The heavy steel cranes that have come to dominate the Harvard Square skyline over the past year will soon be gone as the construction on the new buildings in the area slowly come to a completion this semester.

Already the DeWolfe Street apartment complex or campus is receiving its finishing touches. And according to Thomas A. Dingman, associate dean of housing, the new apartment complex will be ready for occupants next fall.

Approximately 200 undergraduates and eight tutors will be housed in the new building, Dingman says. The other apartments will most likely be used by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to house junior faculty or visiting professors.

The new complex offers the perfect solution for the College's recent pledge to bring its transfer students--currently housed off-campus--into the main residential system, Dingman says.

By allowing undergraduate residents of river houses to live in the new apartments, the DeWolfe St. complex will free up rooms within the main houses, which can in turn be used to accommodate transfer students, he explains.

The apartments in the DeWolfe Street complex consist primarily of doubles, and according to Dingman, the maximum number of students per apartment will be four. All of the apartments in the building are equipped with full kitchens, he says.

House masters will meet next month to decide which houses will assign undergraduates to the complex, and to discuss specific plans for how the assignments will be made, Dingman adds.

Once the DeWolfe building is fully occupied, the College will no longer rent apartments from Harvard Real Estate. According to Harvard housing officer Catherine M. Millet, 136 undergraduates presently live in the annex apartments, which include Peabody Terrace, Botanical Gardens, 29 Garden St. and 18 Banks St.

The building on Bow St. next to St. Paul's Church will also be ready for occupation next fall. This building will house the University's Catholic Student Center.

Construction on Bow St. began in 1982. The 35,000 square foot complex will include offices, meeting rooms, a librabry, an auditorium and a small chapel for private services, said the Reverend John Boles.

The center's completion will be a welcome relief to the Catholic community after almost 10 years of construction and a "painful" fundraising campaign, Boles said.

A Shopper's Haven

The avid shopper can look forward to the Square's new facelift as well. Currently under construction at One Brattle Square is a new seven-story shopping mall which, according to Christopher F. Winchenbaugh of Caldwell Banker, will include 102,000 square feet of new shopping and entertainment facilities. Caldwell Banker is the sole leaser of the property.

The mall will be ready for occupancy November 1, Winchenbaugh says. The first floor has already been leased to the Limited Express and Thorn H.M.V., one of the largest record stores in the country. The mall will also be the home of the Brattle Theater.

The design of the building "scales back from the square," Winchenbaugh explains, with the floors getting smaller and smaller as they go up. The top floors will be landscaped to provide "a rural view of the square," Winchenbaugh adds.