The Garden Is Still At Peace

Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard's elegant estate in the nation's capital, houses a library of Byzantine studies--but it is also the site of 16 acres of a world-renowned formal garden. So when Harvard proposed last year to build an underground library addition, Pusey-style, beneath the estate's most graceful lawn, the University ran into determined opposition.

Harvard claimed that it could excavate and replant the garden without causing muchpermanent damage, and that the underground site was the only one that would allow scholars to pass from the main library to the addition without stepping outside.

But opponents--notably Peter Schenk, a Dubmarton gardener who quit his post to fight the plan--said that construction would cause irreparable harm and that Harvard could find a perfectly acceptable location near the main building but outside the garden.

Last May the University conceded, shelving the underground plan on the condition that "a separate center proves practical," Charles U. Daly, then vice president for government and community affairs, said.

Since that time, however, no alternative site has been explored.

"I think it's just kind of sitting there," Robin Schmidt, Daly's replacement, said the other day.

William R. Tyler, director of Dumbarton Oaks, agreed that nothing much has happened. "The library is running out of space," he said earlier this week, "but that's nothing new.

"If you find anything out," he added, "let me know."