New Pembroke

New Pembroke, a new style of dormitory complex, was built in 1974. Located at the corner of Thayer and Bowen Streets, the dormitory was designed by Donlyn Lyndon to respond to both environments. On the commercial Thayer Street side a band of green bricks sets apart the rented shops on the ground floor of the four-story building and maintains the “one-story commercial continuity” of the street. The Bowen Street side relates to the residential neighborhood with two smaller structures within one building and walls which reflect the hedges across the street. In addition to the green brick of the stores, there are areas of buff brick at stairways and doorways, red brick in public areas in the rear courtyard, a dark blue strip of bricks above the store fronts where signs appear, and more blue brick designed to soften the top edge of the building. Inside, the complex of four buildings is subdivided into smaller living units with separate doorways, a departure from institutional living designed to provide smaller living relationships for the 200 resident students. The design was awarded first place from among 670 entries in a competition sponsored by the magazine Progressive Architecture in 1970, but construction was postponed when the city refused to grant a zoning exception. In awarding the prize, the judges praised this “anthropocentric” design in which “human need seems to be the principal form-generator,” proclaimed the dormitory “on the one hand, dumb and ordinary, and on the other hand, very sophisticated, sensitively and unusually done.”