I took a few happy minutes last week to wander around in the Chemistry Building and see if I could confirm the location of the Chemistry Library before Fondren was built, which I wrote about here.
From what I could see the theory advanced by loyal commenter effeegee was absolutely correct:
Around 1972, 301 was a tiered lecture room at the west end of the building in which I took “Real Analysis”. That was before all of the major renovations to the building in later years. So 302 would have been next to it and obviously on the Main Street side with the view of today’s Baker Commons and kitchen tower.
During the Keck Hall conversion, I believe the room in question was being used as a lab with some office space partitioned off at the windows end. There some cable length issues in that area because of the partitions that ended up requiring creating a secondary distribution room to serve the west end.
Here’s what I saw when I walked into that room up on the third floor:
The windows that we can see here straight ahead and to the left are configured exactly as those in the old photo. So what about the windows on the right side? One of them is now a door and the other two are covered up but they’re still there:
Many thanks to Biosciences faculty members Matthew Bennett (whose lab this now is) and Joff Silberg (who’s right below) for not only letting me in but also getting right in the spirit of the thing. I realized later that I probably sounded a bit crazy when I was talking to them but they did not laugh at me, at least not that I know about. I’m most grateful.
Bonus: You can’t see the dorms out the front window anymore.
Your comment almost implies that sounding “a bit crazy” is unusual around here …
Chuckle
Anyone who thinks that Melissa wandering around trying to figure out what was going on eighty or more years ago is a bit crazy hasn’t been paying attention! I’m guessing the people in Keck, Herzstein, and Lovett Hall see her as much as the Library people do.
Wasn’t there also a small library in the Biology building? I seem to remember it when I worked part-time in a lab there in the very early ’80s.
Ditto for the Geology building.
And one in Abercrombie in the EE area on the second flop in the 70’s.
Those were department reading rooms. Once upon a time almost every department had one, not so many anymore.
If only we had someone with access to information who could tell us all about and share pictures of those old reading rooms.
Lol I’ll see what I can find . . .
Mathematical Sciences had a reading room in Herman Brown until the Jones School moved into the building. Third floor IIRC.
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