Tag: MIT

“The Magic Incubator”: MIT Building 20 (1943-1998)

Posted on by cambridgehistoricalcommission
Building 20 – MIT – from blimp – Aug. 1945. Courtesy MIT Museum.

MIT’s Building 20 was built at 18 Vassar Street in 1943 as part of the war effort to improve existing radar capabilities. In 1940, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) appointed the president of MIT, Karl T. Compton, to head up special research projects to advance the development of what turned out to be “micro-wave” radar. Given the size of the project, Compton quickly realized MIT needed a new building to accommodate the task at hand—hence: Building 20. The administration and business affairs of the work done there were handled by MIT, but its funding and research agenda were determined by the NDRC.

Building 20 was erected in only six months. Since war-time steel production was limited to use for armaments, the building was constructed of wood and built like a three-story barracks. It had five wings: the “B” wing was parallel to Vassar Street, while the A, C, D and E wings extended perpendicularly towards the central MIT campus. The roof was flat, the shingles were asbestos (a product not yet firmly considered toxic), and the windows were stacked hoppers. Because it was considered a temporary building, Building 20 was also built without the need to adhere to some of the usual building constraints of the time, like prevailing fire codes. After the war, the MIT Acoustics Lab was attached to the C wing. At the time of its demolition in 1998, Building 20 and its additions had a combined floor area of approximately 222,000 square feet.

Detail of Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. 1950. Sanborn Map Company via Library of Congress. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3764cm.g03701195001.

The main event when the building was completed was housing the “Radiation Laboratory” or “Rad Lab,” a somewhat vague name intentionally chosen to conceal its true operations: developing microwave radar to improve the accuracy of bombing. Once this new technology was ready for action, the urgency of this need caused the Rad Lab to start manually building “blind bombing sets” in Building 20 until industrial manufactures could gear up to produce them in large quantities.

Radio Frequency (Group 53), MIT Radiation Laboratory. Image courtesy Jewish Women’s Archive via Wikimedia Commons.

Other inventions included “… airborne bombing radars, shipboard search radars, harbor and coastal defense radars, gun-laying radars, ground-controlled approach radars for aircraft blind landing, interrogate-friend-or-foe beacon systems, and the long-range navigation (LORAN) system. Some of the most critical contributions of the Radiation Laboratory were the microwave early-warning (MEW) radars, which effectively nullified the V-1 threat to London, and air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radars, which turned the tide on the U-boat threat.” (MIT Radiation Laboratory)

According to The Cambridge Chronicle (August 16, 1945) the real purpose of Building 20 was made public just a half hour after Truman announced the surrender of Japan:

In 1998, the year the building was to be demolished, The New York Times ran an article called “Last Rites for a ‘Plywood Palace’ That Was a Rock of Science,” which stated that the building was home “for almost 4,000 researchers in 20 disciplines. At one time, more than 20 percent of the physicists in the United States (including nine Nobel Prize winners) had worked in that building.”

What made Building 20 such a hotbed of creative innovation?

It all had to do with what biologist Stuart Kauffman [not at MIT] called “the adjacent possible.” His description of the term perfectly describes Building 20: “…its physical and social environment continually expanded the realm of what was thinkable and doable. Its open, makeshift design and its mix of disciplines made it easier for researchers to stumble upon the next possible thing that hadn’t yet been imagined. The proximity of minds from different domains allowed ideas to leap boundaries and merge into novel possibilities, showing that innovation is less a flash of genius and more a product of evolving connections in the right conditions.”

Those who worked in Building 20 agreed: 

“It turned out to be absolutely perfect for research…you can knock down a wall, you can punch out a ceiling, and you could get space. In academics, space is everything.” (Morris Halle, Professor of Linguistics in “A Building with Soul” by Alex Beam, The Boston Globe, June 29, 1988).

Interior image of Building 20. Courtesy MIT Museum.

“Life in Building 20 was homey with a family-like atmosphere. Any excuse would serve for having a party. People ignored the shabbiness and dirt because the atmosphere encouraged creativity and the exchange of ideas.” (RLE Undercurrents, Vol. 9, no. 2, Fall 1997)

“People got together and shared ideas without worrying who you were.”

