Humanities Center Project Moves Forward

By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

The Harvard Union has been wrapped in scaffolding for the past few months as workers toil inside and out to transform the historic building into a Humanities Center for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Laborers have removed asbestos, repointed brick, torn down a loading dock, and excavated to allow for new heating, plumbing, and electrical systems. They also have taken precautions to protect wood paneling, plaques, and fireplaces that will be incorporated into the renovated building.

In the coming months, the roof will be opened to allow delivery of structural steel, new dormers will be added, and the original "widow's walk" will be restored. Construction of new offices, seminar rooms, computer rooms, and graduate student lounges will continue.

The work is expected to be completed by the summer of 1997, and the center will be named for donors Robert R. Barker '36 and his wife, Elizabeth S. Barker.

"As the Union project takes shape, we look forward to a new vibrancy in scholarship and teaching in the humanities at Harvard," said FAS Dean Jeremy Knowles. "Memorial Hall was the first fruit of the campaign to ripen; the Barker Center will be the second. I am impatient for next summer!"

Leo Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, toured the site recently with several colleagues. "It's a very impressive space," he said. "Our department has been dispersed in several inadequate buildings, and it will be much better to be in one place." The English department will occupy three floors in one wing of the center, connected by an internal staircase.

The Union, the adjoining Burr Hall, and nearby Warren House will form the centerpiece of a complex that will bring together some 16 humanities departments and programs now scattered around the University, some in very cramped quarters. Boylston Hall in the Yard will undergo renovations somewhat later and become part of the complex.

Work on the Union halted for a week this spring after a group

calling itself the Harvard Alumni Architectural Review Committee and 19 individuals obtained a temporary restraining order stopping the project. The group mainly opposes the reconfiguration of the former Union dining hall into two large meeting rooms and a central hallway. A Middlesex County Superior Court Judge lifted the restraining order and denied the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction in early April. The project is back on schedule.

Under discussion for nearly a decade, the Union project goes hand-in-hand with recent (and soon-to-be-completed) renovations to Memorial Hall. Both projects aim to turn underused, deteriorating, and centrally located buildings into more functional space.

"By moving freshman dining to Annenberg Hall in the restored Memorial Hall, and creating Loker Commons on its lower level, the University was able to create a focal point for the College community -- something the Union never quite achieved -- while restoring Memorial Hall to its original splendor," said Philip Parsons, director of planning for the FAS.

"The principle behind the College's planning," he said, "is that it is better to adapt and restore what we have than to build new buildings on precious open space."