that the eye concentrates without distraction on two extremes: earth and sky. This is truly New England, based, of course, on Old England's examples of Oxford and Cambridge.

The Yard has functioned marvelously for three centuries, and probably everyone who has had occasion to use or merely traverse it would agree that it is indeed a very special place. Some say the Yard is an architectural museum and should be kept as such; others, though by far the minority, are willing to tolerate a certain amount of experimentation. However the critical issue is not the Yard as object, but rather the Yard as place. To proclaim all buildings sacrosanct simply because they have been built there is nostalgia rather than architectural evaluation; on the other hand, architectural and environmental experimentation would transform the Yard's character completely.

A design ideal for the Yard must recognize and respect two critical and compatible principles. First, it is the nature of the environment, rather than any single item within it, which is of enduring value and which should be preserved. Second, the success with which any built environment serves its users is a major criterion of its worth. As times and needs change, so must buildings--either by adaptation (the renovations of Harvard Hall and Emerson Hall), or by creation (new construction).

Having decided that new construction was necessary, the Planning Office and its project architects claim to have given high priority to the preservation of the Yard in both the theoretical and physical design of Canaday Hall and the Pusey Library--with what appears from models and drawings to be varying degrees of consistency and success.

If the established spatial relationships of the Yard are to be maintained--as the planning insisted--only two possibilities exist for the siting of new buildings. One can either demolish an existing structure and rebuild on that site, or one can build underground. The new freshman housing and the new library employ both alternatives, and the brief analysis which follows will attempt to evaluate their exterior influences rather than their interior qualities.

Canaday Hall is being built on the former site of Hunt Hall, missed by many of us who enjoyed its semi-successful neoclassical style and struggled through inaudible lectures in its domed auditorium. (The acoustical problem was finally corrected in 1972, the last year of Hunt's existence.) But Hunt was not a masterpiece on the order of, for instance, Sever Hall, and it had outlived its usefulness in the judgment of university planners. Its loss should not be too bitterly mourned.

This site will now become an extension of the dormitory/court system which rings the southern and western sides of the Yard. The planners claim that extreme care has been taken in planning the new complex to match the scale of buildings and court with those of the existing freshman housing system. The problem here was to build a compatible building in a contemporary way. The brick will match exactly that of other Yard buildings; each of the three sections of the complex maintains the volumetric scale of the old dorms and has an eave line matched to that of its nearest neighbor; the roofscape vocabulary of skylights and mechanical exhausts is a modern interpretation of the old chimney system.

One glance at a site plan will convince even the most skeptical that the court, or mini-yard, formed by Canaday's volumes is virtually identical in size and configuration to the other freshman courts (like the one between Matthews and Strauss). But when the view is focused to the personal scale, the finer level of physical treatment and sensory perception, there are some surprises. Because the buildings will have many entries, circulation lines are ambiguous. To "solve" the problem, the designers have chosen to pave most of the court. The only such precedent within the Yard is the area in front of Lehman Hall. Lehman's public and prominent position at the most urban point in the Yard justifies the use of a brick and macadam ground surface. Introducing a paved court to a freshman dorm complex could provide it with a distinctly urban quality which would sharply and disturbingly contrast with the pastoral, town square (as opposed to city center) nature of the rest of the Yard.

The second questionable ingredient of the new court is the planting. Most of the existing deciduous trees on the site have been saved, and one has been moved and transplanted nearby. What will be added, however, are three large evergreens and numerous shrubs. If they continue to proliferate in the Yard, these may prove to be a quietly revolutionary element which could, in time, completely undermine the present landscape of the Yard and ultimately create a resemblance to the Maine woods. By blocking views of the Yard's buildings from a very low height, these trees would become more significant than the buildings, thus eliminating the latter as a forceful visual component of the environment.