“It was so informal nobody considered rank or previous training.”

“…it was so easy to build experiments there – pull wires, bolt things to walls, come and go at any hour.”

It was unpretentious in all aspects.

A hallway in Building 20. Courtesy MIT Museum.

A 1945 statement by the Department of Defense noted that the research in the Rad Lab “pushed research in this field ahead by at least 25 normal peacetime years.” (“Building 20: What Made It So Special and Why It Will (probably) Never Exist Again.”)

Among those working in the building during the war years were:

  • Jerome Wiesner: worked on microwave radar, later at Los Alamos National Laboratory, later chairman of President Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), and later President of MIT
  • Amar Bose: his invention of improved loudspeakers led to the founding of the Bose company
  • Leo Beranek: an acoustical engineer, who went on to found Bolt, Beranek & Newman
Site visit to Building 20, MIT. Photographed by Charles M. Sullivan. 1998. https://cdash.cambridgema.gov/s/cdash/item/136333.

Building 20 After the War

After WWII some programs closed down, opening up space for other projects. While scientific research continued, over time a myriad of “non science” programs like linguistics, history, arts, music, and student affairs also occupied space in the building, further adding to its quirky allure. The list below is far from inclusive but serves to convey the range of programs that shared the space.

  • Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. In 1976, Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky, pioneers in linguistics research, together founded the MIT Linguistics program
  • Jerome Lettvin, cognitive scientist and Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology
  • MIT Dean of Humanities Office
  • History of Science and Technology Program, including Elting Morrison, historian of technology, and founder of the Science, Technology, and Society program
  • Anthropology section of the Humanities Department
  • Music Department
  • MIT Electronic Research Society (MITRE)
  • Research Lab of Electronics Photography: Harold “Doc” Edgerton who developed stroboscopic, stop-action photography, including the famous milk drop “Considered one of the most important photographs of all time.”
Milk Drop Coronet, photographed by Harold Eugene Edgerton. 1957. Courtesy MIT Museum. https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/HEE-NC-57001.
  • MIT Council on Arts
  • The Atomic Energy Commission, Cambridge Office
  • MIT-Wellesley Upward Bound Program
  • Model Railroad Club
  • ROTC: Army, Air Force, Navy
  • Biotechnology Process Engineering Center
  • Center for Space Research, Gravity & Cosmology
  • The Institute for Learning and Teaching
  • Graphic Arts
  • Biologic Process Engineering Center
  • Center for Materials Research in Anthropology & Ethnology
  • Center for Environmental Health Sciences

The Denouement of Building 20 

Building 20 finally reached the end of the road in 1998. Having outlived its original planned lifespan by decades, by any standard Building 20 was a ramshackle place. The Cambridge Historical Commission initially advocated for giving the building protected status. However, after hearings on the subject, the Commission, noting the comprehensive history of the building maintained by MIT and the fact that it no longer could support “modern science and engineering,” gave MIT permission to raze the building.

MIT Building 20 being demolished. Courtesy City of Sound blog. https://cityofsound.com/2004/06/23/designing-adaptability-into-mit/.

Building 20 was replaced by the Ray and Maria Stata Center (Building 32), designed by Frank Ghery. It opened in 2004.

MIT’s Stata Center photographed July 31, 2004 by User:Raul654 via Wikimedia Commons.
Building 20 along Vassar Street framed with wood recovered from flooring of the demolished building. Private collection.

The frame for the photo above was made with wood of floorboards from Building 20. The name carved into the bottom of the frame, Parker & Stearns, was a lumber company in Johnson, VT and is presumed to have provided lumber for the building’s construction.

The MIT Building 20 Time Capsule is located the Stata Center, part of an exhibit dedicated to Building 20 and the Rad Lab. The capsule is to be opened in 2053, 55 years after Building 20 was demolished. Perched on top of the box holding the time capsule is another relic from the war research: a SCR-615B Radar Antenna.

Designers and builders of the Building 20 Time Capsule (left to right): Tanisha Lloyd, Sonia Tulyani, and their UROP supervisor, Professor J. Francis Reinties, 1999. Courtesy MIT Museum.
Rad Lab Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT. Image courtesy S. N. Johnson-Roehr. https://astronomy.snjr.net/blog/?p=559.

