Building—and Buying—a Campus the recent boom—and the future in allston by Jonathan Shaw s Harvard Running Out of Space?” ran a headline existing spaces were begun, it became clear those steps would in this magazine in the spring of 1989. The answer, not be enough. Leaders in the central administration charged the accompanying article explained, was a resound- with planning and real estate had been first to raise the alarm ing “Yes.” The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) privately. The imminent space crunch was not confined to FAS. “Iwas first to go public with its dilemma, which had become ap- Data they had gathered on growth during the prior 40 years parent as the result of a space analysis provided to Dean Michael showed that Harvard had added more than a million square Spence in 1988. FAS also faced significant deferred maintenance feet of space per decade. problems in the freshman dormitories within Harvard Yard, and “Considerations of flexibility for the long-term future of Har- in its buildings north of the Science Center. A renovation of the vard had not been an issue that was prominent on the radar exterior of Memorial Hall, then used only occasionally for exams screen for the Corporation, and no individual dean had much or special events, prompted thoughts about what to do with the concern for the University’s overall space needs,” recalls Sally grand but underutilized hall within. Planners proposed trans- Zeckhauser, who had headed Harvard Real Estate Inc. since 1979, forming it back into a dining facility for freshmen. The decision and subsequently served (from 1988 to 2009) as Harvard’s vice- to do so eventually freed the Freshman Union to be remade as the president for administration. “But the message coming out of the Barker Center for the Humanities, providing much-needed offices data was clear. To meet Harvard’s mission in the coming decades and a central location for scholars in those fields. would require considerable new physical space.” But almost from the moment renovation and reallocation of Yet it is unlikely that even Zeckhauser could have anticipated 68 September - October 2011 The Cambridge campus as seen from a vantage point above Oxford Street, looking toward the University’s future in Allston Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard@ 375 what followed, as Harvard filled out its existing campuses with 15 years between 1994 and 2009, a rate that dwarfed the previous more than 5.5 million square feet of net new space, most of it built pace of growth of the entire University. in a boom during the last decade in which the campus grew at three times its historic rate. FAS and the Harvard School of Pub- Elbow Room Elsewhere— lic Health each grew 30 percent, the Law School grew 21 percent, and the Medical School added 57 percent more space—almost a and on to Allston million new square feet for that one school alone. More than 3 n the Longwood Medical Area, a new research building million square feet were added to the Cambridge campus: a 25 I(later named for the late Warren Alpert, M.B.A. ’47) rose in the percent expansion. Across the campuses in Cambridge, in the Quadrangle in 1992, the first of two (the latter still awaits a name) Medical Area, and in Allston (the Business School and athletic ar- in the past quarter-century. Only at HBS—already in Allston—did eas), the University grew from approximately 15.6 million square growth proceed unconstrained, presaging the University’s future feet to more than 21 million square feet—nearly 35 percent. Capi- even before its land purchases in Allston were made public in 1997. tal spending (more than half of it devoted to new construction Although President Neil L. Rudenstine emphasized interdisci- and acquisitions) rose from less than $225 million annually in the plinary, collaborative academic planning beginning in the 1990s, decade and a half prior to 2000—jumping to more than $600 mil- most of the larger schools (with the exception of FAS) contin- lion in 2001, and eventually peaking in 2009 at $644 million (as ued to make plans independently, with their own budgets. At the University quickly shifted gears to wind down such spending HBS, for example, Dean John McArthur supported the Univer- in the wake of the financial crisis). sity’s Allston land purchases, but wanted no central involvement in his own campus, where Shad Hall, a cutting-edge gymnasium Encountering Constraints in Cambridge that also houses a research computing facility, opened in 1989. The stunning Class of 1959 Chapel (the patina of its green copper ut as Harvard expanded in ever greater concentric rings cladding assured thanks to weathering by goat urine) was built Bwithin Cambridge, Zeckhauser says, it began bumping up in 1992, and renovations to Morgan Hall, the against “mature neighborhoods with sophisticated and politi- principal home of faculty offices, were completed cally active residents often seeking to preserve things just as the same