OVERSEERS DELAY FINAL SOLUTION OF STADIUM PROBLEM

At the meeting of the Board of Overseers yesterday the final settlement of the stadium problem was postponed until the next meeting of the Board on February 27. Several members of the Board expressed the desire for additional time to read the various reports concerning the proposed stadium seating plan.

W. J. Bingham '16, Director of Athletics submitted his proposal recommending that the present stadium holding only 22,000 non-temporary seats be enlarged and the wooden stands be replaced by concrete, thus giving a seating capacity of 80,000. A stadium of this size would give ample opportunity for all people connected with the University to be accomodated. His proposal is based on the results of a survey conducted by an engineer invited from New York by Mr. Bingham. His report shows how it would be possible to enlarge the stadium to seat 80,000 people at a cost of $1,300,000.

When the stadium was built in 1903 it was considered capacious enough to hold a crowd at any Harvard Yale grid-iron battle. In recent years, however, with the annual game coming more into prominence, the ever-growing size of the University and its alumni body, and the resultant larger crowds, a remedy became necessary. The annual erection of wooden stands at a comparatively low cost seemed to have solved the problem. With the completion and occupancy of the Business School buildings in the fall of 1926, the Boston Building Commissioner decided that the wooden stands constituted a fire menace, and informed the University last autumn that this threat must be removed. Hence according to Mr. Bingham's report, Harvard must be satisfied with the present stadium without wooden stands, or one plan of the several submitted for enlargement must be adopted.