Today’s post was written by Kathleen Fox

Sources

Adams, Steve. “The Hottest Property: MIT’s Building 20.” Banker & Tradesman. Sept 11, 2022. https://bankerandtradesman.com/the-hottest-property-mits-building-20/.

Beam, Alex. “A Building with Soul.” The Boston Globe. June 29, 1988.

“Building 20 at MIT Innovation Story: A humble wartime lab that sparked a legacy of innovation and collaboration.” https://conversational-leadership.net/mit-building-20/.

“Building 20: The Magical Incubator 1943 – 1998.” https://web.mit.edu/fnl/vol/104/Bldg20.html.

Cambridge Historical Commission Architectural Survey file for Building 20: https://cdash.cambridgema.gov/s/cdash/item/136317.

Campbell, Robert. “The End of the ‘Magic Incubator’.” The Boston Globe. June 5, 1998.

“Celebrating the History of Building 20.” https://wayback.archive-it.org/7963/20190701202448/https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/building20/.

Garfinkel, Simson. “Building 20: A Survey.” https://ic.media.mit.edu/projects/JBW/ARTICLES/SIMSONG.HTM.

Halle, Morris. “Rooms to Grow In.” Preservation, Vol. 51 No. 5, September-October, 1999. https://web.mit.edu/morrishalle/pubworks/papers/1999_Halle_Rooms_to_grow_in.pdf.

MIT Distinctive Collections. https://libraries.mit.edu/distinctive-collections/.

“MIT Radiation Laboratory.” Lincoln Laboratory, MIT. https://www.ll.mit.edu/about/history/mit-radiation-laboratory.

Subject summary for objects: Building 20. MIT Museum. https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/subject/building-20-37.

International Women in Engineering Day

Posted on by cambridgehistoricalcommission
Boston Herald June 7, 1945

“These Engineers Wear Lipstick!” How’s that for a cringeworthy headline? Just one example of the hurdles women in engineering have had to overcome to be taken seriously in their profession.

In the 21st century, it is not at all unusual to find women engaged in all fields of engineering – civil, military, chemical, aerospace, computer, electrical, mechanical, nuclear, and more. But it wasn’t always that way. Prior to World War II, women in this field were a rarity.

In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science, although many of them were still not eligible to graduate with a degree in engineering. For instance, Tabitha Babbitt (1784—1853?) was a toolmaker and inventor living in the Shaker community in Harvard, Massachusetts. Babbitt is purported to have invented, in 1813, the first circular saw for use in a sawmill. There is some dispute over the accuracy of this “fact”: some believe it was patented by others when they found out about her invention, others say that saw was invented at the Mt. Lebanon Shaker village. Babbitt does share the invention of cut nails with Eli Whitney and is credited for inventing a process for manufacturing false teeth.

PIONEERS IN WOMEN ENGINEERING IN CAMBRIDGE

This piece focuses on women engineers in Cambridge. But we can’t talk about women engineers in Cambridge without first talking about the Institute of Technology– which was first located on Boyleston St. in Boston. William Barton Rogers (1804-1882) had been a professor of “natural philosophy” and chemistry at the College of William and Mary and had also worked on the first geological survey of the state of Virginia. Rogers moved to Boston in 1853 and hatched his idea of a “new polytechnic institute.” MIT was founded in 1861 and its first classes began in 1865. Even before the Institute of Technology moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916, it was the place to go if one planned to study engineering.

Photochrom print of the Rogers Building, the first building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (original photo: 1889; Photochrom: 1901) via Wikimedia Commons

ELLEN SWALLOW RICHARDS (1842-1911)

The first woman to graduate from MIT with an engineering degree was Ellen Swallow Richards. She was admitted as a special student at MIT by vote of the faculty in 1870, the same year that she received her A.B. from Vassar.

