Byerly Hall greens itself

Beautiful old building has healthy new heart and lungs

Byerly Hall, a handsome slate-roofed building at 8 Garden St., opened in 1932. Its Georgian Revival exterior, exterior clock, and white-trimmed windows complement the stately 19th century ambiance of Radcliffe Yard.

But beneath old red brick now beats a 21st century heart, including water and energy systems that meet modern standards for sustainability and efficiency.

Byerly is the third Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study building in the past three years to undergo an architectural makeover to minimize energy usage, save resources, and enhance the experience of working in Radcliffe buildings.

In 2005, a green renovation was completed at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

In 2006, Radcliffe finished its sustainable transformation of the 110-year-old Radcliffe Gymnasium.

And in 2009, work will begin on a green refurbishment of Fay House, an early 19th century mansion that now houses Radcliffe’s administrative offices.

“I thank you in advance,” Radcliffe Executive Dean Louise Richardson told a July crowd at Byerly’s opening, “for being patient next year when we dig up the Yard again.”

The Yard got churned into a construction site last year to install what is the centerpiece of Byerly’s sustainable design — a geothermal heating and cooling system. It’s nearly twice as energy-efficient as conventional systems and fits nearly invisibly into the old building’s classy shell. The system, which relies on the constant moderate temperatures of deep groundwater, uses 6-inch wells that burrow 1,500 feet beneath Radcliffe Yard’s grassy commons.

The geothermal setup, controlled from two gleaming rooms in the basement of Byerly, means the 42,000-square-foot building no longer relies on the fossil-fuel boilers in the basement of nearby Longfellow Hall. (That building was Radcliffe College’s original classroom building, and is now part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.)

“This is where the heat comes from,” said Radcliffe’s operations manager John Horst, standing in a geothermal control room full of white pipes and humming pumps. “It’s so simple and elegant, in a way.”

Radcliffe’s sustainable redesign of all its Yard buildings is a microcosm of Harvard renovations in the past five years: an explicit attempt to preserve the character of the old while introducing the efficiency of the new.

At the same time the Byerly work was being done, two other full-gut restorations — now finished — were conducted at Harvard. The projects — at Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Business School — also embraced strict standards of sustainability, and a respect for architectural character.

At Byerly, “a lot of emphasis was on making sure [sustainable design] was tied to the historical nature of the building,” said Nathan Gauthier, acting co-director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI), a technical advisory group.

Along the way, renovators rediscovered some handsome touches at Byerly that earlier work had covered up. One was a fan-shaped “eyebrow” window on the third floor, which now lends a sunny little conference room a fairytale charm.

An HGCI narrative of the Byerly project relates the more technical details of the old building’s makeover, including a note on CO2 sensors. They increase the volume of fresh air when a lot of people are present, and decrease it when the room is empty.

There are also real-time utility displays in Byerly, said Gauthier. It’s a behavior-modification tool that allows occupants to see exactly how much energy and water is being used — hourly, daily, and weekly. (Elsewhere, such systems doubled energy efficiency.)

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