"The museums are really one unit, with one director and one staff, and the bridge will make an enormous difference in our ability to operate our museum effectively," Parsons said.

The 18-foot-wide and 150-foot-long connector will house three galleries, and midway across the bridge two large circular windows will give pedestrians a view of the street according to Parsons.

To address neighborhood concerns about the overall visual impact on the area. Harvard hired a landscape architect. Carol Johnson, who designed a tree-lined plaza on the Fogg side of Broadway and a row of trees reaching down both sides of the street to the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School several blocks away.

The Fogg will pay the city $16,000 for "air rights" to the space over Broadway officials said.

But neighborhood residents say the financial compensation is not adequate "The $16,000 per year... amounts to approximately 16 cents per resident of Cambridge," the neighborhood's "con" statement says. "Let us forego this bounty and stand united in opposition to the gallery-connector... this proposal is detrimental to our neighborhood."

No Policy

City Councilor Alice J. Wolf said that without having heard both sides of the argument, she could not make a decision on the Fogg case. But Wolf did express concern over the city's lack of a united policy to deal with overhead bridges.

"We have no standards or procedures--now it depends on whether you like the institution building it," Wolf said.

The Cambridge firm Draper Laboratories has also recently proposed a similar bridge spanning Broadway at the other end of the street in Kendall Square.

Construction on the Sackler Museum started in 1972, but the issue of the connector became prominent only last year, when the University presented the idea to the community.

A model of the proposed connector is on display at the Cambridge Public Library, where the April 24 meeting will be held.