The students who carry their bookbags and pizza boxes through the doors
of the new West Campus Residence Hall A bring them into one of the swankiest
apartment addresses in Boston. Once inside their rooms, the luckiest of
these students-those with suites high in the building's tower-have exhilarating
views of the city spanning from the Boston Harbor islands to the towers
of Back Bay and the financial district to Fenway Park. All suites contain
a dishwasher and trash disposal, air-conditioning with local control and
central steam heat, awning-style operable windows, and ports for telephone,
cable TV, and hookup to the university's campus computer network, ResNet.x
Yes, this is Northeastern's west side we're talking about. What you
remember as a vast no-man's-land of parking lots is now 159 apartments
in a massive yet graceful residence hall that from its airy tower-thirteen
stories, glass-
cornered, and curved like a sail toward Huntington Avenue-serenely bends
down Parker Street to Ruggles Street, where its shorter end sits companionably
across from the Greek Orthodox cathedral. Bands of rose- and mustard-hued
brick distinguish the building's facade from the prosaic red brick or white
stone of other dormitories on campus. Two large portals, cut out of the
tower and the six-story midsection of the building, open most cordially
to the city street.
Fresh off the design boards of the nationally recognized architecture
firm William Rawn Associates, the $41 million West Campus A (which is still
in need of a naming donor) was finished just in time for students to move
in at the start of this academic year. An opening ceremony was planned
for September 17. Even as final touches are still being put on the building,
however, it has already accomplished several goals for Northeastern.
Foremost is that it is the first visible signal of President Richard
Freeland's push to change the nature of N.U. from "commuter school"
to a residential campus in the heart of the city. When the last dump truck
rolls off the site in 2001, the West Campus development will include four
smaller dormitories, the George Behrakis Health Sciences Center, two other
academic/administrative buildings, and a parking garage, if all goes according
to plan. Construction on two of the dorms, West Campus B and C, is already
well under way. Along with building A, they will form a grassy quadrangle
that will serve as one end of a promenade to the existing Centennial Common.
"This is a new era in the life of N.U.," declares Freeland,
clearly delighted with the first of the buildings. "West Campus is
part of the whole repositioning of N.U. that followed from the enrollment
crisis of the early 1990s. [Former President] Jack Curry's leadership realized
that N.U. could no longer flourish if it conceived of itself as a commuter-only
school; it needed to become smaller, become more selective academically
in terms of programs and admissions, and attract students from not just
the Boston area but also beyond it."
The early and mid-1990s brought a major expansion of the university's
research space, anchored by Snell Library and the Egan Engineering/Science
Research Center. The landmark Marino Recreation Center was one of several
developments during the same period that enhanced student life. Now the
administration's attention has turned to bolstering student housing, which
hasn't seen an increase since Willis Hall went up twenty years ago. All
phases of this building boom have marked a greening and softening of the
campus that amazes alumni from earlier decades, for whom Northeastern was
a checkerboard of austere buildings and asphalt parking lots.
This aesthetic upgrade is no mere window dressing, Freeland says. "If
we're to be selective, we need to not only make our academic programs more
competitive nationally but also make our campus more attractive physically."
To the 3,600 beds previously available in campus housing, West Campus
A adds nearly 600. Blankets on another 460 beds will turn down in fall
2000, when West Campus B and C open their doors. Davenport Commons, scheduled
to open the following year on Columbus Avenue, will provide 600 more beds,
bringing Freeland close to his goal of housing fifty percent of N.U. students
on campus.
Moving students out of area apartments and into campus housing will
aid the university in several ways. "I think these dorms will attract
students," says Freeland. "And the stronger on-campus life becomes,
the higher our graduation rate will be. Making sure students build a connection
with the campus has always been an issue for commuter schools. Building
residence halls and expanding our resident population will help our retention
[rate]."
The shift to a residential campus also helps the city of Boston. West
Campus A is the first response to Mayor Thomas Menino's call in 1996 for
the city's thirty-two colleges, universities, and graduate schools to increase
their student housing and ease the strain on the rental market.
"Northeastern, Boston College, and Boston University all had master
plans for more beds, but Northeastern was the first out of the gate,"
says Pat Canavan, the mayor's housing policy adviser. "They've really
been a leader in working with us."
The huge student population descending annually on Boston distorts the
rental market, explains Canavan. "Every September there are an average
of 67,000 students living in private rental housing in Boston. Say you
have a three-bedroom apartment; four kids may live there, each paying five
hundred dollars a month. It's a lot more than one individual or a family
could pay."
Add to this the truism that some absentee landlords take advantage of
students, who may put up with clogged drains and broken ovens as part of
the experience of going to college. "The landlords make a killing,"
Canavan says. "The kids often don't care. They figure they're just
there four years. All the neighborhoods with students know the effect of
students."
