In what would be a monumental change for a College that has existed solely in Cambridge for over 350 years, planners are now envisioning building undergraduate housing across the river in Allston.

Once an off-the-wall proposition—former President Neil L. Rudenstine rejected moving any part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) from Cambridge—putting upperclass Houses in Allston is now not only on the table but seen as an integral part of Harvard’s campus of the future.

Under a plan that presidential adviser Dennis F. Thompson presented to deans, top administrators and University President Lawrence H. Summers in July, the College would tie together a disparate mix of science, graduate housing, cultural activities and professional schools to be built in Allston.

Although the plan’s undergraduate component was far from definite, it offered two concrete options for expanding the College into Allston, sources present at the meeting said.

The first would replace the Houses that currently make up the Radcliffe Quad with three new ones in Allston, while keeping the number of undergraduate beds the same.

The other would increase the size of the student body by adding new Houses on the other side of the river.

Either scenario would mean the first expansion of the House system since Mather and Currier Houses were constructed in 1970.

The proposal has caught the majority of the College by surprise—and has already begun to provoke opposition.

Several House masters—who had not heard that either option was being considered by the Harvard administration—said putting undergraduates in Allston seemed a risky proposition.

“I dread the thought of emptying a House and using it for something else,” Eliot House Master Lino Pertile said.

“Oh, God, don’t you think we have enough trouble with the Quad, people thinking it’s study abroad or something,” Quincy House Master Robert Kirshner quipped.

Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 responded to the news of the Quad’s potential relocation in a post to the Council e-mail list: “It seems that the inmates are now completely in charge of the asylum.”

“One of the great things we have here is that our housing is located close to each other and close to our classes,” Chopra said in an interview this weekend.

“I’m nearly positive that a relocation of the Quad is not going to happen,” he added. “It makes so little sense that it can’t happen.”

Allstoning the Quad