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, as well as the facilities for Drawing. 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 Drawing Room is temporarily housed in the sub-basement of Cabell
Hall which has been fitted for drawing. The room accommodates about 100
men, each man having his individual drawing desk.
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.
