Campus Construction Faces Few Setbacks

As the backhoes and bulldozers of the Big Dig infuse Boston, Harvard is seeing its share of construction equipment as well.

With the campus only sparsely populated by summer school students, summer is prime time for renovations and new construction.

Except for a few bumps in the road, Harvard's construction projects are sticking to schedule, and the results of the $2.1 million capital campaign are starting to show.

Truncated Tower

The home of Ec 10 lectures and first-year dining is one of the many buildings on campus getting a face-lift.

Contractors are working to restore Memorial Hall's truncated tower, which burned down in 1956. Last spring, the University earmarked $4 million to restore the structure to its original Gothic grandeur.

"It's so exciting to have it actually in construction," said project manager Elizabeth Randall.

The construction will still be in progress when students return in September, but Randall says the project will be as little nuisance as possible.

"My hope is that we're going to get all of the heavy lifting and noise done before the school year starts," she said.

Summer work atop the 140-ft. tower is proceeding on schedule. The base steel for the tower has been installed, and the workers will spend three days in late August hoisting pieces of the tower roof into place.

"We're going to be lifting these major steel structures by crane," Randall said. "It's going to be a very cool thing."

Randall said if construction keeps progressing smoothly, the project will be complete by the end of December.

"We have no reason to think there will be a problem," she said.

Them Bones

The renovation of Holden Chapel basement is one of the few summer construction projects that hit an unexpected stumbling block. When workers found human remains in the basement walls, construction ground to a halt.

"That was somewhat of an anomaly," project manager Thomas Melvin said.

After renovations were delayed a week for archaeologists to excavate the bones, the project hit another setback--environmental tests of the site showed traces of arsenic in the soil.

But despite the unusual circumstances, contractors weren't kept from their work for long.

"All has been removed and cleared and construction has resumed," Melvin said.

The renovated basement, which will include expanded rehearsal space for choral groups, was originally slated to be complete by the time classes begin in the fall. But with the interruption caused by the bones, the project will likely finish in the first weeks of the school year.

By the Books

As Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles pointed out in his annual letter to the Faculty, the nostalgic smell of Widener Library's dusty stacks is caused by decaying books.

But a mammoth renovation of the library that began this summer is designed to save the collection from years of abuse by heat, humidity and sunlight.

Project manager Jeff Cushman said the construction is projected to span over 2 and 1/2 years and will cost $52 million. Renovations will include the addition of air conditioning, a sprinkler system and a new fire detection system.

The other major component of the project is construction in the light courts, which will host office space along with two new reading rooms.

Two major components of the project include moving books inside the library to other areas--one half-stack at a time--as well as using a 175-ft. sky crane to lift materials to Widener's center.

Even in the slower summer months, Cushman said, contractors have had to work around a busy library.

"Widener doesn't really work on the academic year," he said.

Despite the magnitude of the work, Cushman said that the renovations won't cause major inconveniences.

"Construction is pretty well confined to the courtyard," he said. "By and large, we expect little disruption to the library operations."

Dworkin Hard

Humanities concentrators have their Barker Center. Come September, computer science concentrators will also have a new building to call their own.

The campus construction project closest to completion, the Maxwell Dworkin building will house faculty as early as this month.

"Things have been crazy the last two or three weeks, in the final stages," said Thomas Murray '82, president of the Casali Group, which is handling the construction.

The state-of-the-art computer science and electrical engineering building will be the new home for faculty from the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Murray said the constraints of the property, located between Oxford Street and Holmes Field, occasionally made construction difficult.

"It's always tough to build in a tight site and around people who are living there and trying to work there," he said.

As Maxwell Dworkin prepares to open its doors, Murray said he thinks the completed structure will impress.

"It's a pretty neat building," Murray said.