A Free Garden for the Fly

In the winter of 1956, the President and Fellows of Harvard College paid $33,000 for a pretty, grassy plot of land on the corner of Mt. Auburn and Plympton Streets, intending to build on it. But the building plans fizzled, and no new plan has emerged in the intervening 19 years; the 13,000 square-foot plot is still grassy, still pretty, and obscured enough so few people now know who owns it.

The land goes under several aliases: the Cambridge assessor catalogs it as lot 81 on block 161; the Harvard Real Estate Office in Holyoke Center files it under 52-58 Mt. Auburn St.; and most Harvard undergraduates know it simply as the private garden of the exclusive Fly Club.

If you're anxious to lounge some afternoon on the pastoral lot, you'll have to overcome one stumbling block: the high wire mesh fence that encloses three sides of the property. And climbing it may not endear you to Harvard officials. While they say there's no reason why University members cannot use the land, they also express reservations about mounting the fence to get there.

To follow a less rigorous route to the land you can always join the Fly, an all-male final club whose land lies directly west of lot 81 and that, thanks to Harvard's persistent failure to use or lease the land, can offer its members privileged access to the plot.

But joining the Fly is no easy task either, since its non-alumni membership runs to about 60 undergraduates and five grad school students. If those odds don't frighten you the club's initiation fee (over $100) and monthly dues (over $25) might scare you off.

The Fly does not lease the land from the University; in fact, no rental agreement exists between Harvard and the club. The University has never asked the Fly to pay for using the property, although the President and Fellows of Harvard College must pay significant property tax on it. Last year those taxes ran to $4817.80 for the lot, which is assessed at $26,000. That fiscal 1974 figure represents only one annual payment of the 19 Harvard has turned over to Cambridge since purchasing the land in December 1956. In fact, since 1957, Harvard has paid Cambridge over $45,000 in property taxes for the land while it was being used exclusively by the Fly. (In 1974 dollars, with earlier payments recalculated according to changes in the consumer price index, the payments come to about $57,000.)

In interviews earlier this month, Administration officials took varying positions on the University's use--or non-use--of the land. One turned a critical eye toward what he considers an inequitable arrangement; others defended it, suggesting that a tacit Harvard-Fly Club agreement allows the club to use the land in return for maintaining it, an agreement they say benefits Harvard by sparing it substantial upkeep costs.

However, a Fly Club official reported that while the Fly does cut the lawn on the property it does not do so under any agreement. He also indicated the grass cutting has incurred only minimal costs for the Fly.

According to those interviewed, the University's subsidization of the Fly Club garden-backyard has continued for 19 years because of Harvard's failure to adopt a short-term use of the land after it scrapped its 1956 building plans. As one administrator put it earlier this month, the Fly's exclusive access reflects not a policy for such land, but "just an evolution."

If the evolutionary theory stands up, the process of natural selection for lot 81 dates back to 1956, when the Fly owned both its present property, on the corner of Mt. Auburn St. and Holyoke Place, and the adjoining lot that runs all the way to Plympton St. Having "no particular use" for the land and jumping at the chance to cut its property taxes ("every square foot we sold saved us taxes"), the Fly offered the land to a highly interested Harvard, according to Thomas Whiteside '32, who was then and still is a trustee of the club. The deal, adds Whiteside, seemed "mutually sensible."

That fall the negotiations for a sale hit the front page of The Crimson, which announced Harvard's plan to buy the land and speculated that the plot would be used for a new "commuter center." Hinting at Harvard's plans, the then undergraduate president of the Fly told The Crimson, "In view of the University's need to expand in the Cambridge area, we feel that such a sale of land, which isn't being used for anything at present, is justified, although we hate to see it go." More tea leaf reading on the land's destiny came from an anonymous, high-ranking University official, who said, "You don't expect a valuable piece of grass like that to remain unused, do you?"

By May 1958, plans for the commuter center--the rough equivalent of Dudley House--had grown firm enough for Charles P. Whitlock, present dean of Harvard College and then Dudley's Allston Burr Senior Tutor, to discuss publicly the size of the proposed building. That autumn The Crimson even carried a sketch of tentative plans for the five-story building, which was to be erected shortly after what is now the new part of Quincy House. The Crimson story concluded by stating that the commuter center would "definitely" be built on the Mt. Auburn-Plympton St. corner.

But Harvard soon dropped the plans because of a lack of ready alumni funds and the completion of another University building. According to Whitlock, who traveled through the country in the late 50s seeking funds for the new building, alumni gifts only ran up to $4000, while approximately $500,000 was needed. Then, when the Harvard comptroller moved out of Lehman Hall and into the brand new Holyoke Center, the vacant older building offered an ideal spot for Harvard's commuters.

So lot 81 remained vacant--and open only to Fly Club members.

Through the 60s and into the 70s Harvard occasionally considered the site for one of several other proposals:

IAs the site for the house of the College dean: President Emeritus Nathan M. Pusey '28 reportedly felt strongly the dean should live near the Square. He directed studies into various sites, including the Fly Club lot, which was closely examined but then passed over for another lot on DeWolfe and Grant Streets. Eventually, however, the whole project was scrapped.

