"They are taking a great piece of art and destroying it.... It's insane," says architect Richard Rice, who graduated from the Graduate School of Design in '73 and from the Business School in '82.

In a letter to Goody, Rice informed her of his intent to stop his alumni contributions to the Graduate School of Design and the Business School in order to "cause the University Facilities people to realize the beauty and wonder of the architecture that has been passed on to them by their predecessors and stop the horrors of your destruction." In the same letter, Rice urged Goody to resign from her work on the Union.

In one letter to Harvard Magazine, Reiff wrote, "The remodeling plan is more than just unworthy of Harvard. ...I think alumni deserve an explanation of this planned barbarism."

In another letter to the magazine, D. Grahame Smith '45 criticized the plans, saying, "The proposed new parlors look like an over-designed subway concourse."

Richard C. Byron '50 wrote to Rudenstine asking him not to change the great hall.

"Some things have to be sacrosanct," Byron said. "I can't believe they don't realize this. What kind of skewed value systems do they have?"

The controversy over the plans reached The Boston Globe as well, which ran a story on the renovations in late October, characterizing the renovations as "plans to turn the Georgian-style Freshman Union building into offices."

Parsons and Goody say descriptions such as these have inflamed the debate over the Union's renovations, adding that no one expected such feedback over the remodeling plans.

"I think that there are a slew of McKim, Mead & White specialists who would be pained to see anything changed," Goody says. "There is a small group that feels strongly and receives a maximum amount of publicity."

But a letter to Rudenstine from Keith N. Morgan, president of the Society of Architectural Historians and a professor of art history at Boston University, argues that the University should make the necessary changes to the Union, barring changes to the great hall.

"The Harvard Union is a building of national importance, and more importantly a building which established the character of Harvard architecture for the first third of this century," Morgan wrote.

Quoting novelist Henry James, Morgan urged Rudenstine to reconsider the changes.

"If the professors and students in the Humanities seek greater intellectual and social interaction why not preserve that 'great grave noble hall' which still fulfills its original mission so well," Morgan wrote.

Nature of the Union

In order to understand the position of the University and the architects, Parsons says the restoration of the Union and the restoration of Memorial Hall must be seen as a package of inseparable projects.