The Fenway/Mission Hill area is no exception, and residents there have
warmly greeted the arrival of the West Campus Residence Hall. In fall 1997,
Thomas Keady Jr., head of the university's Government Relations and Community
Affairs office, and his staff presented the project to city councillors
and dozens of neighborhood groups, including the Parcel Eighteen Task Force,
which comprises ten groups;
Symphony United Neighborhoods; Fenway Civic Association; Fenway Community
Development Corporation (CDC); and the Fenway Alliance, a group of major
area institutions that includes the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and the Boston
Symphony as well as N.U.
All parties gave it a nod-and then perhaps sighed with relief that some
action has been taken. In a letter of support for the project, Carl Koechlin,
executive director of the Fenway CDC, noted that "the presence of
large numbers of students in the neighborhood has been a major concern
to Fenway residents and Fenway CDC." He added that the group "has
long believed that the site in question would be an excellent location
for student housing."
"There was no opposition to this project," Keady says with
satisfaction. "People liked our taking students out of the neighborhood
and freeing up apartments. It went as smoothly as any project could go."
Indeed, it was just three years ago that N.U.'s Physical Plant office,
responding to petitions from students and the Student Affairs office for
more housing, drew up a proposal for an addition to the ten-story Willis
Hall as a quick and cost-effective approach to the problem. After reviewing
the proposal, Freeland hired architect William Rawn to create a master
plan for West Campus. Rawn advised going bigger.
"President Freeland and I walked around the campus discussing his
vision of Northeastern as urban and residential and his ambition to make
Northeastern known at a national level," explains Rawn, who has designed
buildings for Bowdoin College, Dartmouth College, and the University of
Virginia, as well as for DreamWorks and Celebration, Florida, the Walt
Disney Company town.
Rawn and his staff started planning West Campus A in December 1996.
They included in their research observations of the Tavern Road and Field
Street parking lots at different times of day and night to learn from what
directions students approached the area. "We also spent a lot of time
in Willis Hall to understand how students use the suites," says Rawn.
"We talked to the students about what they liked and didn't like about
their rooms and learned, for example, that the bedrooms are a bit small
for two people. We also asked how common rooms were used; on many campuses,
they're often empty except for Pepsi cans."
The result of Rawn's research is this eye-catching, 220,000-square-foot
brick building on a granite base. Though the building is large, the generous
use of glass lightens its impact. Glass illuminates the corners of the
tower, the portals, and the many windows. West Campus B and C will have
spectacular opaque glass gateposts, base to roof, serving as walls.
Each apartment suite contains from three to five students, in single
or double bedrooms. Ten units are fully accessible to students with disabilities,
and six more are equipped with electronics for students who are deaf or
hard-of-hearing. A thirteenth-floor conference room overlooks the MFA and
beyond.
The ground floor has great potential to be a vibrant student community.
Admittance is granted through a reception area, which is open around the
clock, to common areas, to separate meeting, television, and game rooms,
and to eating, laundry, and mail areas. Seating alcoves are positioned
alongside pathways, "so they're energized by people walking, and not
isolated," says Rawn. The main walls are warm yellow, while all external
walls are glass, which opens the ground-floor common areas to Parker Street
on one side and the quad on the other.
The residents of West Campus A, which houses upperclassmen only, pay
$2,150 per quarter for a single bedroom and $3,900 per quarter, or $1,950
per person, for a double. The students who drew low numbers in last year's
housing lottery and chose corner apartments in the tower won views they're
likely never to have again-unless they decide to become lifers, which,
considering these panoramic vistas, would be understandable.
Clearly, this haute housing is every bit as much a statement as it is
a dorm.
"We wanted it as beautiful as we could make it," says John
Martin, who, as the university's vice president of business, has been heavily
involved in campus planning. "People drive down Huntington Avenue
and don't even know they're going through our campus. We needed a real
identification of place for Northeastern, one that says, 'Here you are
in Northeastern University.' "
"I've been on Huntington Avenue a thousand times," says Rawn,
who lives in Boston. "I have a sense of how Northeastern has faced
it, and I wanted to create for the university a new, strong presence on
Huntington."
Even as it strengthens and clarifies the campus's physical identity,
with its tower and its distinctive shape setting it off from the Wentworth
Institute of Technology and the MFA nearby, West Campus Residence Hall
A emphasizes the university's connection with the city. "We chose
the farthest-out edge of the campus to house the students," explains
Rawn, "instead of surrounding them by parking lots." The portals,
which Rawn likens to the one at Rowe's Wharf in downtown Boston, underscore
Northeastern's tie to the city. When West Campus B and C are finished,
there'll be still more entrances from the street.
In the century-old relationship between the university and the city,
and in the university's place in the world of higher education, a new Northeastern
is participating. Asked what his favorite part of the new residence hall
is, Freeland responds, "If I had to choose one thing, I'd say it's
the tower, because of its elegance and sense of ambition. It says we're
an institution that intends to make its mark on the educational landscape
of the country."
Deborah Klenotic, a freelance writer in the Amherst, Massachusetts,
area, wrote about co-op award winners in the May issue.
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