New House May Be Constructed Near Dunster

The Eighth House will very probably be built in the Leverett-Dunster area, and architects have been asked to start drawing plans, President Pusey announced yesterday.

He highlighted a conference on the Program for Harvard College by announcing that the Corporation had decided to use now some of the funds already collected in the drive.

The new House will cost about five million dollars and hold 350 students, each of whom will have an individual study-bedroom. The President did not commit himself definitely on the style of the House, except to say that it would not be in the traditional Georgian, with entries and other expensive features.

Split-Level Apartments

Behind the President as he spoke was a large sketch showing one way of compromising between Georgian architecture and the approach used in the Graduate Center. This sketch (reproduced at right), featured a split-level arrangement with four study-bedrooms having access to a living room on a different floor. While the President did say that this plan had not been decided on, the emphasis placed upon it suggested that it was receiving important consideration.

Pusey did not elaborate on details of location except to say that the "probability is very strong that it will be in the neighborhood of Leverett and Dunster Houses." This recalled one idea that has been previously suggested, to build onto Mather Hall towards DeWolfe Street, eliminating the House tennis court.

Primarily for Overcrowding

The University owns much but not all of the land in this area, and has made repeated efforts to buy up the remainder in the DeWolfe-Cowperthwaite region. At one point yesterday Pusey said that the University might "build around" any property that it could not buy.

Pusey said that the House would primarily be used to draw off some of the overcrowding on the present Houses, but he did not eliminate the possibility that it, and the two others which are also included in the Program, would also absorb the apparently inevitable College expansion, which he estimated at fifteen to twenty per cent in the next decade. The Program also calls for two new freshman dormitories.