Photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

All summer long, O’Neill Plaza was girded with chain-link and plywood dust barriers as it underwent its first full makeover since construction in 1984. Beginning the day after Commencement, on May 22, more than 50,000 square feet of concrete was dug from the area and trucked away. Installed instead were 49 trees (flowering pink cherries near Gasson Hall and tulip poplars in front of O’Neill Library) and numerous shrubs and other flora; 800 linear feet of granite wall; a nearly 15,000-square-foot lawn; and 16 wooden park benches.