ENGINEERING ANNEX
(Includes Ceramics Building)
Built: 1909-1910
Architect: Proudfoot & Bird (1909), Proudfoot, Bird & Rawson (1914)
Contractor: Benson & Marxer (1909), Nelson Construction Co. (Ceramics Wing), Neumann Co. (1914)
Dean Anson Marston made a request in 1906, for “A two-story draughting room and laboratory building with some offices and classrooms, say 200 feet by 50 feet.” 1 Legislature allocated $30,000 for the building early in 1907, to be taken from the Special Building Tax.
The following year a request was initiated for $15,000 for a Ceramics Building proposed as a wing on the Engineering Annex.
Bids for Engineering Annex were received on January 28, 1909; bids for the Ceramics Building on May 6, 1909. Separate contracts were awarded for the two sections. Both units were accepted in Jan. 1910.2 In July of that year Supt. Sloss was directed to install the plumbing in both structures.
Both the main building and the ceramics wing on the southwest were built with two stories and third floor over which the roof construction allowed the use of only the center part of the floor.
The building when completed provided space for civil, electrical and chemical engineering, for ceramics, and some office and laboratory space for the Engineering Experiment Station.3 In 1916 chemical engineering moved to the Chemistry Building. By 1921 about one fourth of the floor area was being used by the Highway Commission.4
In 1914 a small addition, one story, was made on the west side of the center of the Engineering Annex “to accommodate the power station of the electrical department and the electrical department and the electrical and civil engineering shops.”5 That addition was extended west, in 1919, to the same length as the ceramic wing to the south. A second and third floor were added to this wing in 1921.
A $15,000 renovation project was undertaken in 1956 using plans prepared by Leonard Wolf, Supervising Architect. This involved various partition changes, installation of fluorescent lighting in drafting rooms, renovation of rest rooms and miscellaneous other work.6
The Engineering Annex was the home of Architectural Engineering (later the Department of Architecture) and Civil Engineering for many years, except for that portion occupied by Ceramic Engineering.
The Civil Engineering activities were transferred to Town Engineering Building in 1971 and Architecture moved into the new College of Design Building in 1978. Ceramics remains there and other space is used by Materials Science and Engineering, Industrial Engineering and freshman engineering drafting classes.