FILM STORAGE

The structure referred to as Film Storage is very meagerly documented and the dates shown are rather uncertain.

The Board Minutes for December 10, 1929, record this recommendation by President Hughes, which was approved:

A large number of celluloid films, which are distributed to the schools and colleges of the State by the Department of Visual Instruction, are housed in the Engineering Building. During the last two years, there have been several very serious fires, destructive to both property and lives, which originated in the room in which films were stored. We feel that we must immediately erect a small building, either in the form of a cellar or of an isolated structure on the campus, at an estimated cost of $2000 or $3000 for the housing of films.

There is no further reference to the structure in the Board Minutes but a thesis of 1954 gives some added information:

…an experimental concrete culvert, discarded by the Engineering Experiment Station, was placed at the disposal of the Visual Instruction Service. The culvert was located in the space now occupied by the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Building on the western part of the campus and motion picture films were safely stored in that structure.¹

The Financial Report first included Film Storage, at a valuation of $500, in the list of buildings in the 1934 edition. It was finally written off in 1948, although the structure was undoubtedly removed or razed in 1942 when construction of the Naval Armory was started.

Harold Kooser, long-time director of Visual Instruction, once told this writer about the “culvert” storage structure and its location, but he made no mention of a relocation to another site.