The Kennedy Library

Like most Cambridge citizens who voted for and treasure the memory of President Kennedy, I had not until recently fully grasped the meaning of locating this national memorial so close to this busy urban center.

As the details of the memorial have been made public and as their implications have become clear, it must now be readily apparent to even the most casual observer that locating the Kennedy Memorial Library in Harvard Square would be an environmental disaster.

Cambridge is one of the most densely populated cities in the country. In six and one-quarter square miles live 100,000 people, not including students resident in dormitories. Crime, development pressure for high-rise building, and lack of open space, parks, and recreation are among its major problems. The Kennedy library-museum complex would exacerbate, not ease, every one of these problems.

The major reason for this is that the purpose of a presidential library is to display the history of an era, not only for scholars, but, more importantly, for all Americans. Barton-Aschmann Associates, consultants for the library corporation, estimated in 1965 that the library would draw two million visitors per year. They have since revised their estimates to 700,000 per year after the novelty has worn off.

However, the Science Museum in East Cambridge, a regional attraction, now draws 600,000 visitors annually, and its 950 parking spaces cannot accommodate the crowds. Brad Washburn, the museum's director and a close friend of the late president, has termed the proposed Harvard Square location "sheer lunacy." At this writing, the Kennedy gravesite at Arlington cemetery continues to draw three million visitors per year.

No one really knows, of course, how many people ultimately would visit a presidential library in Harvard Square. But for a library to accomplish its mission, it must provide a meaningful education program. I do not argue here that presidential libraries are unimportant, nor that this one in particular has been planned in a grandiose fashion. Quite the contrary, because the program has been imaginatively designed to depict the lives of John and Robert Kennedy, it will surely become a major tourist attraction.

Already pedestrians crowd Harvard Square every day except Sunday. Traffic is a nightmare and almost every major artery in Cambridge runs through Harvard Square. Parking is so woefully inadequate that planners have considered barring all cars, forcing people to travel to the Square only by public transportation.

Unfortunately, most of the library's potential clientele will come from outside Massachusetts and will arrive by car and bus. There is simply no place to accommodate these vehicles except on the streets of surrounding neighborhoods.

A proposal to build parking facilities in Allston on public land has been blocked, understandably, by that community. And Harvard has announced plans to build housing on the Business School parking lot. Thus an early solution, to park cars on the other side of the river and to shuttle people to the library by minibus, is no longer possible.

The economic impact of such a large complex will also increase pressure to develop land commercially around Harvard Square. The fight last year over the height of the Holiday Inn presages the future. The inexorable trend toward high-rise and toward tourist related development would surely accelerate. Land prices in low-income residential neighborhoods would rise, continuing the pressure on low-income citizens to leave Cambridge. Land values in the more affluent neighborhoods will diminish as the congestion affects the desirability of Cambridge as an attractive residential community.

Cambridge must decide, as a matter of deliberate public policy, what sort of community it would like to be. Throughout the country, from Maine to Colorado to our seashores, there has risen a new concern for the environmental quality of our daily living. New laws have limited tourist-related development in Vermont. Even in Florida, residents are taking a second look at the consequences of policies which emphasize the most intensive possible use of available land.

The General Services Administration must by law study all these environmental matters and must issue a report outlining its findings before the project starts. And there are many who are pinning their hopes for some compromise on the results of that study. Although I would be pleased if that could happen, the facts indicate solidly to me that no livable compromise can emerge.

It is unfortunate that until now the Cambridge debate has centered mainly on sentiment and patriotism. The essence of this argument is that a highly dense area like Harvard Square cannot accommodate the compound effects of a large number of visitors.

Surely enough time has elapsed for Cambridge to understand that such a development would be no memorial to the ideals of President Kennedy. There must be a more adequate site which would be better for Cambridge, for the visitors, and for the memory of the late president.

Francis H. Duehay '55 is co-Chairman of the City Council Committee on Finance.