It is a far cry indeed from a converted farmhouse in an idyllic olive grove in Florence; the red brick and poured concrete that raise Mather House to an unwieldy 18 stories will, David and Patricia Herlihy admit, take a little getting used to.

David Herlihy Jr. '80 was, his parents recall, sitting in the Herlihy residence in Florence last March 17 when the phone range. It was President Bok; David Jr. thought for a moment that Bok was calling him to inform him of his admission to Harvard. Instead, Bok had a somewhat different message for his parents.

David Herlihy, professor of History, and his wife, Patricia, an associate of both the Russian and Ukranian Research Centers, were in Florence on sabbatical last year--David was a professor in residence at the Harvard-owned Villa i Tatti there--when they were notified of their selection as Mather House co-masters.

"It came as a nice surprise," Patricia Herlihy relates, "although we still don't known the whole story of how we were selected."

Well, it all worked out for David Jr. too; he was admitted to Harvard soon after (by conventional mail), and now Mather House boasts its first freshman resident. In fact, the Mather master's residence, occupied since it was built in 1972 by its original tenants, will, for the first time, be filled to near-capacity.

The Herlihys bring with them, along with David Jr., three other children, aged 9 through 18. Two older sons no longer live at home.

The Herlihys inherit from their predecessor, F. Skiddy von Stade '38, a House whose popularity dipped to an all-time low last year in the wake of an unprecedented spate of overcrowding in its cramped, unsoundproofed rooms.

This year, however, the Herlihys confidently predict that Mather will "turn the corner" on overcrowding. When the Herlihys arrived in Cambridge last month, David Herlihy reports, they immediately set to the seemingly gargantuan task of alleviating Mather's burgeoning overcrowding problem.

The immediate result of lobbying on the part of Mather students and the Herlihys has been a dramatic reduction in overcrowding--"a distinct amelioration," as Patricia Herlihy puts it. In fact, there will be three fewer students living in Mather House this fall than last fall, and no junior or senior rooms will be overcrowded.

"Our rationale is that juniors and seniors should have something to look forward to," says Patricia Herlihy. In fact, the current housing situation for upperclassmen in Mather House compares favorably with the least-crowded Houses in the University.

A longer-term problem in Mather will be to deal with the House's foundering reputation. "Hearsay, reputation, anxiety--you have to work within those confines," Patricia Herlihy says.

"At this point," she adds, "all we're trying to cope with is what we've heard about." Minor structural changes--amenities like ventilation in the now-stifling game room and coat hangers outside the dining hall--are already in the offing; others, David Herlihy says, "will be explored when the House opens--there'll have to be undergraduate input on all of this."

Mather, the Herlihys point out, is not without its inherent selling points--which include an attractive library, decent food, and a carpeted dining hall with an exclusive view of the Charles. But these features alone will not be able to compensate for a bad reputation imparted by the House's overcrowding woes. And once the line is held on student crowding, nothing short of a good public-relations campaign will gain for the house its long-awaited position of respectability. The Herlihys seem fully prepared to wage just such a campaign.

North House

John and Hannah Hastings