U. Mass. 1, Harvard 0

The meeting in the Manhattan offices of Architect I.M. Pei last week was a reconvening of the New Frontier. Almost the entire Kennedy family was there (Jacqueline Onassis arrived 20 minutes late and was reprimanded by a receptionist); so were Robert McNamara, Burke Marshall, C. Douglas Dillon and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The luminaries had gathered not to launch a new candidacy, however, but to decide once and for all the location of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library and Museum. Finally, after family members had left the room twice to caucus, the entire board made its decision: the $14 million complex would be built not at Harvard -- Kennedy's alma mater and his own choice for the library site -- but instead, on the bleak new Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts.

Once a Dump. The decision was a major disappointment for Harvard, which had planned to combine the library, museum and archives with the existing John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government and its Institute of Politics on a site a few blocks from Harvard Square. John Kennedy had visited the site a month before he was assassinated and pronounced it "ideal." But many Cambridge residents were vehemently opposed to the memorial, fearing that it would attract hordes of tourists into the already bursting Harvard Square area. Indeed, in announcing the decision, Ted Kennedy referred to a "small and vociferous group that was prepared to entangle" the Cambridge site in lawsuits for years. No such trouble is expected at the U. Mass, site -- a barren waterfront strip of filled land, once a city dump, that adjoins the decaying, half-deserted, scabrous Columbia Point housing project. Groundbreaking ceremonies are planned for May 29, which would have been J.F.K.'s 59th birthday.

Landing the museum was a major victory for U. Mass., which is striving to enhance its academic reputation, and for its president, Robert C. Wood, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Johnson Administration. Wood lobbied hard for the library, arranging tours of the Boston campus* for the Kennedy family and friends. Mrs. Onassis was escorted around the site several times; her last visit coincided with a stunning sunset over Dorchester Bay.

Harvard also lobbied hard to keep the library and was stunned at the loss. Sniffed Harvard Vice President Charles Daly: "With a lot of luck and a lot of work, the memorial might amount to something out there."

* Opened in 1974, the Boston campus has a projected enrollment of 12,000 students; the main campus in Amherst has about 23.000.

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