Winthrop Wages War With Waves

Adams House has had a swimming pool since 1907, but for a few hours last night, Winthrop House got one too.

Backed-up drains and rainfall inundated the House’s dining hall, gym, basement, and several entryways with sewage, forcing some students to flee to other Houses for dinner.

Winthrop House Master Stephen P. Rosen ’74 said last night that 15 people, including a crew from the Harvard Emergency Operations Center, would have the flood cleaned up by 3 a.m. this morning, in time to open for breakfast.

According to Rosen, crumbling infrastructure in Winthrop has made flooding part of house life, with the last inundation hitting about a year and a half ago.

“We have had problems with the drains in Winthrop before—even when it hasn’t been raining,” he said. “My understanding is it’s because some of the pipes are quite old and some have begun to corrode.”

The sewage surfaced as the Faculties of Arts and Sciences are considering major renovations to the College’s twelve undergraduate houses, an initiative Rosen said he hoped would receive greater attention after the waters recede.

“Everybody knows that the River Houses are old and at some point the University will have to do something to fix them up.” Rosen said. “I hope this flood adds some sense of urgency to the plans to renovate the Houses.”

Interim Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam said in an interview late last year that renovating would likely be a protracted process because the Houses have to be overhauled one at a time.

“You folks won’t see anything, but your sons and daughters might,” Pilbeam had said about the renovation of all Houses.

He also cited the likely price tags—from “expensive” to “stunningly expensive”—as a drag on the process.

Last week, Pforzheimer House suffered a similar sewage problem due to the rain that closed its dining hall for over a day and a half.

At least some Winthrop residents responded to the event with stoic humor.

“There hasn’t been complaining or anything,” House resident Catherine “Hoppy” M. Maffione ’08 said. It was “almost funny in its own sort of way.“

And one Winthrop resident even proposed “constructing an ark in the MAC quad” over the House’s e-mail list.

“Free admission once it’s built if you bring a pair of animals we don’t have yet,” wrote Alexander N. D’Amour ’08.

But other residents remained concerned about flooding in other parts of the house.

“We’re actually having problems with leaking from the roof,” said Christina N. Cordeiro ’09.

“We have a leak by the entrance, one on the way up the stairs, one from the fireplace. That’s our biggest issue.”

—Aditi Balakrishna contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.