Crane Charges Harvard With Selling City Parking

Harvard may be renting students and faculty parking space it does not legally own, City Councilor Kevin Crane '73 told the council last night.

Waving a copy of a city engineer's report showing Winthrop St. between Boylston and Holyoke Streets as a public way, Crane charged Harvard with "demarcating ten spaces across from the Indoor Athletic Building in bright yellow paint."

Highway Robber

The University deprives the city of parking meter revenue as well as "robbing the public of parking spaces in a highly congested area," Crane said. The council then ordered city manager James L. Sullivan to consult with public works officials and Harvard representatives to settle the dispute.

"My understanding is that, historically, the street belongs to Harvard," Lewis A. Armistead, assistant to the vice president for government and community relations, said yesterday. "I know nothing about councilor Crane's endeavors," he added.

Robert Burns, director of the University parking office, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The traffic department report said that Winthrop St., then known as Long St., was declared a "public high-way" in 1635. The section of Winthrop St. between Brattle and Boylston streets (bordered by Grendel's Den on one side and the Galeria on the other), however, has been a private way since 1899 according to the report.

"The abutter can do anything he wants to on a private way, but we don't have to plow the snow and stuff like that," Crane said. "But if that's a public way, we'll tell Harvard to cease and desist with the parking spaces and instead put in meters," he added.

Crane said similar problems may exist on Holyoke Place near the front entrance to Lowell House and on Cowperthwaite St. near the end of DeWolfe St. "It just really irks me that Harvard or anyone else is depriving the public of parking spaces," Crane said.

"I've just never heard of a dispute like this before," Armistead said.