MDC Shows Two Underpass Plans; Costlier Would Save Boat House

The Metropolitan District Commission unveiled two possible designs for the Boylston St. underpass Friday at a public meeting in the State House.

One plan, recommended by the MDC's engineering consultants, would allow Weld Boat House and most of the sycamores on Memorial Drive to remain, although a frontage road would take a sizeable slice of the river bank east of Weld. The other plan would require the demolition of Weld and take more trees and land, but would be substantially cheaper.

MDC chairman Robert F. Murphy told a generally hostile crowd of 300 at the meeting that the commission would need "at least several weeks" to choose between the designs.

Denies Go-Slow Policy

An assistant commissioner, Max Rosenblatt, yesterday denied reports that the MDC had decided on a go-slow policy for two months so that plans could take into account traffic generated by the proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration research center.

Rosenblatt, a Republican from Malden, said that he thought "there is no sense jumping the gun" on building the underpasses, but that he did not know how the other four members of the commission felt. He added that the question of delaying action might come up Thursday at the MDC's next meeting.

A site often mentioned for the NASA laboratory is in Brighton near Cambridge St., which becomes River St. on the Cambridge side of the Charles. The MDC plans to build underpasses on Memorial Drive at River St. and Western Ave. as well as at Boylston St.

No Enthusiasm

The Commission's proposals generated no great enthusiasm Friday, but the reaction was milder than had been expected. Many in the crowd apparently agreed with Alan McClennen, Cambridge's planning director, who said, "I don't like the results, but it's not their [the MDC's] fault." A bill passed in June, 1962, directed the MDC to build the underpasses.

Although a number of Harvard officials, including John H. Finley, Jr. '25, Master of Eliot House, attended the meeting, the University issued no official statement. Finley yesterday deplored the MDC's "pragmatic desire to do things piecemeal without considering the consequences in a larger context," and said he did not think it had acted "in an imaginative and large-minded way, even given their original mandate."

The meeting was to have been at the MDC's headquarters at 20 Somerset St. in Boston, but the large turnout forced the commission to move it to the 800-seat Gardner Auditorium, a block away in the sub-basement of the State House.

Pickets marched at both locations, carrying signs reading "Cars or People," "Save the Charles for Our Children," and "Don't Throw Our $6 Million Down the Thruway." One of the demonstrators was Mrs. Cornelia B. Wheeler, Cambridge City Councillor, who carried a tiny piece of cardboard that read, "How Can I Cross an Expressway to Play." Another picket, a baritone in a brown duffel coat, sang: "I think that I shall never see/A highway lovely as a tree."

Six Proposals Summarized

At the State House, Fred II. Lindquist, representing the Boston engineering firm of Jackson and Moreland, summarized six proposals for the Boylston St. underpass. He said that either of two designs could handle the expected volume of traffic.

The first he described as an "extended portal" underpass, because its eastern entrance is located about 400 feet from the intersection so that frontage roads used for turning can converge near the Boat House. Jackson and Moreland recommended this underpass, estimating its cost at $2,208,000.

The second design--for a conventional underpass--"immediately wipes out Weld Boat House and takes a rather large portion of recreational land," Lindquist said. It would cost $1,304,000 plus the expense of demolishing and replacing Weld, which might come to another $500,000, he said