UNDERPASSES: A CHRONOLOGY

The Sycamore Sags (so named for the sycamore trees which would be destroyed by the construction of an underpass at Boylston St. on Memorial Drive) has reached the columns of two national magazines (Time and Life) and the desk of Secretary of Interior Stewart L. Udall since its small beginnings last fall.

Here follows an abbreviated chronology:

Oct. 1963: University first learns of proposal to build underpasses at Boylston St., River St., and Western Ave. John H. Finley '25, Master of Eliot House, reacts with "pure, horrid gloom" when told that one of the access roads to the Boylston St. underpass might come very close to the corner of his House.

Jan. 1963: Nearly 500 irate Cambridge citizens turn up at a public hearing to hear Metropolitan District Commissioner Robert F. Murphy explain two alternative designs for the underpasses. (The MDC is obligated to build the underpasses under a legislative act passed in 1962.)

Feb. 1963: President Pusey and James R. Killian, Jr., Chairman of the board of M.I.T., meet privately with Governor Endicott Peabody '40 to discuss the Memorial Drive situation. The Governor remains non-committal. Edward L. Bernays, the spirited 72-year old dean of public relations and a leader in the anti-underpass campaign, writes Secretary of the Interior Udall. Bernays asks that the Charles riverbank be declared a "national historic site" because of its recreational and historic value.

Later Udall writes Bernays, "You are certainly to be congratulated on your energetic efforts to alert your community," but in another letter says he cannot declare the riverbank a national historic site.

Winter and Spring 1964: Bills that would have repealed the act authorizing the underpasses' construction or delayed construction are defeated. Opponents vow to continue fight.

May 1964: At the end of a mild spring "riot," more than a thousand Harvard and Radcliffe students, shouting "Save the Sycamores," gather on Memorial Drive. MDC police rush in with police dogs. Students are dispersed after blocking traffic on Memorial Drive for more than an hour.

July 1964: MDC modifies underpass plans to save 11,500 square ft. of park land. Opponents vow to continue to fight.