Seventy Years Of The Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Page 38

that the proceeds from the sale of the wood might be applied to the cost of grading. He also reserved for himself a 50-foot right of way for a street across the north portion of the tract and granted the Institute a 17-foot strip on the south side to be used in widening Jo Bill Road.

The building committee, consisting of Phinehas Ball, Ichabod Washburn, Dr. Pervear, and George F. Hoar, to which was added D. Waldo Lincoln, devoted much time to a study of the needs of the school and of the type of construction that would be most suitable. They visited the buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then in process of construction, but "found little there adaptable to our wants." At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute they obtained useful information. Included also in their visitations were the Sheffield Scientific School and the new gymnasium at Williams College.

After consulting with the committee on studies, the building committee recommended that the structure should contain a "laboratory of sufficient size to accommodate thirty chemical students, having suitable balance and chemical supply rooms attached, . . . a drawing room for the students in Mechanical Engineering, which shall be of sufficient size to accommodate fifty students, with model room and the professor's room adjoining," two lecture rooms to hold thirty students each, and smaller rooms for recitations, cabinets, janitor, etc. They proposed that the front of the building should be three stories high, with a mansard roof, the laboratory wing one or two stories high, but so built that the roof could be raised at some future time. The entrance was to be carried up in the form of a tower for astronomical observations. Common brick, "without a large amount of architectural ornamentation," was proposed as the building material.

On these specifications and pencil sketches, architects were invited, in the spring of 1866, to submit plans and estimates. The building was to be designed to accommodate 150

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Last Modified: Fri Jul 30 11:15:25 EDT 1999