The massive reconstruction of the Freshman Union was once intended to knit together the Faculty's diverse humanities departments.

But while the project will provide more office space for cramped professors, it may not meet its ambitious original goals.

Instead of one compact complex, the Humanities Quad will now include Boylston Hall, physically isolated from the southeast corner of the Yard.

Administrators are claiming Boylston as a part of the project, but faculty members bill the "two pillar" approach to the center as a compromise, not necessarily a triumph.

"I think it's going to be pluses and minuses," says Ellen Dipippo, a staff assistant to the Women's Studies committee.

One of the minuses is probably the relocation of the Expository Writing Program, which will be temporarily housed in the Vanserg Building, scarcely the "location central to all first-year students" desired by Director Nancy Sommers.

"I'm hopeful and trust the powers-that-be," she says. Sommers, who took over the program on July 1, wants space in the Union complex to bring her discipline closer to "the fabric of learning," she says.

There is no guarantee she will get what she wants. Five departments will be in Boylston, and 12 will work in the Union complex.

"I think that is going to be a shame," says Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan about the two different sites. "I would prefer it all to be in one space, but that would require a mammoth building."

The location compromise was finally based on space needs, says the Faculty's director of planning. Philip J. Parsons.

English and Romance Languages and Literatures are the two largest departments housed in the buildings. Like major department stores in a mall, they will "anchor" the two sites.

The English department will be in the Union complex, ending its current split into three different sites: 8 Prescott Street, Warren House and 34 Kirkland Street.

Romance Languages will stay in Boylston.

"The objectives of the plan had been defeated by itself, in a sense," Parsons says. "The notion was to bring all these humanities departments and centers together in one location. It turned out that there simply wasn't enough space to do justice to the needs of all these different groups."

English Department Chair Leo Damrosch says he is delighted that the department will be under one roof. The original conception of a united humanities complex was "probably always a fantasy," he says.

"If it were a true humanities building, you would have art history and philosophy and music, but that would be an ideal world," Damrosch said. "If that was really what they had in mind, they would have put the departments we had the most contact with in there," such as the history department, Damrosch says.