The death of Roscoe Pound on July 1 marked the end of an era at the Law School. Pound had been dean of the Law School from 1916 to 1937, and during his tenure he established the School as a national rather than an Eastern institution. He resigned as dean to become a University Professor, and spent the next eleven years traveling, writing, and teaching law and philosophy.
In 1953 at the age of 82, he abandoned his teaching duties all together and retired to his home in Cambridge where he lived until his death.
Cambridge entered a new era of its own this summer by luring the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Space Center--and its $60 million in construction contracts--to a site in Kendall Square, next to M.I.T.
NASA had announced last Spring its desire to build the Center within a half hour's travel time of both M.I.T. and Harvard. After surveying the area, the agency in early July indicated interest in building at one of several sites in Cambridge, and it requested the city to report on the feasibility of obtaining the sites for the Center.
Four weeks of study by the Cambridge City Council produced the City's offer of the 40-acre Kendall Square site. NASA's budget, however, called for a good portion of the construction costs to be borne by urban renewal funds. And once the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority was assured the Kendall Square area would qualify for urban renewal funds, NASA promptly approved the site.
The Space Agency has set up temporary headquarters in Technology Square but it is not anticipated that any demolition or construction will begin for a year or two.
Kennedy Library
President Pusey spent an active June before he departed on his vacation. Commencement week Dean Ford, Don K. Price, dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration, and Pusey met with McGeorge Bundy, Robert Kennedy's official envoy to the University. Bundy brought with him the first concrete proposals for the institute in the Kennedy Memorial Library, and the meeting itself was the first formal contact between the Kennedy family and the University on the Institute. (See page seven for the basic points discussed.) Later in the month, Kennedy himself journeyed to Cambridge to talk to Pusey about plans for the Library.
Civil rights and other events of the summer eventually forced the Attorney General to turn his attention away from the Library and little has been done since June.
On June 23, however, the plane carrying Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) to the Democratic State Convention crashed in an apple orchard, killing the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides. The Senator sustained a broken back and will be in the hospital until Christmas.
In the middle of June, the University joined a campaign against a proposed Commonwealth Edison plant to be built in upper New York state. If Con Ed goes through with its plans to build the hydro-electric power project in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, the University will lose slightly more than 200 acres of its Black Rock Forest.
In a letter to the New York Times printed June 19, President Pusey objected to Con Ed's "radical proposal for altering the scenic beauty and scientific value of largely unspoiled section of the Hudson valley." Pusey said the 3700-acre forest "is remarkable for its hardwoods characteristic of the middle Applachian region and important for the study of silviculture and conservation practices."
The University's chances of blocking the construction of the project dropped sharply when a Federal Power Commission examiner approved Con Ed's plans for the Hudson River plant on July 31. While the five-man Commission will undoubtedly review the examiner's findings this fall, it is unlikely the group will reverse the ruling. Once a utility obtains a federal license for a hydroelectric project, it can take private property by right of eminent domain.
Mem Drive Underpass
Conservationists in Cambridge were busy denouncing the Metro-politan District Commission's "modifications" of the plans for the Memorial Drive underpasses. The MDC in early July announced changes in its plans for the underpasses which, it declared, would save 11,500 feet of park land from destruction.
