Harvard to Break Ground on Pritzker-Funded Economics Building in June 2025

Construction on the new building for the Harvard Economics Department will begin in June 2025, according to an email sent to Harvard Art Museums affiliates on Monday morning.

The building came as a result of a $100 million donation in September 2021 by Penny S. Pritzker ’81, who was tapped the following year to lead the Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s highest governing body. It will give a new home to the department, which is currently located in Harvard’s Littauer Center for Public Administration.

The building is slated to be built in a currently open area behind the Littauer Center. Construction is expected to conclude in December 2027.

Shalimar Abigail Fojas White, the head of Harvard’s Fine Arts Library, wrote in the email that “unique and fragile” special collections in the Fine Arts Library, which is also housed in Littauer, will likely be moved to other locations on and off campus due to the construction, “pending the results of vibration testing due later in December.”

“Given this close proximity and the potential impact of construction activity and vibration on library collections, FAL librarians have developed mitigation plans to prioritize securing the Special Collections stored in the Sub-Basement level of FAL’s stacks,” she wrote.

She added that access to the building’s Sub-Basement level will be restricted to staff, while the Basement level — which houses General Collections — will remain open to library patrons.

The new Economics building aims to encourage collaboration and innovation within the updated space. It will unite the department’s faculty into one building and provide more space for faculty to interact with the nearly 1,000 undergraduate Economics concentrators on campus.

Harvard College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in an email that updates on the construction “will continue to be communicated directly to stakeholders.”

Current enabling work outside the Littauer Center is scheduled to continue through the end of February 2025, and a detailed construction schedule for the building has not yet been released.

Though the vibrations from the construction may require the Fine Arts Library to temporarily relocate its special collections, Palumbo wrote that other aspects of the Littauer Center are unlikely to be adversely affected by the construction.

“The project is planned for a good distance away from the building and is in line with other construction projects that have taken place across the community,” he wrote.

Correction: December 13, 2024

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Harvard Art Museums Administrative Coordinator Erica Lawton sent an email announcing the relocation of the special collections from the Fine Arts Library. In fact, Lawton forwarded an email authored by Shalimar Abigail Fojas White, the head of Harvard’s Fine Arts Library.

—Staff Writer Danielle J. Im can be reached at danielle.im@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at neeraja.kumar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @neerajasrikumar.