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May-June 2007
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Ripening Nicely
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The New College Theatre will be home to Hasty Pudding nonsense, but more as well, in a building nearly twice as large. |
New College Theatre. After 117 years of young gentlemen treading the boards in drag, the Hasty Pudding building at numbers 10 and 12 Holyoke Street was in dire need of a lift when the students debouched in 2005. Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects had the rear two-thirds of the structure demolished, retaining the historic front and restoring its lobby and masonry bay. At back, they dug down—a popular direction in construction these days—to put two new floors below ground in which to stash most of the building’s systems. On top of those, they built a high-quality theater and many other useful spaces. While the new 272-seat theater is smaller than the old 350-seater, it comes with fine support space—dressing rooms, a prop shop, a management office, a control room, and staging areas. Multifunctional rooms may accommodate rehearsals, performances, meetings, or classes. And there are offices for the shared use of student clubs.
“We have a strong arts heritage,” dean of the College Benedict H. Gross has said. “The Hasty Pudding Theatricals is in the forefront of that heritage, having been a fixture here since the late 1700s. We are very happy that we will be able to give them, and several other student performance groups at Harvard, a wonderful new home so that old traditions may continue, and new ones may begin.”
In early April, a superintendent would have observed the completion of the decorative woodwork in the south porch and the installation of its granite steps.
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The Memorial Drive housing project includes a building with a low-rise section, shown here in the background, and a high-rise section at front. |
University housing. On the site of a former garden center on the corner of Memorial Drive and Western Avenue, near Peabody Terrace, the Harvard University Art Museums had proposed to build a low, glass- and wood-clad museum designed by Renzo Piano. But a vocal group of local residents protested. And so, instead, Harvard, the Riverside community, and the city opted for housing, for which the property was already zoned (“University Housing on the Rise,” September-October 2005, page 63). As a result of the compromise, in which Harvard agreed to significant downzoning of some of the parcels, the University is putting up 300 units (500 beds) of new housing, mostly for graduate students, on two sites in the Riverside part of town. The Memorial Drive site features a big structure—strikingly red, as will soon be apparent—designed by Kyu Sung Woo Architects for the north part of the parcel. Three wood-frame houses with multiple units, designed by Elkus/Manfredi Architects, will sit at the back of the south piece of the site.
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New housing, mostly for graduate students, nears completion on Cowperthwaite Street (above) and (below) on Grant Street, both close to Mather House |
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Harvard will turn the land in front of these buildings into a public park. Although the University proposed at first to put a park at the interior of the property, close to neighborhood houses and away from the traffic-filled streets, Riverside residents and some city councilors insisted that it be where it will be for its public visibility. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates will do the landscape design.
Also as part of the deal that allowed this construction project to move forward, Harvard agreed to build and turn over to the city, after all the building permits it needed were in hand, 34 units of affordable housing in a nearby former industrial building that is part of the Harvard-owned Blackstone power plant just across Western Avenue.
Elkus/Manfredi Architects are the authors also of the high- and low-rise buildings on Cowperthwaite and Grant streets. On Grant, six wood-frame buildings, similar in scale to existing houses in the neighborhood, will hold six units each. On Cowperthwaite, one three-story wood-frame building will sit on the corner and play a facing-down role for a more massive glass-and-brick apartment house atop an underground garage. With these projects, the University moves toward its goal of housing 50 percent of its graduate students.
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