Welcome to Eden. Or so the powers that be would like you to believe. But residents of 29 Garden St. Aren't so sure this is paradise on earth.

After a summer spent fretting about their rooms, 166 first-year students moved a week ago into what once housed transfer students and faculty members, finding carpeted suites, freshly painted walls and complimentary green "29 G" T-shirts.

The undergraduates were forced in to the Garden St. building by dorm renovations that have currently shut down Weld Hall and will close Matthews Hall in the spring. These first-years students occupy the space above the Harvard University Police Department.

After the first semester, current Matthews residents will be moved into newly renovated Weld, freeing Matthews for refurbishment.

Initial reaction to the relocation has been mixed. Despite sign-ups for Red Sox games and Happy Birthday announcements that line the hallways, there is an anxiety among students that some say goes beyond normal first-year jitters.

Many still speak bitterly of their housing assignment, the piece of paper that made them Garden Street's first members.

"I thought I was the worst misfit," says Shayne M. Mauricette '96, who hails from Toronto. "I thought there must be something wrong with me that out of 1600 people, they picked me to live here."

New Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth S. Nathans is making integration of Garden Street resident in to Yard life a priority. She has so far dispatched Associate Dean W.C. Burriss Young '55, armed with more than 150 T-shirts, to the dorm. Even Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has pleaded with first-years to be patient with their living accommodations.

Nathans and other College administrators are also careful to mention the dorm's spacious rooms and full kitchens whenever they talk about the first-years sent there.

"If you're at 29 G, you'll let your T-shirt do the talking as your classmates complain," Nathans told first-years during opening exercises last Sunday in Tercentenary Theater.

At 29 Garden St., students occupy all four floors, each with long carpeted hallways, freshly painted walls and elevator service. The ground floor has a huge common room with seven couches, and underground tunnels are convenient to Harvard Real Estate's recycling center and a very full student bicycle rack.

As for the rooms, each suite comes with a fully equipped kitchen, with a stove, oven, microwave and refrigerators, which students use to hold everything from late-night munchies to ice cold beer.

But some first-years say the T-shirt's message--"Every Yard Needs a Garden"--has a flip side. Some Garden St. residents say they are relying almost exclusively on the Yard for entertainment. And others say there has been little in the way of Garden St. spirit.

"The whole thing here was that people were supposed to bond--that hasn't happened," says Julie Zikherman '96. "If I hadn't gone on FOP [the Freshman Outdoor Program], I don't know how many people I would know."

Some residents say they are already using their Garden St. rooms as nothing more than sleeping quarters, with some stocking personal items with friends in the Yard.