Doyle’s introduction is followed by a complication. Harvard has already expanded across the Charles River, into the nearest neighborhood in Boston: Allston, located just across the Charles River. Harvard Business School, Harvard Innovation Labs complex, and the university’s athletics complex all currently reside in Allston as relatively recent additions to Harvard’s property; Harvard constructed the athletics complex in 1903, then HBS in 1927. These were the forebears to the current foray into this neighborhood, and others in Boston — like Longwood, where the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health reside.
In 2003, then-President Lawrence Summers announced a plan for more substantial expansion into Allston.