A bomb threat in Holyoke Center proved to be a hoax yesterday after the building had been partially evacuated and searched by police.

The bomb scare was the fifth at Harvard in the last month. During a four day period from February 16 to 20 police received four bomb threats to Holyoke Center.

University police, as well as units from the Cambridge police and fire departments, yesterday searched the ten-story building after an anonymous caller warned that a bomb would go off within a half-hour. The call was immediately reported to University police by the personnel office switchboard, which received it at 10:45 a. m.

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Many of those inside Holyoke Center left the building during the 30-minute search. When no bomb was found they returned to their offices.

On March 6 an explosion destroyed a town house in Greenwich Village and killed three people connected with the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society.

"We expected after the New York thing to have a flood of them." said Robert Tonis, chief of University police, "but today's is the first."

Tonis said yesterday that no special precautions have been taken against bomb threats. "The only thing we do is treat them seriously when we receive them."