But those involved in the Allston planning process describe clear advantages to locating undergraduate housing in Allston.

FAS is likely to put up a vigorous fight if the University attempts to co-opt its athletic buldings and fields—prime Allston real estate—for a professional school.

Former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 fired the first shot in that battle, when he argued strenously against displacing the athletic fields in a memo to Allston planners last February.

“The location of [the College’s] athletic fields is one of our greatest distinctions” and moving them further away would risk “a much greater dissociation of the athletic experience from the rest of college life,” he wrote.

When the University Physical Planning Committee—the lead faculty group considering Allston plans—discussed moving the Quad Houses last spring, the land where athletic buildings now stand was seen as a potential site, committee member Alan Altshuler said.

FAS—and its donors—might be more receptive to moving athletic space if the replacement were College housing.

Aside from political considerations, planners and professors hope that an undergraduate presence in Allston would link Harvard’s soon-to-be two campuses. They envision students providing a constant flow of activity back and forth across the Charles.

When the planning committee discussed moving the Quad, Altshuler said, “a number of people did think it sounded like a very attractive idea.”

“It was appealing for several reasons,” said Altshuler, the Stanton professor in urban policy and planning at the Kennedy School of Government.

“One, it would be very attractive housing; two, it would be very close to the existing undergraduate housing complex; and three, it would reinforce the idea that Allston was going to be a precinct with as much appeal as Cambridge over time.”

Quad Houses, emptied of their undergraduates, could be used for more graduate student housing.

Director of the Allston Initiative Kathy A. Spiegelman said July 16 that the concept of moving undergradate Houses was “predicated on the idea of integrating the campus.”

This weekend, Spiegelman declined to comment specifically on the plan that Thompson, who chairs the physical planning committee, presented to the deans.

Pforzheimer House Master James J. McCarthy said he did not think the distance between Harvard Yard and Allston was an “overwhelming obstacle” compared with students’ current walk back and forth from the Quad.

The Yard’s John Harvard statue is approximately the same distance from the Quad and the athletic fields.