year. In 1999 McArthur­ Hall (a residen- Visit harvardmag. they were.” tial building for executive education) opened, com/campus-375 Academic growth spurts continued at first on the tradition- followed in 2003 by Hawes Hall (a classroom for a compendium of Harvard building al pattern of building around an open green space. Hauser Hall building)—all rising within the school’s existing projects from the (1994), the first new building at the Law School since 1970, rose footprint and prompting no objections. pages of Harvard to complete the Holmes Field quadrangle, in the same way the But back in Cambridge, there was trouble with Magazine from Taubman Building (1990) completed the Kennedy School’s cam- the neighbors, as Zeckhauser anticipated. The 1996 forward. pus. But increasingly, it was tuck, wedge, and squeeze for new 259,000-square-foot Center for Government and International buildings in Cambridge, and renovation for older structures. Studies, for which planning began in 1995, was not completed Towering William James Hall, for example—enormously expen- until 2005; it had to be completely redesigned more than once to sive to renovate—was spared destruction by Spence in the early appease community concerns, more than quadrupling its price to 1990s mainly because the academic spaces the high-rise contained a reported $140 million. A tunnel underneath Cambridge Street couldn’t easily be replaced at the same density. At the same time, linking the two buildings was nixed, echoing earlier thwarted plans were laid to renovate long-mothballed Lowell Lecture Hall. attempts to link the Fogg Art Museum to the Sackler Museum On the site of a faux-Colonial gas station it had acquired in the with an enclosed pedestrian overpass. Similarly, plans to build 1980s, the University built the Inn at Harvard (1991), with the ex- a museum of modern art along the Charles River near Western pectation that it would eventually become faculty offices. Max- Avenue were resisted by vocal Riverside neighbors, some still well Dworkin (1999), with the slimmest of presences on Oxford embittered by the University’s construction of Peabody Terrace Street (it expands from a wedge at the sidewalk entrance into a decades earlier. A park and graduate student housing, mixed substantial building), made new space for information sciences with some affordable housing, went up instead. North of Har- on part of the old Aiken Laboratory site. vard Yard, long-running negotiations with neighbors did allow With little room left on the shelves of campus libraries, books the construction of the 470,000-square-foot Northwest Science began to be shipped to a satellite repository in the suburbs, even- building (2008); its twisting layout mirrors the shape of the par- tually enabling renovation of three major libraries, including cel on which it was built. Langdell at the Law School in beginning in 1996, Widener in 1999, Community concerns thus loomed large in the planning of ev- and Baker at the Business School (HBS) in 2003. Near Quincy ery new building in Cambridge, and space constraints made it House, a parking lot on DeWolfe Street gave way to a substan- clear as well that not many more could be built in any case. Zeck- tial brick apartment building that opened to house students and hauser had realized that Harvard would need a new campus, in junior faculty in 1991. More housing rose later on unbuilt parcels a place with fewer obstacles to its growth, in the late 1980s. In of land near Mather House and in Riverside (2005), along the 1987 or 1988, she put together a proposal and took it to the Har- Charles River near the intersection with Western Avenue. vard Corporation, urging consideration of the long-term physi- Just by renovating and expanding older buildings, and shoe- cal needs of the University, pointing out the difficulty of meeting horning new ones into an increasingly constrained Cambridge them in Cambridge, and identifying Allston as the most promis- campus, FAS alone added a whopping 2 million square feet in the ing place for future expansion. Photographs by Steve Dunwell Harvard Magazine 69 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 “The Corporation, with Derek Bok as president, gave the pro- the nature of the dialogue about questions of style and materi- posal careful consideration,” Zeckhauser remembers. “Rod Mac- als. When Harvard—then in a public bidding process for 91 acres Dougall, then Treasurer, was charged with determining how any of Allston land owned by the Massachusetts Turnpike—decid- land assembly in Allston might be undertaken appropriately, giv- ed in 1997 that it was necessary to disclose its aspirations across en the University’s responsibilities, and particularly to assure that the river, that step brought questions of architecture and “brand” Harvard secured properties at fair prices, properties that would to the forefront “in a way that individual projects by individual not be used in the short- or even medium-term.