Leverett, Dunster, and Mather residents can look forward to some quieter study hours, as well as pizza, during the remainder of the exam period following a decision yesterday to postpone a particularly disruptive stage of the Cowperthwaite St. construction of graduate student housing.

Last week, digging for the basement garage wall of the graduate student dorms sent vibrations throughout student dorms.

Residents near the east wall of Leverett G Tower, which faces the construction, complained of hammering and pounding.

Alex Radu ’08 described the noise as a “huge hammer knocking into the wall every 10 seconds,” which persisted for periods of eight hours.

“The entire building moves...if you have a cup of coffee on the table, it’ll shake,” Radu said. “It was like a small earthquake.”

Students said they saw, heard, and felt the effects of this phase of the construction particularly acutely.

“My head was ringing after a while,” said Andrew L. Kreicher ’06. “I had some things on my ceiling that were knocked off.”

Frustration echoed over house e-mail lists, leading tutors and students to contact university administrators and the construction mitigation team.

According to Steven C. Nason, real estate development manager for Harvard Real Estate Services, the vibration was caused by an unexpected obstruction.

“The slurry wall involves digging deep holes and filling them with concrete and reinforcing rods, and sometimes in the process of doing that we hit unexpected obstructions,” Nason said. “They hit a big stone—that was what was going on Friday.”

Nason said he acknowledged the inconvenience created by the construction.

“The amount of vibration was well below what’s considered problematic, but obviously it was causing people a lot of stress,” he said.

While construction had been audible during the fall with the beeping of trucks backing up in the construction lot, last week’s blasting reverberated through the rooms of students engrossed in preparation for finals and term papers.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re happy about [the construction], but we’re willing to live with it,” said Lauren P. S. Epstein ’07, referring to the work that had gone on previous to this exam period. “The concern was more that this was happening when we were all in our rooms writing our papers and simply could not afford to be distracted at that level.”

Leverett House Master Howard Georgi ’68 said he had hoped the construction planning would take exam period into account.

“They’ve known about the schedule for months,” Georgi said. “We had asked many times that it not be too noisy during reading and exam period.”

In an e-mail yesterday, Nason informed house masters and students that the construction would be moved to another area of the site until after finals are over.

Construction Mitigation Manager Ed G. LeFlore said this means the noise will relocate, not disappear.

“It won’t be silent,” he said.

The site of the problematic panel, one of 50 panels comprising the basement garage wall, will be temporarily filled with light-weight concrete, and construction will resume after exams, Nason said.

“For various complicated technical reasons, you can’t easily, or safely...stop a slurry panel; you’re supposed to finish it,” he explained.

In his e-mail, Nason wrote that the relocation would results in “negative schedule impacts” for the project, which is due to be completed in 2007.

“The construction management folks will have to figure out how to make up for lost time,” he said.

In the meantime, Leverett, Dunster, and Mather residents can fortify themselves during studying this week with pizza, courtesy of the construction mitigation team. Two pizzas were delivered to each house last night, and will be provided again tonight and tomorrow night.

“The idea was to enhance the brain break with some variety,” Nason said.

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.