Portrait of Ellen Swallow Richards. Image courtesy of MIT Archives

Her special student status at MIT did not, however “establish a precedent for the general admission of females.” (https://archivesspace.mit.edu/agents/people/975). Swallow later applied for formal admission to MIT and in 1873 she earned a B. S. in Science (chemistry)—the same year that she also earned an M. S. of Arts from Vassar. Her thesis for MIT was titled “Notes on Some Sulpharsenites and Sulphantimonites from Colorado.” Impressive. Two years later, in 1875, she married the chairman of the MIT Mine Engineering Department, Robert Hallowell Richards (1844–1945).

It appears that the main reason for excluding women from studying at MIT was the lack of laboratory space and residential accommodations. By 1876, Swallow had raised enough money for the creation of the MIT Woman’s Laboratory, “established to afford better opportunities for the scientific education of women” (Technology Review, June 1910). Swallows Richards had a long and illustrious career at MIT, as Instructor in Chemistry and Mineralogy and, for 27 years, as an Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry. Her work in sanitary engineering led to the development of the field of home economics, which she is credited as having founded. She was a consultant in chemistry and a water analyst for the Massachusetts State Board of Health, the nutrition expert for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and co- founded (with Marion Talbot, class of 1888) of the American Association of University Women.  

Ellen Swallow Richards (upper left). Image via Interactive Timeline: Women at MIT

Between 1881 and 1890, more than 100 women enrolled at MIT, and 19 earned S. B. degrees. However, the U. S. lagged behind other countries in graduating women engineers: a 1909 article in the Boston Sunday Herald (March 28) pointed out that Russia was far ahead of the U. S. in this statistic. That same year, at least 40 women qualified as engineers from the St. Petersburg Higher Technical College program.

Women encompassed around 1% of the student body at MIT until the arrival of WWII. By 2023, legions of women engineers have graduated from MIT (see below). Those mentioned here are just a small representative handful of successful women in engineering. Among those prominent engineers following in Ellen Swallow Richards footsteps were:

EDITH CLARK (1883-1959) M.S. MIT 1919

Edith Clark. Image: https://medium.com/rediscover-steam

Edith Clark was the first women to earn a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and the first woman to hold a professional position as an electrical engineer in the U. S. She worked at General Electric, as a Professor of Physics at the Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey, and became the first female professor of engineering at the University of Texas. Clark invented the “graphical calculator, which solved problems with electric power transmission of data.” It was patented in 1925. Edith Clark holds the distinction of being the first woman to present a paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

To quote Clarke: “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.”  

LYDIA GOULD WELD (1878-1962)

Portrait of Lydia Gould Weld via The Mariners’ Museum and Park (Accession# P0001.016-01-PP1539)

Lydia Gould Weld attended MIT from 1898 to 1903 and earned the S.B. in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Weld was the first woman to earn an engineering degree from MIT and later became the second woman member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Even as women progressed in engineering in the early 20th century, they still experienced many of the same roadblocks that impeded their progress in the late 19th century, as the Boston Herald pointed out on July 1, 1928:

WWII AND THE NEED FOR ENGINEERS

With men leaving engineering jobs for the armed forces, World War II provided new opportunities for women in engineering. In fact, the need for engineers was urgent. All the same, newspaper reporting on the phenomenon of women engineers continued to express concern that women were “taking over jobs held by men.”

Cambridge Sentinel September 26, 1942 (excerpts)
Boston Traveler January 14, 1943 (excerpt)

The number of women engineers graduating from MIT in Cambridge post WWII is too numerous to list in detail. This year, in 2022–2023, women at MIT account for 48% of undergraduates (2,244) and 39% of graduate students (2,830). Those below are just a sample of women engineers with an association with Cambridge:

MILDRED DRESSELHAUS (1930-2017), “The Queen of Carbon”  

Mildren Dresselhaus. Image: Courtesy of the National Science Foundation

After graduating from Hunter College (1951), Dresselhaus spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar and later earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. In 1967, she was appointed to the MIT faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer science. In 1983, she was also appointed to the Faculty of the Physics Department. Two years later, she received MIT’s highest honor and was named Institute Professor (1985). She was also the first woman to win a National Medal of Science in engineering. Her research and teaching focused on magneto-optics, the structure of carbon, carbon nanotubes, and graphene.

