An Overdue Library

The Charlestown Navy Yard is filled with dirty old granite buildings. The Yard is shut down now, closed by the government in 1973. It's ghost town, silently rotting away on the banks of the Charles River. Some buildings, like the one next to the USS Constitution, have managed to escape anonymity simply by historical proximity. But most of the structures are like Building 36, lacking a history before the mid-1800's, serving for a brief time as a sail-making factory, and scarred by an ugly brick addition tacked on to meet World War Two supply demands.

Building 36 would be virtually indistinguishable from the other ramshackle monstrosities except for one hitch--it represents Harvard's last gasp in the fight to keep the whole Kennedy Library complex from falling into the lap of the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

The situation wasn't always this drastic. Even at this time last year, most observers, including Harvard administrators, expected that the whole Kennedy complex--comprising a library, museum and the Kennedy School of Government affiliated with the Institute of Politics, would be built in the MBTA subway yards across the street from Eliot House.

But delays caused by the MBTA's reluctance to yield the subway yards and community pressure to keep the museum out of Cambridge because of the possible traffic and pollution problems it would bring held up construction for more than a decade, until 1975.

That decade proved to be enough for Stephen Smith, president of the Library Corporation. Smith announced in May that he was bowing to the wishes of Cambridge community groups, that he would recommend to the corporation's board of directors in June that the whole complex be built at the University of Massachusetts campus at Columbia Point in Boston. Smith offered Harvard one chance: produce a suitable site for a museum within one month, and retain the archives separately in Cambridge.

Smith insisted ironclad guarantees for the split-site proposal. He stipulated that Harvard's proposal include an already existing site in Massachusetts for the museum, that there be total community acceptance of both sites, and that the University pledge financial support because of the obvious additional cost of working with two buildings instead of one.

With that ultimatum Harvard swung into action, proposing that the library corporation use three acres of the Business School land in Allston for a museum site. The offer was doomed from the start. Although residents of the community behind the MBTA yard site supported the Allston plan, residents of the Riverside community of Cambridge, immediately across the river from the Allston site, rejected it. The plan failed to meet Smith's requirements.

But Harvard still held a trump card. Under a separate plan that the Boston Redevelopment Authority had been working on--with active Harvard encouragement--the museum portion of the library would be built in a section of the Navy Yard, as part of a comprehensive plan for the Charlestown yard. The library portion would remain in Cambridge.

So in spite of the inadequacy of the Allston plan, Charles U. Daly, vice president for government and community affairs, did not come to the Kennedy board meeting emptyhanded. Daly offered more than $3 million of Harvard's money to the Kennedy corporation, to be given through direct payment and land transactions. The payment would enable the corporation to afford the Charlestown-Cambridge split. The offer figured heavily in the corporation's decision to give Harvard a reprieve, until the fall. Harvard must now present a comprehensive Charlestown-Cambridge package to match what UMass is offering.

Daly now calls the odds for Cambridge construction 50-50, which he says are "a hell of a lot better than they were on the morning that they called us up to say goodbye." Since June Harvard has spent more than $30,000 to work out an arrangement with the city of Cambridge on the related facilities--those structures that are to accompany the archival portion of the library if it ever gets built in the MBTA yard site. The negotiations are the lifeblood of the Cambridge end of the deal, because it is by selling some sort of package to a developer--which may include entertainment facilities, hotels, or a small shopping plaza--that Harvard hopes to recoup the $3 million it would give the Kennedy Corporation.

Despite the Cambridge community's antagonism towards a complex that the Kennedy family thought anybody would love to have in their neighborhood, despite the additional financial problems caused by the spit site, despite the inherent disadvantages of separating the two portions of the complex, the Kennedy Corporation's board of directors--made up predominantly of Harvard graduates--seems to bend over backwards to keep Harvard's options open.

After all, the alternative Columbia Point site is almost everything that any Kennedy Corporation director would want. There's plenty of room, more than adequate public transportation, strong community support from at least 40 Dorchester neighborhood groups, a university president who is campaigning for the whole complex much more actively than any Harvard administrator, and a site conducive to low initial construction costs. And most important, the corporation has enough money at hand right now to build the whole complex on the site.

But as Eugene R. Black, chairman of the board of directors, puts it, "We hope Harvard can put together a good package for the board meeting. Harvard has been doing everything it can, there hasn't been any criticism of Harvard at the directors' meeting." Black confesses to know little about the Columbia Point site or the Charlestown-Cambridge split package and says he defers to those who do most of the work, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D.-Mass.) and Smith, president of the corporation.

But if there's a snag that will turn even the most inveterate Harvard supporters on the board against the split site proposal, it's probably in the Charlestown Navy Yard. Although one of the assistants to library architect I.M. Pei says that Building 36 is "an excellent site" with exciting shore-line possibilities, it is difficult to camouflage the building's and the Yard's most obvious flaws. Just the massive overhaul that is necessary to make Charlestown workable makes Harvard's trump card the lowest of its suit.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Harvard's proposal could prove to be a shortage of federal funds for development of the entire navy yard in such a manner that a Kennedy Museum won't look like a civilized outpost in a boarded-up town.

And that's an obstacle that Arthur M. Schlesinger '38, one of the corporation's most active members, is worried about most: whether Harvard could ever do enough to make the Charlestown site workable. Schlesinger says he feels that the archives could remain in Cambridge if Harvard would show that it's willing to put out to keep them there. "If Harvard were to show serious intent for putting something together," he says, "there would be a strong chance of the board's accepting it." But Schlesinger adds, "It's not clear to me that Harvard has done that."

But in any case, the corporation's final decision, which will probably be reached some time in November, may provide the long-awaited last word on a controversy that has lasted much too long for everybody involved.