Hilles To Be Converted to Activities Space

University Hall officials unveiled the blueprints of a plan to drastically reshuffle facilities at the College Friday, including gutting most of Hilles Library to make way for student activities and relocating Harvard’s dance program to a modified Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC).

A thorough renovation of Lamont Library is also in the works.

While there is no final plan for the renovated libraries and QRAC, construction is expected to begin in the summer of 2004 in Hilles—which will retain one floor as a consolidated Quad library—and in Lamont, which will upgrade its technology and open a new media and music center.

A committee of administrators and students, chaired by new Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd, will determine how to rebuild a portion of the QRAC for dance space. The Rieman Center—which has recently been reappropriated by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—will meanwhile continue to house dance space for at least another year, according to Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71.

Citing budget and resource concerns, Harvard College Libraries (HCL) will relocate most Hilles library employees and empty the library of its collections—most of which are duplicates of those contained elsewhere in the and HCL resources system. A recent donation to Lamont will support the creation of a new reading room on the fifth floor of the undergraduate library. In turn, most of what is now the main reading room will house the Morse Music Library and media center, both currently located in Hilles.

Gross said that he had not yet decided what will go in the space made available by Hilles’ renovation, but says he will work in close contact with the Committee on College Life (CCL) and the Undergraduate Council to discuss which student activities could most use the 50,000 square feet of new space.

“This is the most space made available to student space since I’ve been here,” Gross said on Friday. “There is ample opportunity and time to explore.”

But Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 said he is skeptical of the benefits touted by the administration. According to Chopra, there will actually be a net loss in the reconfiguration.

“There is not a single square foot of new space for undergraduates in this space,” Chopra said. “All of Hilles is undergraduate study space, and now it’s just being converted, while the library has again gotten out of the business of serving undergraduates.”

“It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

But Chopra did acknowledge that the plan averts what would be a crisis for the dance program and might enhance life in the Quad.

“The space up there could be much better than it is today,” he said. ‘We could have some exercise equipment, some food, late night social space.”

Gross says that the two major decisions—the reconfiguration and consolidation of library resources and the renovation of part of the QRAC for new dance space—were made independently of one another, and that no student services will be disrupted while the construction is underway.

Lamont will retain its collections.

Later construction may make way for a relocation of most of the Government Documents section, currently in the bottom floor of Lamont, to Littauer Library, according to Larsen Librarian of Harvard College Nancy M. Cline. The move may make room for late night study space, she said.

According to a press release, Hilles is expected to offer more evening hours, study spaces and reference support.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.