SHEILA WIDNALL (1938-)

Portrait of US Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall via Wikipedia

Sheila Widnall majored in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, receiving her B.S. (1960), her M.S. (1961), and her Ph.D. (1964) in that field. Her research focused on “fluid mechanics and the aerodynamics of high speed vehicles.” In 1979, she was the first woman appointed to the faculty of the MIT School of Engineering. She was also the first woman to serve as Secretary of the Air Force having been appointed by President Clinton, a position she served in from 1993-1997. Afterwards, she served as Associate Provost of MIT, and was ultimately appointed Institute Professor Emerita. Her awards, positions, and achievements are too numerous to list. Widnall was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2003. 

SHIRLEY ANN JACKSON (1946-)

Jackson was one of the first black women to receive her B.S. in theoretical physics from MIT (1968). In 1973, she was the first African American woman to receive a doctorate from MIT, and the second nationwide to receive a doctorate in nuclear physics.

Shirley Jackson at MIT the year she earned her PhD in physics, 1973. Image via MIT Black History, courtesy MIT Museum

In 1995, President Clinton appointed Jackson as Chairwoman of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1999, she became the 18th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

MARGARET HAMILTON (1936-)

Hamilton received her BA in mathematics with a minor in philosophy in from Earlham College in 1958. Moving to Cambridge with her husband (James Cox Hamilton) in 1960, she joined MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. She then moved on to MIT’s Instrumentation Lab (now the independent Draper Lab) where she was the director of the Software Engineering Division. In 1961, the lab contracted with NASA “to develop the Apollo program’s guidance system. For her work during this period, Hamilton has been credited with popularizing the concept of software engineering.”  (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/)

Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton poses with the Apollo guidance software she and her team developed at MIT. Credit: Courtesy MIT Museum

The national Society of Women Engineers was founded in 1950. But it wasn’t until 1963, with the opening of MIT’s McCormick Hall, that women finally had a dormitory on the Cambridge campus. 

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen M. Fox.

SOURCES

https://alum.mit.edu/slice/first-female-engineer-inducted-inventors-hall-fame

https://blog.isa.org/mechanical-engineering

https://www.britannica.com/

Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection

Enrollment Statistics

Genealogybank

https://innovation.mit.edu/interactive-timeline-women-at-mit/

MIT Facts
View at Medium.com

Newspapers.com

https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/medalofscience50/dresselhaus.jsp

https://prabook.com/web/tabitha.babbitt/1837435

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/

Technology Review June 1911, MIT Archives and Special Collections (p 368)

Wikipedia

The Women of M.I.T., 1871 to 1941: Who They Were, What They Achieved by Marilynn Arsey Bever ’76 (MIT 1976)

Torn Down Tuesday: 71 Amherst Street

Posted on by Meta Partenheimer

It must be time for … Torn Down Tuesday! Today’s feature is a two-story garage that once stood at 71 Amherst Street.

Drawing of 71 Amherst by Francis W. Wilson. MIT.

Completed in 1909 for Fred Smith, the utilitarian structure was built of poured-in-place reinforced concrete. The design included a long span for the upper floor combined with a low-pitched roof carried by metal trusses. The building was set at an oblique angle to the street, and the second floor was reached by a concrete ramp leading up to a door large enough to admit automobiles and trucks.

The Cambridge Auto Body Shop as featured in the Cambridge Tribune, 3 July 1925

The building was later occupied by the Daggett Chocolate Company, which commissioned an addition in 1947. When this addition was demolished in 1981, much of the original design was again visible. The building was purchased from the Daggett Trust by MIT in 1961 and renamed Building E20. In 1972-73 the first floor was reconfigured by the architect Bernard Awtry to accommodate the institute’s newly established Department of Psychology. By that time the industrial sash bays had been largely filled in by concrete block panels pierced by small punched windows.

71 Amherst Street photographed by Robert Rettig, May 1969

The Frederick Smith Garage at 71 Amherst Street was of a typical, but relatively minor, use in the newly developed Cambridge riverfront lands. As the automobile became popular in the first decade of the 20th century, residents of the densely settled areas of Boston’s Beacon Hill and Back Bay needed storage and service facilities that could not be provided in their neighborhoods. Just as Bostonian’s stored their household goods at the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse on Massachusetts Avenue, so they brought their automobiles to be serviced in the Cambridge garages of Mr. Smith and others.

