A Child's Garden

The lights are out in the toddler room of the Botanic Gardens Children's Center, but as 4 p.m. approaches the quiet of naptime is broken by the snaps and zippers of preparation for recess on the snow-covered playground.

"Pablo is still sleeping. He must be tired," one toddler tells the caregiver while hovering over the sleeping youngster's head.

The child gets closer and louder, repeating, "Pablo is sleeping."

Not anymore.

Pablo's eyes open slightly and his head raises a bit before he burrows it into his curled arms.

Realizing that Pablo wants naptime to continue, his friend moves to a window ledge across the room and lets the toddler sleep.

Peace at Last

Life was not always so tranquil at the University's most recently completed construction project, located in the Harvard-owned Botanic Gardens apartment complex one block beyond the Quad.

The $1.5 million children's center, the new home of the 28-year-old Harvard Law School (HLS) Child Care Center, was completed in late January after rancorous debate and angry community meetings.

HLS announced in mid-1996 it was going to repossess the space the daycare center had used on the HLS campus. The eviction left the center's 43 young charges and their parents seeking a new site.

The Botanic Gardens complex, only a few blocks from the Law School, seemed like an ideal location.

But in a series of community meetings and angry exchanges between tenants and University developers throughout the fall of 1997, Botanic Gardens residents explained that the new facility would pit affordable childcare against the quality of life in the apartment complex.

The most vehement opposition to the facility came from a band of junior faculty members and Botanic Gardens residents who viewed the center as an intrusion and an impediment to their research, writing and, ultimately, their search for tenure.

"They tried to sell us this project, and people saw the wool was being pulled over their eyes," Botanic Gardens resident and Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies Marcus Moseley told The Crimson during the center's planning process in December of 1997.

But, University officials say, Harvard had a duty to follow through on its stated commitment to affordable care for children of students and faculty.

"There are many of us who have worked at Harvard only because we could get daycare for our kids," notes Kathy A. Spiegelman, associate vice president at Harvard Planning and Real Estate.

Today Moseley sings a different tune.

To accommodate the center's most vociferous opponents, the University gave residents the option to change apartments within the complex, in addition to accelerating construction and delaying its start until the conclusion of the academic year.

"I was moved into an apartment that was way the other end [of the complex]," Moseley says. "[The center] doesn't disturb me at all. There was a lot of negotiation but eventually they came up with a deal that I considered quite reasonable and an apartment came up that was...actually as far away as you could possibly be."

The apartment complex is large enough to allow Moseley and others concerned about noise to reside far from the playground cacophony. Today, children from the older age group, ages three and four, are shouting as they chip the ice from a recent snowfall off their play equipment.

The center--one of the few University daycare facilities built from the ground up, according to Mary H. Power, Harvard's director of community relations for Cambridge--is state-of-the-art, boasting numerous accommodations for small children and their special needs.

The development of the child care center was an unusual triple collaboration by HLS, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and University president Neil L. Rudenstine.

Rudenstine and HLS cobbled together the funds for the project. Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles entered FAS into an agreement that provides "ongoing operational support and annual subsidies to the center" according to Mary A. Cronin, director at the Harvard Office of Human Resources.

Apple Pie and Shaving Cream

After all the time spent planning and moving, the adults closest to the project seem as pleased as the children that bounce around the center.

"After two years of zoning board Meetings, snowstorms, community meetings and negotiations with Harvard...we can't believe it's over and that it's working so well," says Lynne M. Shirey, bibliographer for Latin American law at HLS' Langdell Library and the current head of the Botanic Gardens center's board of directors.

Caregivers and their charges are settling into their new home.

"It's really been up and running just over a month," Cronin says. "As far as I know, there have been no major moving-in kind of issues."

Caregivers say they have attempted to provide continuity for the toddlers. Lessons in toiler-training and telling time have continued after the move.

"Have you gone to the bathroom yet, Daniel?" one of the caregiver asks a toddler.

"Three minutes," he responds confidently, as he has been taught in the center's toilet-training system.

"Okay, three minutes," the caregiver acknowledges.

Meanwhile, the middle group waits impatiently for word on a class apple pie that was a morning's project now baking in the facility's kitchen.

In addition to the kitchen, the center boasts a climbing structure and special child-sized windows and toilets.

In its move from the HLS site, the daycare center, has gained two additional classrooms, including an infant room for children as young as three months old.

After all the upheaval, things appear to be running smoothly at the new center. The carevigers can now focus on art projects and toddler temper tantrums now that the negotiations, neighborhood protests and moving day chaos recede into the past.

Today, controlling the spread of pink shaving cream is a the most important concern for the Botanic Garden caregivers. Four children in the middle age group are clustered around a bin filled with shaving cream tinted red with food coloring.

"Look at you," one of the caregivers admonishes as she wipes red shaving cream off one girl's shirt.

"Look at you," the toddler reports as she mischeviously lathers her teacher.