University Opposes Land Sale For 15-Story Office Building

The University joined city planners, historians, and housewives yesterday in testifying against legislation to allow the sale of land for an office building on stilts above the MTA tunnel entrance across from the Littauer Center.

Spokesmen for the Administration opposed the plan basically on the grounds that it might only further complicate an already critical traffic situation.

Hearings took place before the House Committee on Cities which was considering bills by Senator Francis X. McCann and Rep. George W. Spartachino to sell the land, part of historic Cambridge Common, at the petition of John Briston Sullivan, the building's promoter. Sullivan previously engineered construction of the Treadway Motor Inn on stilts in Brattle Square.

Francis J. Roche, Sullivan's attorney, told the Committee that the plan would bring needed funds to the Cambridge tax base and would relieve the bad traffic situation in the Square.

The building would have parking facilities on the first two stories and an MTA bus station on the street level. According to Roche, the MTA facilities would greatly reduce the concentration of busses from Arlington and North Cambridge in the main part of the Square.

University Opposes Building

Speaking for the University was William W. Nash, Jr. '50, assistant professor of City planning, who did a study of the area traffic problem several years ago.

"It is impossible to see what the effect of the plan might be," Nash declared. "As a fifteen story building," he said, "it might generate from 1,000 to 1,500 people and perhaps 500 cars per day, including tenants, visitors, and service vehicles."

At peak hours, Nash observed, 100 to 120 buses enter the Square area. To dock at the station proposed in the plan, many of them would have to make awkward turns that would only complicate matters. Implementation of Sullivan's plan, he concluded, would merely "move the core of traffic congestion from Harvard Sq. proper further up into the Harvard Square bottleneck."

Testifying in three announced capacities was Charles William Eliot II '20, professor of City and Regional Planning. As a landscape architect, he stressed the importance of saving open land in metropolitan areas, while as a city planner he predicted that such a plan would make "one colossal mess out of the Harvard Sq. area."

In his third capacity, private citizen Eliot emphasized that the idea of a commercial structure on a site where continental troops mustered before Bunker Hill was "just plain outrage." In 1769, he noted, when the Proprietors of Cambridge set aside the common land for the public, they stipulated that it should revert to original owners if ever used for other than civic purposes.

Mrs. Hope Kay, vice-president of the Neighborhood Ten Association, expressed doubt that the structure would add to the tax base or reduce the traffic problem.

The Cambridge Civic Association voted against the plan, said spokesman Warren Dillon because "It is a violation of open land for personal gain and not in the public interest."

Favoring the bill was its sponsor, Rep. Spartachino, who pointed out that most of his constituents earned only about $70 per week. Since Harvard did nothing to aid in the education of needy Cambridge youth, he declared, it should not oppose a proposal that might lower city taxes.

Thomas J. Cronin, attorney, expressed an interest in the Common because his ancestors had owned a share of it. The plan would assist the City of Cambridge in revenues, he said. "The parking problem is secondary."