Eliot House Fetes Renovated Grille

Eliot House residents piled their plates high with slices of pizza, heart-shaped cookies and clementines and watched “The Simpsons” last night at the formal reopening of their Grille.

Closed since last November’s kitchen fire, the Grille lounge space has undergone extensive clean-up, though renovations on the kitchen area are not expected to begin until this summer.

House Masters Lino Pertile and Anna A. Bensted announced a small celebration in honor of the completion of the clean-up on Friday.

“We really wanted a to have a party to celebrate that it is in use,” Bensted said. “This is exactly what we wanted. We wanted people to come down here and get away from studying.”

Eliot residents promptly arrived at 9 p.m. to feast on the 50 boxes of pizza and variety of soft drinks. The black leather couches in the Grille were soon filled with students watching the widescreen cable television. Other residents took advantage of the refurbished pool table.

Brian J. Cruise ’03 said House life was not the same without the Grille.

“It was almost like the recreational things stopped happening,” he said.

Bensted said she sees the Grille as an informal space where students can socialize—a cafe-style area that could feature live music and hold other social events. House Committee co-Chair Emily R. Murphy ’03 said that the turnout at the party shows how popular the Grille is among residents. She said she wants to use the Grille as a place to hold karaoke, dances, parties and Stein Club.

The reopened Grille has the same layout and black-and-white furniture as it had before, but looks cleaner and newer after the restoration.

“We have a totally new ceiling which makes the room look bigger and more attractive,” Pertile said.

While the Grille was closed, Eliot kept its dining hall open all night. as a space where students could study or socialize.

“It’s not the same,” said Claudia A. Sitgraves ’02, who was glad to finally return to the Grille.

“We see that people liked it [the dining hall being open] and we are going to keep it open all night,” said Superintendent Francisco A. Medeiros, who oversaw the restoration.“I feel relieved because we have done everything we had to do and it’s back to normal.”

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu.