From the Quad to Allston

In the years before the recession, Harvard’s plans for Allston were so bold that they seem almost fanciful today. There was talk of a tram across campus, moving the graduate schools of education and public health across the river, and even the possibility of building a new bridge. The University hired the prominent architect Frank Gehry, and building designs were drawn up. There was a sense of immediacy to the Allston plans. Those plans may still come to fruition, but it will take much longer than the planners originally hoped. Still, there is one piece of the old plans that should not wait or be canceled. Harvard should build three new Houses across the river and repurpose the Quad.

Even under the revised, post-recession plans, Allston will become a lot more important for undergraduates when the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences joins the Business School, the i-Lab, and athletic facilities on the other side of the Charles. Harvard’s most recent plans aim to make the Allston campus and the Cambridge campus feel like a continuous whole. Without a vibrant undergraduate presence, however, there is a risk that Allston will feel lifeless and manufactured.

Harvard College is the symbolic center of the University. Whether it is the freshman dorms in Harvard Yard or the red and gold dome of Dunster, the most recognizable parts of Harvard College are the most recognizable parts of Harvard as a whole. Of course, the distinction is more than architectural—the undergraduate population has certainly helped to make Harvard Square the vibrant place that it is. If the goal of building in Allston is to create one Harvard, then there is no better way than to build new Houses.

If Harvard chooses not to build undergraduate housing in Allston, the undergraduate campus will fragment. Instead of two disconnected campuses, we will have three: the main campus in Cambridge, where most students live and go to class; the Quad campus, isolated from the Square; and the new Allston campus, a collection of shiny but soulless buildings that students leave as soon as classes are done. The span of the undergraduate campus will double, and even a functioning shuttle service would not be able to reduce the feeling of distance between the Quad and Allston.

The danger here is not so much the distance between the Quad, the Yard, and Allston as it is the psychological separation between the Quad, the Yard, and Allston. The distance from Dunster to the Science Center is the same as the distance from the Yard to the Quad, but Dunster students are not cut off from the bustling activity in Harvard Square. The Quad, on the other hand, feels somehow apart from the rest of campus. Closing the Quad and building new Houses across the River does not solve the problem of physical distance, but it could resolve the feeling of isolation. It is not possible to bring the feeling of the Square, the Yard, and the river to the Quad, but it is very possible to bring that feeling to Allston.

Building new Houses by itself is no panacea. A vibrant undergraduate presence in Allston is necessary to truly unify the Allston and Cambridge campuses, but moving students across the river is not enough on its own. As University Professor Peter L. Galison wrote in a Crimson op-ed six years ago, as Harvard contemplated moving three Houses across the River, “Allston must be thought of as a fundamental piece of the dynamic center of Harvard University. Here’s the acid test: It is 6:30 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday or Friday or Saturday—and if you don’t think it would be great to go to Allston, if ‘back to the Square’ is on the tip of your tongue and you would never think of going ‘back to Allston,’ then we will have failed.” Allston will need its late night food spots and quirky shops.

This plan may have to wait a while. This is not 2007, when the University’s financial position was much less precarious, and it seemed like a bold vision could be implemented quickly. It will not happen within ten years if the University sticks to the current master plan, but perhaps within twenty. Even so, Harvard will soon be a very different place. Some people say that universities change slowly, but the next ten years in Cambridge and Allston will prove those people wrong. By 2023, if all goes according to plan, most of the Houses will have undergone renewal, there will be a campus center, and the present capital campaign will be well in the past. Planning for the next capital campaign should be well underway. And of course, Harvard will have a much greater presence in Allston.

The other side of the Charles is key to the future of Harvard. It is time to double down on Allston, dust off the old plans, and create new Houses across the river.

Christopher B. Farley ’16 is a Crimson editorial writer in Winthrop House.