New Physics Building

The University of Pennsylvania has announced plans for the erection of a $2,700,000 physics, mathematics, and astronomy building intended primarily to supplant the Randal Morgan Laboratory of Physics, which is now more than fifty‐five years old. The new building, to be located at the southeast corner of 33rd and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia, will contain some two hundred rooms with a total floor area of more than 125,000 square feet. The university’s betatron laboratory, built adjacent to the new site in 1948, will become a functional adjunct of the main structure. The building will centralize the classrooms, offices, and laboratories of the physics department, headed by Gaylord P. Harnwell, the mathematics department, headed by John R. Kline, and the astronomy department, of which Charles P. Olivier is chairman and Frank B. Wood is executive director of observatories. Rooms will include 17 laboratories, 52 research office‐laboratories, 17 classrooms, 55 offices, five shops, three lecture halls, a library, and an astronomical observatory. The building will be the fourth major structure to materialize under the University’s $32,000,000 development program intended to transform 148 acres of West Philadelphia into a new campus.

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