Most of the University community was still vacationing last September when Harvard and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library announced joint plans for the Library site at the Bennett St. M.B.T.A. yards. Harvard would build a massive new complex to centralize the study of government, economics, and international relations near the Memorial Library. All offices now located in the Littauer would be moved. The total cost: between $12 and $15 million.

In such ways is sorting the events of the last twelve months and making some sense of them mad edifficult. There has always been a small percentage in predicting. Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate some trends which seemed significant. Ten or fifteen years from now, some of them may still be significant.

(1) Development of the Kennedy Library: what consequences?

In some cases, there can be no doubt that fundamental change is coming. The development of the Kennedy Library complex falls into this category.

When it is completed in the early seventies, it may attract more than a million visitors a year. Twelve acres of new real estate will be opened up in the heart of Harvard Square. No one has vet predicted precisely the consequences of the Kennedy development, but there has been ample speculation: land values around the site will inevitably rise, and the competition for potential building sites will become increasingly intense. Over the long run, the prospect is for major redevelopment all around the Library site, and specifically more growth westward along Mt. Auburn St.

In ten or fifteen years, high rise commercial and apartment buildings may cluster around the Library site, intruding into Brattle Square and extending down Mt. Auburn St. Many city officials, planners, and architects envision this type of change. They expect the visual and commercial character of the Square to be altered drastically.

If these predictions are substantially correct, there are serious implications for the City Administration, the University, and Cambridge residents. What will be the character of the growth around the Library? What type of construction, what type of business will dominate the new development? Will the presence of the Library prompt developers to base commercial operations, not directly related to the Library, in Harvard Square.

Some University and city officials are clearly worried that the response to the Library will have unsettling effects on the Square: they forsee uncoordinated and unsightly commercial development that would detract from the 'Memorial' aspect of the Library. To control development, urban renewal has been suggested. Thus far, the idea has been discussed by the city officials, but nothing official has been proposed. The questions raised by the Library complex are serious ones that fundamentally affect the University environment. The issues of development crystalized this year; the course of development will loom large through the next decade.

(2)The University's Growth: how long, what price tag?

Harvard's decision to participate in the Library development emphasized another dimension of the year's activity-the incessant growth of the University. Putting the government-economics-international relations building next to the Library was not done out of sheer sentiment: Harvard wants more room for these fields anyway, and available land is running out. The University has already begun a policy of building up instead of out; and in the view of many officials, passing up the opportunity to use the Bennett St. M.B.T.A. yards for expansion would have been a disastrous mistake.

There were dozens of other reminders this year of Harvard's continual physical expansion. Holyoke Center was officially completed, and, at Radcliffe, the new Hilles Library was finished along with the first section of Mabel Daniels Hall. For the future, Harvard began final design work on the 10th undergraduate House and started excavating an automobile underpass on Cambridge St. (This $3.4 million project will also allow the closing of part of Kirkland St. for use as a construction site.)

The most convincing indication of how permanent this growth is came less than a month ago in President Pusey's annual report to the Board of Overseers. Pusey spent half the report simply enumerating Harvard's current capital needs. His total was $160 million, though he actually left out a few items and warned that there are other areas, now neglected, that will require more financial help in the near future. What the report amounted to was a permanent committment to large capital campaigns.

In concrete terms, this has meant (and will mean) not only expansion but also consolidation: the School of Education consolidated its activities from scattered buildings when Larsen Hall was constructed; the School of Design will do the same when its current $11 million fund drive is completed. The Social Relations Department collected itself in William James Hall; the new building on the Kennedy Library site do the same for the Government and Economics Department. And when the $49 million Program for Harvard Science (just getting under way) is completed, there will be considerable consolidation in a new undergraduate Science Center.

In short, 1966, confirmed that Harvard would continue to drive for more funds on all fronts, it also meant that the University had accepted the implications of present growth: that is, ever increasing activity in all areas, paralleled by larger needs for current and capital cash, and gradual increases in the numbers of Faculty members and students. Over the long run, growth begets more growth.

(3)The University's relation to the Federal government.