Detail of 1916 Cambridge Bromley Atlas showing Fred S. Smith’s garage.

This building and 79 Amherst Street (Building E10) were demolished in 2000 and replaced by an addition to the neighboring MIT Media Lab.

Sources:
CHC demolition memo, cases D-811 and D-812
MIT report: Proposed Demolition of Buildings E10 and E20

Save The Date: Cambridge Open Archives 2019

Posted on by cambridgehistoricalcommission

COP-Logo-type

Dive into the tangled history of Cambridge politics and social activism at 7 local archives from June 24-28, 2019.

Archivists at each site will share treasures from their collections – photographs, art, posters, letters – that tell complex and unique stories about dynamic politicians and dedicated activists; fights over highways and development schemes; a strong mayor vs. Plan E.

See what an archive is, find out what archivists do all day, and see how you can use these resources to learn more about your family and community.

This year’s participating archives:

MIT Museum

The Cambridge Room at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Semitic Museum

Harvard Art Museums Archives

Cambridge Historical Commission

Cambridge Historical Society

Mount Auburn Cemetery

REGISTRATION OPENS MAY 31

Info here: http://www.cambridgema.gov/openarchives

This event is free but registration is required.

Questions? 617-349-4070 or chcarchives@cambridgema.gov

 

Modern Monday: McCormick Hall and Katharine Dexter’s Legacy at MIT

Posted on by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In the year 1960, just 22 women were admitted to MIT, in comparison to 914 men. After decades of feeling pressure to admit more female students, President James Killian and his Chancellor Julius Stratton made the decision not only to admit more women to the university, but to actively work to improve the environment and resources available for female students.

Women at MIT Enrollment

The shift to admit and provide better education to young women was described years later in 1970 in a report written by Professor Emily Wick, Associate Dean of Students and the first woman promoted to tenure at MIT:

“Until the Institute could commit itself to educating women in significant numbers, and could provide suitable living conditions, coeds were not overly `successful.’ … Before 1960 women entered MIT at their own risk. If they succeeded — fine! If they failed — well, no one had expected them to succeed. … The class of 1964 entered in 1960 knowing that MIT believed in women students. It was the first class in which coeds, as a group, matched the proportion of B.S. degrees earned by their male classmates!”

Emily Wick_MIT Alum Class 1964
Emily L. Wick talking with students circa 1963. Photo courtesy of MIT Class of 1964.

An early and vocal advocate for women’s rights and increased visibility of women at MIT, Katharine Dexter, (1875-1967) graduated from MIT in 1904 in biology. She married Stanley McCormick whose mental illness emerged soon after. Throughout her life, she tried to find a biological basis and cure for schizophrenia as well as supporting women’s right to vote as a strong proponent of the suffrage movement. Later in life, she turned her full attention to the construction of the first women’s dormitory at MIT, which coincided with the Institute’s newly established goals for admitting more women. Starting in the 1940s, 120 Bay State Road in Boston was occupied as a women’s dormitory (the only such dormitory for female MIT students at the time), and it housed approximately 19 graduate and undergraduate women students from the early 1950′s until McCormick opened. The Bay State Road dorm was over a mile from campus, which was less than ideal. As a result, Katharine funded a taxi service to shuttle the students to campus on poor weather days.

800px-Katharine_McCormick_on_April_22,_1913
Katharine Dexter McCormick in 1913. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.

In 1963, the west wing of Stanley McCormick Hall was dedicated and named after her late husband. Just three years later, the second wing (a second tower) was constructed and dedicated just after her death. Both phases of the building were bankrolled by Katharine Dexter McCormick and were to house women studying at MIT. McCormick Hall was designed by Herbert Beckwith, a member of MIT’s architecture faculty and principal of the firm Anderson, Beckwith and Haible. Elizabeth McMillin Beckwith, Herbert’s wife, also an architect in the firm, assisted with the design. The dorm could today be classified as “Brutalist” in design. The two concrete and glass towers front Memorial Drive and are connected by a low-rise community space. The buildings are used today as all-female dorms housing upwards of 255 students.

