Sprinkler issues to keep MassArt dorm closed until Thursday

Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Tree House dormitory will remain closed until Thursday, the college said over the weekend, after the tower was evacuated Friday because of a sprinkler issue.

The burnt-orange dorm on MassArt’s campus remained shut down Sunday, populated only by maintenance workers and a handful of students who shuttled up to their rooms and back under the watchful eyes of staff members.

The dorm, which had separate issues with a broken pipe near the beginning of the school year, continued to be closed as the sprinkler system remained out of service after it broke Friday night, the college said.

“The college informed students that crews have made significant progress since Friday night, and expect the residence hall will be ready by Thursday afternoon,” the college said in a statement Sunday evening. “This new timeline will give crews adequate time to finish necessary repairs and testing of the sprinkler system, ensuring there are no additional issues.”

Earlier, multiple vans from Johnson Controls, which is repairing the sprinkler system, remained outside the building that houses mostly first-year students, and a Boston Fire Department engine was on hand.

The building at 578 Huntington Ave. contains 20 floors of dorm rooms that house students from MassArt and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

MassArt said its students who live there are staying in residence halls at other nearby colleges.

The rest of the college’s campus is “open and operational,” the school said. First-year classes were canceled for Monday and will be hybrid Tuesday through Thursday, the college said. All other classes will take place as usual.

“MassArt understands that being away from a living space is a major inconvenience and disruption and continues to have staff available on campus to support impacted students,” school officials said.

The College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences did not respond to a request for comment.

MassArt said that while it had been “prepared to provide temporary accommodations” in a common area of the Kennedy building on campus, “that was not necessary.”

“MassArt successfully relocated all impacted students on Friday night and no MassArt students were told to find their own accommodations nor did they sleep in common areas,” the school said.

The college acknowledged that residents of the large dorm “have expressed frustrations with other issues in the Tree House building this year.” The college said a pipe was “damaged inadvertently by a contractor working on routine maintenance” near the start of the school year, leading to “water issues that impacted three floors of the building.” The college said that was “quickly contained” and has no connection to the sprinkler issue.

In December, the exterior overhang of a different MassArt building “sustained isolated damage” during a wind storm, leading to debris falling to the ground, officials said at the time.

“With the exception of the current sprinkler system issue, the Tree House building is safe and fully operational,” the college said.

Freshman Louisa Ferginald, a Tree House resident who is staying off campus, said there were elevator issues early in the year, as well as a pipe leak in January that brought flooding to stairways that froze into “a glorified ice waterfall” that the school then melted and vacuumed away.

“I love going to college here,” she said as she left the dorm with a large blue bag of her belongings. “I’m just looking forward to it all being fixed.”