The building going up in yesterday’s picture was Rice’s Nuclear Lab (later renamed the Bonner Lab in honor of Professor Tom Bonner), built to house a six-million volt Van de Graaff particle accelerator. Here’s another shot of the construction in 1952. For those of you who missed it, it was where Duncan Hall is today.
And here’s how it looked just after it was completed in 1953:
It’s a little ironic, but there are far more pictures of it’s destruction in 1994 than of any other phase of its existence. I have almost no idea what it looked like on the inside. This picture is pretty cool–it was taken just an instant after the wrecking ball hit and it’s worth zooming in to see the debris flying off the side
