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CHE Department History
Homes for the Chemical Engineering Department
Benton Hall, completed in 1911, was the first engineering building on campus,
but chemical engineering was not yet an independent curriculum and was not
housed there for years. As part of Chemistry, chemical engineering was in Leigh
Hall until 1939. Only when chemical engineering became a full-fledged department
in the Engineering College did it move to Benton Hall and Benton Annex, a
temporary building directly behind Benton Hall. Chemical engineering did not
occupy the whole building—some of the classrooms were used by the rest of the
university. Because the space arrangement in Benton Hall was not suitable for
chemical engineering equipment, the location of the building (now the site of
Grinter Hall) put it right in the center of the campus. When chemical
engineering moved to the Hangar Building (now the site of the O'Connell Center)
in 1950, however, it was in the wilderness—at that time the only thing west of
the old gym was the football field. During World War II, the ROTC had put up an
airplane hangar that was used for training activities during the war, but when a
new military building was erected, Dean Weil obtained the old hangar for the
enlarged engineering operations.
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The Chemistry Building
(Leigh Hall)
CHE's First Home |
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The Old (now demolished) Benton Hall
CHE's home until 1950 |
| The hangar was a huge metal shell covering
21,350 square feet. The north end was occupied by aeronautical engineering
and the rest by chemical engineering. Most of the center space was taken up
by Dr. Nolan's paper pulp pilot plant and the unit operations teaching
equipment. Around the edges of the hangar and on a narrow balcony there were
offices, labs, the shop, and a storeroom. There were only two small rooms
that could be used as classrooms, so most classes were held in the new
military building next door. |
The Hangar
CHE's home until 1969 |
 As
most alumni from that period will attest, the hangar did not provide the most
suitable working quarters. It was hot in the summer, cold in the winter, drafty
all the time, and when it rained, it leaked. But it was home for almost twenty
years, and chemical engineering survived. When research operations expanded,
2,200 square feet of additional space were found in the new Engineering and
Industries Building (now Weil Hall) and 4,850 square feet in Reed Lab, formally
known as the hydraulics lab.
Finally, in 1969 the new chemical engineering building with 51,000 square feet
was completed and all of CHE was reunited in this fine, new building, although
the move was delayed for a while when it was discovered that the building had
been built over a cave.
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