IAs the site for a parking garage: Harold L. Goyette, director of Harvard's Planning Office, says the city has urged use of the area for parking, but Harvard, he said, is not "favorably disposed." Goyette also notes that parking lot operation costs "substantial amounts"--not to mention paving, which he sees as an "eyesore" and a "detriment to the environment." Also opposed to a parking lot in the area is Donald C. Moulton, assistant vice president for community affairs, who cites a joint Harvard-Cambridge study that he says favors parking areas on the periphery of the Square, not in pockets off of the Square.

IAs the site for a Museum of Man affiliated with the Peabody Museum: According to Goyette, the proposal for such a museum remains in the early discussion stage since funds are not plentiful. Goyette also suggests the lot 81 site is not desirable for a museum that would draw large numbers of visitors.

IAs the site for additional undergraduate housing or possibly for inclusion in rebuilding of the south side of Mt. Auburn St.: Both possibilities have been studied as part of the University's long-range planning efforts, Goyette says.

As a Harvard administrator tied specifically to the purchase of lot 81 in 1956 and involved generally in how the University uses its real estate, Dean Whitlock voices with confidence his theories about Harvard's hands-off policy toward 52-58 Mt. Auburn St. Whitlock maintains that Harvard's allowing the Fly free and privileged use of the land--to "have its cake and eat it too"--results from "a combination of a perceptual deficit and a lack of long-range planning" on the University's part, a one-two punch he hopes the Bok administration is correcting.

Whitlock often complains about Harvard's long-range planning efforts, and this gives him a chance to illustrate his theories. Elaborating on the "perceptual deficit" Whitlock says he believes the inequity of the arrangement with the Fly, though "so obvious," never gained notice because "nobody ever talked about it [the land]" and "nobody ever thinks about it." It is, he adds, "simply that people didn't see."

Whitlock concedes the "hard-to-defend" privileges of the Fly offer grist for a conspiracy theory mill, and briefly he evokes visions of monied Fly Club alumni pulling strings with Mass Hall buddies to kill plans for the land. But he then discounts such a theory: "I was too close to it," he says, to miss such machinations.

Over in Holyoke Center, Goyette offers a stronger defense of its non-policy toward lot 81. He stresses what he believes is the crucial value of the land (it's "very important," he stresses) to the University and insists that the land is "simply in a holding pattern," waiting to fill its major role "some time in the future."

In the meantime, Goyette says, Harvard has simply left the land in the hands of the Fly, saving the University maintenance costs while allowing the club use of the land. The deal has been "mutually beneficial," he says. "Somebody's got to maintain it at some substantial cost," Goyette adds, and having the Fly be that somebody proves an "economy" to Harvard.

What maintenance the club does do, Fly trustee Whiteside maintains, is merely the logical extension of its having a lawnmower there for its own small yard. The Fly, he said, "might as well do the rest of the lawn" while it cuts its own. Is the cost of this maintenance high? "Good God, no," Whiteside answers.

Goyette's defense of the plot's 19-year holding pattern extends to the aesthetics of the current set-up. "Many say it's very delightful to have an open space as it now exists"--a space, he said, that can be "viewed and enjoyed by all who walk by." However, the fence that surrounds the property is backed up in many places by tall bushes and creeping ivy that prevent one from getting a clear view of the area. The Mt. Auburn St. side is completely obscured, as is the northern half of the Plympton St. frontage.

No one, neither Harvard's planners nor Harvard's administrators, can say for sure whether Harvard's most prominent croquet court, lot 81, will emerge from the limbo that swallowed it after the commuter center plan faltered. Indications are that no long-term commitment of the land can be expected in the next five to ten years. The interim version of the planning office's "Long Range Plan for Harvard University and Radcliffe College in Cambridge and Allston" classifies the lot as being without any "foreseeable" prospect for future development. Supratik Bose, manager of long range planning, believes that Red Line subway extension work will force many cars down Mt. Auburn, making it an unsuitable site for a building.

What will happen then to the land until Harvard finds the "important use" Goyette talks about? Moulton (who says he "couldn't say for sure" who uses the land) admits the lot has never been completely studied for an interim use, and he promises that if the area is not expected to see a major use for an "extended period of time," it will be analyzed for an interim use. But the final choice, he adds, might not differ from the present set up.

One alternative for lot 81 is suggested in the interim long-range planning report, which classifies the land as a "potential pedestrian precinct," making it one of the targets for a possible "major effort to improve the existing outdoor space environment." However, the interim report (issued in June 1974 and scheduled for a final release late this fall) also says such an effort "will require funding beyond the regular maintenance budget."

Such budgetary problems emerge in Goyette's unenthusiastic opinion of converting the plot into a park. He centers his objections around the "substantial" initial cost (for walks, lighting, and benches) and the "substantial costs" of maintenance (for caretaking, electricity, policing, and trash collection). Goyette ventures an estimate of $20,000 for the initial expenditure and several thousand dollars annually thereafter.

Moulton takes a more open stand on the land's future. While an analysis of interim proposals might favor the current arrangement, it could just as well lead to creating a park with benches for reading and sitting and a volleyball net for recreation, he said. Public interest, he added, will hasten a decision on the park's destiny.

But in the meantime the land will remain in the hands of the Fly Club, adding more time to a 19-year record of unequal access.