Residents, Students Assemble on Common To Hear Speeches Protesting Sale of Land As Site for Cambridge Building on Stilts

Perhaps more people than at any time since the Revolution took a stand on an embattled segment of Cambridge Common yesterday morning to protest the proposed sale of the site to area promoter John Briston Sullivan for an office building on stilts.

Approximately 750 residents and students, mostly churchgoers, assembled before the war memorial on the strip of grass across from Littauer Center to hear speeches by the president of the Cambridge Civic Association, by Rep. Mary Newman, and by Charles William Eliot II '20, professor of City and Regional Planning.

James Vorenberg '49, president of the CCA, told the cold, damp crowd that the Senate bill (S. 447) to authorize the sale was "private interest legislation of the worst sort." The Senate is expected to take a final vote on the matter today.

Rep. Newman, the only Cambridge legislator whose name does not appear on the identical House and Senate Bills, directed the group to contact Sen. Francis X. McCann and to write to their representatives. "They won't vote for what their constituents don't want," she asserted.

"The more I think of this proposal the more distressed I get," she declared. "We ought to be looking ahead, to the time when we can make this the beautiful and nourishing place it ought to be. It is a wicked thing to contemplate taking what was given to us by our forefathers and throwing it away."

"We are on our way to making it not happen," Rep. Newman emphasized.

Eliot brought in the historical argument. "This land on which we stand is ours--given in 1769 in trust for the free use of all citizens to be used as a training field, to be undivided, and to remain for that use forever."

Eliot Fears Traffic Jam

"It takes no expert to see that the comings and goings at such a building would make what I call a colossal traffic mess," Eliot said. But he expressed confidence that Sullivan would be defeated: "In our fight to prevent this desecration we have the support of friends from all parts of Massachusetts, New England, and the United States. "This battle, like Bunker Hill, is not a local matter," he asserted.