A construction worker, Louis Dingee, fell from the scaffolding at Holyoke Center yesterday evening and lay in the pit for five hours before he was discovered by a relative who had come to search for him. The temperature, meanwhile, had dropped to 51 degrees.

A large crowd gathered on Dunster Street at 10 p.m. as the Cambridge Fire Department rescue truck arrived to take Dingee, still conscious, to the Cambridge City Hospital. Police said that he had fallen at about 5 p.m.

Word on the worker's condition was not immediately available from the hospital.