Six First-Year Dorms Renovated; Thayer Under Construction This Fall.

It's not all quiet in Harvard Yard, the construction still continues, but six newly renovated first-year dorms emerged from the scaffolding just in time for the Class of 1997 to move in this weekend.

First-year students moved into Greenough, Hollis, Hurlbut, Matthews, Pennypacker and Stoughton halls over the weekend, the scaffolding gone, the debris forgotten, the hammering ended after a frenzied summer of construction work threatened but never killed by delays.

All 16 first-year dorms are being renovated in a $60 to $70 million multiyear project that is not expected to be complete until the fall of 1995. Lionel, Massachusetts, Mower and Weld have already been either fully or partially renovated.

Thayer is still undergoing massive construction that will, among other things, connect the three previously separated sections with a corridor running through the building. It is scheduled to be completed at the beginning of 1994, just in time for the residents of Holworthy and Pennypacker to move in while the interiors of those dorms are renovated. The first years who would have lived in Thayer this year have been settled in at 29 Garden St., where the students displaced by the Weld renovation lived last year.

Besides Holworthy and Pennypacker halls, Canaday, Grays and parts of the interiors of Hollis and Stoughton halls will undergo renovation over the spring and summer of 1994. Once Wigglesworth, Straus and the interior of Massachusetts Hall are renovated (slated for the summer of 1995), the Yard facelift should be finished, just in time for the Class of 1999 to arrive.

Until now, Matthews, which was essentially gutted and refitted, has undergone the most dramatic transformation. Gone is the dry wall surrounding the staircases--which hid a metal rail from the 1920s that has been uncovered, repainted and extended upward. Gone is the abstract wood sculpture from the 1960s. Gone are the rats (or so hope administrators).

Instead, Matthews denizens are now the beneficiaries of added showers, refurbished furniture, new interior systems and a color scheme which project manager Elizabeth L. Buckley calls "sage green and magenta."

"We've taken the fire escapes off and created new corridors between [the two sections of Matthews] on the second through the fifth floors," she says. "We installed new wood floors as well."

Work was going on in all five buildings up until the last minute. As of late afternoon Thursday, beds, chairs and desks were still being moved into Hollis and Stoughton. Buckley said that the electrical systems in Matthews would not be finished come first-year moving-in time. "There will be people here working during freshman week," she says.

Greenough had boards being sawed outside and wet paint on the inside, but Buckley said at the time that she was confident that all such traces would be gone quickly.

"There are all-new mechanical systems, all-new finishes," says Jeffrey Cushman, Greenough project manager. "There was a lot of cleaning and touch-up...[and] the bathrooms were enlarged."

Greenough and close companion Hurlbut both were repainted in the interior in cream and gray. The latter's most noticeable change is a more prominent entrance, highlighted by a portico and columns.

Hurlbut's bathrooms were also redesigned, but the renovation wasn't nearly as extensive as that of Matthews.

"The rooms themselves really haven't changed that much," Buckley says. "There's a whole new rail system...better air circulation and lighting."

A transformer bolt was installed in the courtyard outside Hurlbut, to be used by radio station WHRB when it moves into the newly renovated basement of Pennypacker Hall sometime this year.

Some of the dorms are also more accessible to disabled students. Matthews and Greenough both have new elevators and several wheelchair-accessible suites. Matthews also has some wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and Braille on the new number plates for each room.

The construction was completed on time under the Project-Labor Agreement of 1992, hashed out between management and union workers in anticipation of a massive Yard construction effort.

But those involved in managing the projects admit that there were times when they feared the projects were fatally delayed, because of snow, rusted window supports or missing support walls. The answer was usually, according to Buckley, to add more workers rather than pushing back the deadline.

"They'd complain, `You think if one man can paint a room in an hour 60 men can paint it in a minute,'...but we needed to get the work done," she says.

David A. Zewinski, senior vice president for property operations and construction, says he suspected for quite a while that the projects would not be finished by deadline. "I stopped feeling that way not long ago," he says. "It took a lot out of people, but I think it was worth it."