A SECOND YARD

With the House plan definitely going into effect and a mammoth building program looming ahead of the University, the Student Council has anticipated the situation with a program of development which is basically sound, elaborate and idealistic as it might at first appear. Disregarding the social and educational ramifications of the experimental project, it has offered in a new and second Yard a practical solution of the future construction problem. Passing over the question of the problematic success or failure of the proposed hoses, the Council points to the present opportunity of strengthening the physical homogeneity of the college. The aim of its report is fundamentally to direct the additions to the College into such channels as will assure not merely architectural harmony but a symmetrical unification of the whole new dormitory system with the present lay-out between Mt. Auburn Street and the river.

There is no radical element in the recommendation of a new Yard to supplement and keep inviolate the historic yard. The land within the suggested boundaries, Mt. Auburn Street on the north, Memorial Drive on the south, DeWolf Street on the east, and Boylston Street on the west, is virtually all owned by the University. The advisability of acquiring the rest, in view of the construction of the new Houses, is evident. The CRIMSON has previously pointed out the objections to further construction of dormitories on the river front east of McKinlock. The Council report "deplores any attempt to build houses beyond McKinlock Hall on the river front." With these considerations in mind, the locality most favorable for the new houses is plainly that confined within the proposed boundaries of the second Yard. "A comprehensive plan of development" for this area is the plea of the Student Council, and the basic wisdom of such a plan warrants careful consideration of its practicability.

"A large quadrangle with long vistas which eventually would have fine elms and shady paths after the manner of the present Yard", as suggested by the report, is entirely possible by the careful choice of sites for the new buildings and the elimination of streets. The immediate danger to anything approaching this orderly arrangement is the imminent location of one of the first new Houses at the northwest corner of Mill Street and Plympton. This would place the new house directly opposite Gore and absolutely preclude an ultimate development having even a remote connection with the plan of the Student Council. Haphazard distribution of the units, dictated by immediate convenience, is an evil to be avoided. The first house should not be dropped down upon a piece of land merely because it is vacant.

In taking the Memorial Chapel into its calculations the Council has showed, its desire to be as comprehensive as possible. The CRIMSON has pointed out that "the permanence of a Memorial Church demands that it harmonize with the Harvard of the future." With the probable transposition of the three upper classes to the area below Mt. Auburn Street there is a logical argument for a reconsideration of the site of the new Chapel. What promises to be a new center of Harvard life is certainly a suitable setting for the memorial, and furthermore the inviolability of the Yard familiar to generations of past Harvard men would be preserved.

The paramount objection to a plan so extensive in its scope is likely to be the cost. To build the first unit on the DeWolf Street frontage, as the report suggests, instead of on the vacant lot behind Gore, would involve the demolition of almost a block of houses. This would add something to the expense but the advantage of the project seem to outweigh any expenditure incurred by tearing down a few frame and brick structures. Furthermore, while the report stipulates the purchase of the plot bounded by the Smith Halls, Dunster, Boylston, and Mt. Auburn Streets, this acquisition is not immediately essential. It would require a greater difference than this in financial outlay between the proposition of the Student Council and any alternate proposal to justify the sacrifice of an ultimate gain to an immediate economy.

In its report the Student Council expresses its desire to offer constructive criticism. The idea of a second Yard is fundamentally sound and at the same time is susceptible to whatever changes in detail further investigation may render advisable. The suggested participation of a committee of two Student Council members in a discussion on the subject by University authorities, no matter what the outcome, would both facilitate such adaptations and assure that adequate consideration was shown what is supposedly undergraduate opinion.