BUILDINGS
The buildings at present devoted wholly or in part to the work of the Department
of Engineering are the following:
The Mechanical Laboratory is the main seat of the instruction in technical
studies. It is 180 by 70 feet and contains on the main floor the Dean's office
and the offices of three other professors; and three lecture-rooms.
Above are two offices, a reading room for students, and blue-print and photographic
rooms. Below on the ground floor are an office and classroom, the
electrical laboratories, the testing laboratories, apparatus and storerooms, and
the student's lavatory. In order to more adequately care for increased numbers
this building has undergone a considerable rearrangement during recent years.
Wood and machine shop equipment has been entirely removed from the building.
This change made available much needed classroom space and allowed the
electrical laboratories to be expanded. Incident to the changes new cement floors
were constructed for the Road Materials Testing Laboratory, the main testing
Laboratory and the main hall. A new high-pressure steam line from the Power
House was also installed.
The New Power House is a single story building 130 by 60 feet, in which
is housed the University heating plant. The equipment includes two 310 horsepower
Heine water tube boilers, equipped with single retort stokers of the underfeed
type, supplied by the Combustion Engineering Corporation, two Babcock
and Wilcox boilers (Stirling type) fitted with underfeed twin-retort Detroit
stokers, two steam and two electrically driven circulating pumps, low pressure
heaters, etc. Provision has been made for the future installation of two steam
turbine generator sets for the supply of electric current to the University buildings.
The entire plant is available for instructional purposes.
Plants available for inspection both locally and elsewhere throughout the
State include the Bremo Bluff and other generating stations of the Virginia
Public Service Company, numerous chemical plants, the Langley Memorial
Aeronautical Laboratory, Hampton, the Newport News Shipyard, the Norfolk
Navy Yard, the Rothwell Cold Storage and Ice Company's plants in Charlottesville
and Waynesboro, the Norfolk and Western Railway shops and the works of
the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company at Roanoke, the Charlottesville Woolen
Mills, etc. Visits of several days' duration are organized to distant points and
are made to coincide, if possible, with some event of more than usual interest,
such as the launching of a cruiser at the Newport News Shipyard, the visit of an
airplane carrier to Hampton Roads or the sea trials of a passenger liner.
The Geological Museum is 120 by 50 feet. It is a three-story building.
The main floor is devoted to the very extensive geological collection of specimens,
charts, relief maps, and so on. The gallery above contains an equally good
collection of minerals and numerous models of typical crystallographic forms.
The upper floor contains the lecture-rooms and the laboratories of Economic
Geology. In the basement are stored subsidiary collections and new material
accumulated in more recent geological surveys.
The Physical Laboratory faces the Mechanical Laboratory on the opposite
side of the quadrangle, and has almost the same proportions. The main floor
contains the lecture-room, the professors' offices, the laboratory of experimental
physics, and the storeroom for the very large collection of apparatus used in the
lectures. On the ground floor is the laboratory of theoretical electricity, the
storage battery room, a well-equipped shop for the repair and manufacture of
apparatus, and smaller rooms for the work of graduate students.
The new Chemical Laboratory was opened for use in September, 1917.
In this fire-proof structure all the work in Chemistry is assembled. The floor
area provided is about 45,000 square feet. The lecture-rooms seat classes of
300, 75 and 25 students. The laboratories assigned to General Chemistry, Organic
Chemistry, Qualitative Analysis, Quantitative Analysis, and Physical Chemistry
contain 110, 60, 40, 30, and 20 desks. Altogether by dividing classes into
sections, 600 students may be accommodated. Smaller private laboratories are
provided for research workers. Large stock rooms communicating by elevators
with the several floors contain ample stores of chemical supplies. The 5,000
volumes of books and bound sets of journals constituting the Departmental
Library of Chemistry are so housed as to be accessible to both teachers and
students.
