In 1946, the University had the temporary Vanserg Building, built during the war near the Divinity School, waiting to be used for something.
No Dining Hall
Before the war not only did the Cambridge graduate students have inadequate dormitory space, but also there was no University dining hall where they could regularly eat.
Dean Landis, then head of the Law School, and Buck agreed to turn Vanserg into a graduate dining hall. The administration agreed that this was only a temporary measure, for Vanserg is an unattractive building which was interior to the other dining halls in the University.
When Griswold was made dean of the Law School, he began pushing the idea of new graduate dormitories strongly. Buck and he realized that the best way -- and perhaps the only way -- to get real Corporation support for new dormitories and commons would be to make the program a joint one between the Law School and the other graduate schools.
To the surprise of many, the project won rapid support from both Conant and the Fellows of the Corporation. Before the Graduate Center idea was announced in October of 1948, the University had to decide what type of buildings they wanted.
High Building Costs
Even though the post-war building boom was not far from its peak, no one wished to delay construction. The feeling was that this project had been long enough delayed; the process of changing the atmosphere at the g r a d u a t e schools would take some time, so that the sooner they were started the better.
Modern architecture was about the only type that could be used in the center; if Georgian Colonial were used -- as in the Houses built in the depression -- the cost would have been enormous.
Actually the Graduate Center received initial Corporation approval before Gropius preliminary sketches were authorized.
Once the plans had been approved, the long-delayed program went ahead with virtually no stoppages. Sample rooms were constructed by the architects for the students to look at and offer improvements for A number of minor points were changed, but the only criticism students offered was that economy had made the rooms too small.
The Graduate Center as planned would have dormitory space for about 1,000 men. Since three of the four existing halls were meant for non-Law men and since Law alumni would contribute more money for the new buildings, the Corporation decided to build five of the new dormitories for the Law School and only two for the other graduate schools.
Today the 1,000 men living in the Graduate Center are about equally divided between Law men and students from the other Cambridge graduate schools.
New Significance
The opening of the center lends new significance to the University's graduate schools. To a great many persons, regardless of where they went to college, a Harvard graduate degree was something useful to have. But these, men felt few ties with Harvard, nor had they received all the benefits of a Harvard education.
The Harvard graduate schools will continue to educate leading lawyers, college professors, and civil servants of the future. To these men the University will have a new importance. No longer will they recall Harvard as the place where they lived in a dingy rooming house and ate in drug stores, while studying under some of the world's leading scholars and teachers.