Owning the Glass

So I currently sit in last place in my March Madness pool. No money is going to change hands, thankfully--this is a "just for fun" pool organized by my blockmate and facilitated by espn.com's ever-so-helpful pool generator. Nevertheless, if you want to revel in my shame, just check out the rankings in "Tim's Group of Excellence." Several friends and even a few people I've never met are cleaning my clock on the way to the Sweet 16. In my own defense, I spent a grand total of 120 seconds filling out my bracket--Duke, my perennial favorite since the days of Christian Laettner, is filled in every round through to the championship, where I have them defeating UConn.

Beyond that very thoughtful selection of the final two teams, I left the rest to chance and my affection for two minority groups in NCAA b-ball: Ivy League schools (this year, Stanford had to do, and they didn't do very well) and unknown schools from the middle of nowhere--Southwest Missouri State practically defines the species.

While Stanford's loss and the defeats of countless other teams (Valparaiso was a particularly painful disappointment), Southwest Missouri State has been keeping me going. They face Duke this weekend, so for my bracket hopes to stay alive, their Cinderella run must end. But their unexpected success is the point of March Madness. It's no fun if everything goes according to plan; we all love rooting for the underdog and watching him succeed. This attitude mostly has to do with basketball, but it also has to do with the time of the year--it's spring, and pleasant surprises are the order of the day.

An underdog of a quite different sort here in Cambridge surprisingly won a round in its bracket this week, defeating a more powerful and bigger opponent. The Swedenborg Chapel was named an historical landmark by the City Council on Tuesday night, thereby protecting it from a Somerville developer's plan to demolish the building and raise a housing development in its place. The Council's decision preserves the outside of the Chapel from being destroyed or blocked from view. The inside is not protected because the Historical Commission does not consider interiors for landmark designation (though the council has requested a re-evaluation of that policy).

In an unusual show of support at the council meeting, a representative from Harvard's community relations department spoke on behalf of the chapel's protection. I say unusual both because Harvard has always been hesitant to limit its own expansion options and because it was about this same time last year that Swedenborg parishioners were fighting the construction of the Knafel Center, which is to house Harvard's Center for International Studies (HCIS) and other programs.

Parishioners and residents of the neighborhood around the chapel complained last spring that the proposed height of the new building would block light from coming through the windows of the chapel. After much negotiation, Harvard compromised, revising the Knafel blueprints and leaving the chapel's stained glass windows open to light.

The current situation is a little more complicated: the chapel has been put on sale because of the poor financial situation of its owner, the Swedenborg School of Religion in Newton. But the congregation has the right of first refusal (that is, they have the chance to counter any offer put on the table), and Harvard has the second right of first refusal. Now that the exterior of the chapel has been preserved, it is unlikely that any major destruction will befall the building, but the congregation rightly wants it to remain as a place of worship.

Parishioners admit that they don't have the money to buy the chapel, which would save it once and for all from any kind of alternative use. Harvard does have the money, but the University is understandably reluctant to purchase a building which has limited opportunity for being restructured into classroom or office space.

From a student's perspective, the preservation of the outside of the chapel can be viewed only as positive. The short, elegant building on the corner of Kirkland and Quincy Streets breaks up the string of modern buildings like the Science Center, the Design School and the monstrously tall William James. The neighborhood would lose a good deal of character if the chapel were demolished, and that long walk to Vanserg just wouldn't be the same without it.

More substantively, though, from Harvard's perspective, there's something to be said for doing a good deed to the tune of buying the building for the congregation or at least working out a deal helping the congregation purchase the chapel. As we saw recently with the announcement that Memorial Hall's tower will be rebuilt, the University has an appreciation of history and beauty as well as for pragmatism and the bottom line. Harvard knows well that the Chapel has historical significance to our academic life, as both Henry James and his son William (for whom the building which so ironically overshadows the chapel is named) read the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Additionally, the town-gown relationship, which cycles from bad to tolerable and back to bad, would be given a push in the right direction if Harvard were to do a purely generous deed and be seen to be doing so. As David A. Zewinski '76, associate director for physical resources and planning for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said, "Given how much this development has been a lightning rod for community activists, [buying the site] does a lot for Harvard as a white knight."

And what better than a white knight for this Cinderella team, I mean, chapel? Southwest Missouri State will probably lose in the next round of March Madness, but their tournament will have been a success. The Swedenborg Chapel deserves a more permanent victory, and Harvard can help it avoid a final foreclosure. Susannah B. Tobin '00 is a classics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.