Memorial Hall Project Delayed Until Jan. 1996

The Class of 1999 will have to wait a semester to escape the Freshman Union's food.

Memorial Hall's grand opening as first-year dining hall and student center, originally scheduled for September 1995, has been pushed back to January 1996, according to a memo from Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and Administrative Dean of the Faculty Nancy L. Maull.

The memo, addressed to Dean of the Graduate School Christoph J. Wolff, said the change was not due to any setback in construction plans, but was simply to allow extra "'give' for hidden structural problems or delays."

As a result, the Union will stay open so the members of the Class of 1999 will have a place to eat come September, said Peter J. Riley, project manager for Harvard Real Estate.

"It's no good if you're a week late with dining for freshmen," Riley said. "It doesn't do it."

The Memorial Hall renovations are part of a larger project to restructure Warren House, Burr Hall and the Union into a new humanities center. The center, which will house 12 humanities departments and committees, should be finished by the summer of 1997. Boylston Hall, which will be renovated after the Union complex is refurbished, will also be part of the new center.

The opening of the humanities center, originally scheduled for September 1996, will come a year later than expected.

Members of the Memorial Hall and humanities center building and planning committees recently proposed the delay.

"We realized that it was a very ambitious thing to have the two projects overlapping by a three month period [the summer of 1995]," said Philip J. Parsons, director of planning in the Faculty. "I think that was a risk that we felt increasingly reluctant to take."

"Next summer, we would have had Memorial Hall unfinished, and we would have started construction on the humanities center, and there would have been a three-month period when we had no dining hall for the freshmen," Parsons said.

The memo also cites the high expected costs of the humanities center as a reason for pushing back the date of its opening. The rescheduling, however, will not require any additional funding and could even save money, according to the memo.

The price of the center's renovations will fall between 20 and 25 million dollars, according to parsons. Administrators currently have "about half of what we need to have committed," Parsons said.

As planned, work on Sanders Theatre will take place this summer to allow classes to meet as usual in September.

The extension will also give employees time to practice serving meals in Memorial Hall, Knowles said.

"The first thing you do with a kitchen at home is not to give a dinner party for 20," Knowles said. "You give a small, intimate supper."

The extension will also allow Memorial Hall project heads to ask students before the building reopens what they would like to see in the commons, Parsons said.

Department heads interviewed yesterday said the year's delay in the humanities center opening is not a large concern.

"I don't think it's going to have much of an impact," said Juliet B. Schor, director of studies for the women's studies committee. "We'll just be delayed in moving in."

Patrick K. Ford, chair of Celtic Languages and Literatures, said that the delay is actually welcome, because the academic year 1996-97 marks the centenary of Celtic Studies at Harvard.

"We were concerned in the preceding schedule that we would have a new address and new telephone number right at the beginning of our centennial year, and that might make it difficult for us to get in touch with even old friends," Ford said. "For that reason, if none other, we're not at all unhappy with this change in plans."

As a result of the Union renovations, the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and the Expository Writing Program will move to Vanserg Hall for the 1996-97 academic year.

The contractor for Memorial Hall is A.J. Martini, Inc. The contractor for the humanities complex has not yet been selected, according to Parsons, but Shawmut Construction is providing pre-construction services.

Jonathan A. Lewin contributed to the reporting of this story.CrimsonAndrew K. SachaConstruction of a new first-year dining hall and student center in Memorial Hall will continue until January 1996. The Freshman Union will stay open to feed the Class of 1999.

"We were concerned in the preceding schedule that we would have a new address and new telephone number right at the beginning of our centennial year, and that might make it difficult for us to get in touch with even old friends," Ford said. "For that reason, if none other, we're not at all unhappy with this change in plans."

As a result of the Union renovations, the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and the Expository Writing Program will move to Vanserg Hall for the 1996-97 academic year.

The contractor for Memorial Hall is A.J. Martini, Inc. The contractor for the humanities complex has not yet been selected, according to Parsons, but Shawmut Construction is providing pre-construction services.

Jonathan A. Lewin contributed to the reporting of this story.CrimsonAndrew K. SachaConstruction of a new first-year dining hall and student center in Memorial Hall will continue until January 1996. The Freshman Union will stay open to feed the Class of 1999.