In the case of the Pusey Library, we are dealing with a new factor, a building which represents a serious deviation in the system. Although Widener, Houghton and Lamont are currently connected by underground tunnels, an underground building is not merely an extension of the tunnel system. Present technology does not allow us to hide a building--a structure below ground will make its presence felt on the ground because of the type of surface it generates and because of a shallow soil layer which cannot support large plant materials. In terms of its interaction with the rest of the Yard, the Pusey Library must be regarded as architectural landscaping rather than as a building which defines the space around it. The library will, however, be "visible;" windows and light wells will give it exposure to the outdoors.

The critical points here are the creation of a type of plaza which is totally unprecedented in the Yard, the absence of substantial trees, and the introduction of shrubbery in great quantities.

To consider the plaza first: the former slope around Lamont represents a grade change of about nine feet. Hazardous in icy weather, the slope will now be replaced by two sets of stairs--one at the lower level entrance to Lamont, and one near the entrance to the Pusey Library (parallel to Widener's main entry). Unlike the grand stairway of Widener or the less monumental stairways of University Hall, the new stairs do not function as the specific entrance to a specific place, but rather as an integral element of the Yard's pedestrian paths.

Having mounted these steps, one will find himself on a plaza which appears in model not unlike Holyoke Center's Forbes Plaza: very large, and very flat. (Remember, we are discussing standing on the roof of a building.) And here enters a contradiction: The designers have chosen to treat this area not as a gathering or activity place, which its physical form strongly suggests, but rather as a place to be moved through. The architects' model shows a diagonal circulation path leading from the Freshman Union to the stairway and into the central Yard as the plaza's single strongest feature. Such understated treatment, and the assumption that the Pusey Library's rooftop will have the same character as the ground plane of the old Yard, is a compromise solution which, thus far, is unconvincing. Here is a new environmental element which deserves more innovative treatment. Having opted for an underground building, the designers might have created a student plaza on its roof. Such a move--admittedly a bold one--could greatly enhance the functional aspects of Harvard's outdoor areas.

Let's look next at the plant materials to be used in this architectural landscape. Rooftop planting reduces the issue to one of shrubbery. Within the past year or so, shrubs have been appearing in the Yard at an alarming rate and are totally out of scale and out of character with the vital elements of the Yard described above. In some areas, notably those deemed by the University's landscape office to be residential in scale, the shrubbery seems to work well. A successful example is, once again, the court between Matthews and Strauss, and, potentially, the Canaday court. On the east side of Sever Hall, however, situated in a much larger yard, the shrubs are an unmitigated disaster. Their diminutive scale and bushy quality tend to distract the eye from and visually undercut a most majestic building.

The Pusey Library will have a liberal supply of shrubbery on its non-plaza rooftop, trees nearby where soil is deeper, and smaller plants ranged around the windows and light wells. One can only hope that the Yard's planners will resist the temptation to sow an "ever-green belt" of shrubs across the Yard. The introduction of an element of this scale has already proven to be one element too many--the "accent" which destroys the balance and integrity of a serene environment.

Here the designers have tried to have their cake and eat it too. In aspiring to maintain established spatial qualities in this most important corner of the Yard, they have tried to design an inconspicuous building which will have a most conspicuous range of environmental effects. The visual closure which reinforces one's sense of security within the Yard is gone. A vast new vista will be opened across the new rooftop. When the Pusey Library's foundations were excavated, the rectangular spatial envelope of the Yard was destroyed--possibly not forever, but probably for a long time.

Sooner or later, planners will have to take a firm and uncompromising stand toward the growth, or non-growth, of Harvard Yard. Both of the projects here discussed were sensitively planned, but both introduce innovations which may have far-reaching effects on the total fabric of the Yard. Intellectually, numerous efforts to render the new buildings compatible with the Yard's current architectural atmosphere have been made. How successfully the buildings--and their immediate environments--will contribute to that atmosphere must be experienced before it can be judged.

Karen Sobel '70 is a student at the Graduate School of Design.