Katharine McCormick at Hall dedication 1963_MIT Alum Class 1964 website
Katharine McCormick speaking at McCormick Hall dedication ceremony. Photo courtesy of MIT Class of 1964.

Mccormick Hall 1963_Before addition_MIT Alum Class 1964
McCormick Hall West Wing. Photo courtesy of MIT Class of 1964.

McCormick Hall_1968_0002
Image located in McCormick Hall Survey File at CHC. Photo circa 1966.

McCormick Hall_1968_0004
Image located in McCormick Hall Survey File at CHC. Photo circa 1967.

Aerial 2017
2017 aerial view of McCormick Hall and surrounding structures.

To learn more about McCormick Hall, feel free to make a research appointment with us by emailing histcomm@cambridgema.gov.

Modern Monday: Hayden Memorial Library at MIT

Posted on by cambridgehistoricalcommission

For today’s #ModernMonday posting, we are highlighting the Hayden Memorial Library at MIT.

Hayden Library PHoto

Located on Memorial Drive, the library is named after Charles Hayden (1870-1937) an MIT alum (1890) who studied “mining investment.” Hayden was a philanthropist who donated vast sums of money for the construction of buildings including; the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Hayden Memorial Library at MIT to name a few. Hayden was involved with philanthropy most of his life. During World War I, he donated $100,000 per year to the American Red Cross. Hayden’s largest philanthropic effort came following his death in 1937 when his will directed roughly $50,000,000 ($853 million in today’s dollars) from his estate be used to create a foundation to advance the education and “moral, mental, and physical well-being” of boys and young men. The organization, known today as “The Charles Hayden Foundation”, distributes grants of between $10,000,000 and $20,000,000 annually to support programs for children in the Boston and New York metropolitan areas.

Charles Hayden Photo
Charles Hayden in 1934, from the American Museum of Natural History Digital Special Collections.

Exterior original drawings_Tech. Review
Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

Interior drawings_Tech. Review
Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

Interior drawings_Tech. Review (2)
Architectural drawing included in Architectural Record, Nov. 1946.

The Hayden Memorial Library at MIT was unveiled beginning in 1946 when the Architectural Record highlighted the design of the building. The building was designed by Ralph Walker (MIT Class of 1911) of Voorhees, Walker, Foley and Smith Architects and was completed in 1951 in a Post-WWII Art Moderne Style. Walker was called “The only other honest architect in America” by Frank Lloyd Wright, and “Architect of the Century” by The New York Times when he received the Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects. He was most well known for his Art Deco buildings in New York. “Three years after accepting his award from the New York Times, he resigned from the AIA amid controversy surrounding a member of his firm who was accused of stealing another firm’s contract. Though he was later cleared of all wrongdoing and reinstated, he was apparently never the same afterwards. Ten years later, in 1973, Walker shot himself with a silver bullet, only after destroying his AIA award. His original firm still exists under the name HLW International, but as Walker and his wife had no children, all that remains of his great legacy are the buildings he created” (Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century).

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Exterior010
Hayden Library in 1968, photo part of CHC Survey files.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Interior012
Hayden Library in 1968, photo part of CHC Survey files.

The Hayden Library inaugurated the expansion and modernization of MIT’s academic facilities and was one of the first truly Modern buildings on the campus. At the time, vast amounts of technical literature – generated largely by the war – had to be housed, and facilities had to be updated to accommodate recent advances in conservation, storage, and photographic reproduction. The Hayden Library would have to meet those demands. The protruding two-story glass bays allow ample natural light into the library and the limestone façade serves as a nod to the older Beaux Arts MIT buildings nearby.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_UMichigan Archives
Photo of Hayden Library courtesy of University of Michigan Digital Archives.

 

Utilizing the Hayden Library’s initial design goal of “flexibility”, Shepley Bulfinch re-imagined the building as the hub of the MIT Library System in 2012 and it now houses collections for science, engineering, humanities, music, and archives.

The 1951 building remains as a great example of Modern architecture in Cambridge and shows how good architectural design can be timeless and adapted to meet future needs.

MIT Hayden Memorial Library_Color Slide CHC017
CHC Color slide of Hayden Library in 1990s.