QUADRANGLE

Requests for appropriations for new facilities for the Veterinary Medicine Division were introduced in 1893 and in subsequent biennia until $150,000 was allocated in 1909. Preliminary plans had been started in 1908 and final drawings were made in 1910.

Several sites were considered for the location of the new building: (1) the site of the then existing Veterinary Hospital; (2) the site of what is now Clyde Williams Field; (3) a site north of today’s Davidson Hall; (4) the actual site where the building was erected.¹

The construction contract was awarded in the amount of $135,700 in November 1910, and excavation was underway by December.² Actual construction began the following spring. The building was occupied in March 1912.³

The new structure was described in the Biennial Report for 1910-12:

During the past year the group of new veterinary buildings planned has been completed with the exception of the Experiment Station and Diagnostic Laboratories. The group of five completed includes the Administration building with dean’s and surgeon’s offices, assembly room, library, general museum, and faculty room; the Pathology building accommodating the Department of Pathology and Bacteriology; the Anatomy building for the Department of Anatomy and Histology; the Physiology building in which the work of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology is carried on; and the Hospital or Clinic building for the use of the Department of Surgery and Practice. Each building has the necessary offices, laboratories, store rooms, and rooms for animals for laboratory purposes. Each building is adapted to the work of its respective department without interfering with work or plans of any other. This arrangement has proven eminently successful, and is stimulating individual work in a very effective way.

Minor modifications and repairs were made in subsequent years. In 1929 a frame addition was erected at the northwestern corner of the Quadrangle as reported in the student paper for September 26:

A $6,000 temporary frame structure, to be used by the Veterinary Anatomy Department and built on the north of the present laboratory, will be ready for use soon after college starts this fall. It will be a one-story building, measuring 40 by 50 feet, and will double the present laboratory space. The old accommodations were barely able to take care of half of the class enrollment.

That frame structure continued in use until it was razed to make room for the new Diagnostic Laboratory in 1954.

The Christian Petersen mural sculpture and his free-standing figure of “The Gentle Doctor” were installed in the Quadrangle court in 1938. The mural was subsequently removed to the new facilities when the college moved there in 1975. (See “Sculpture”.) The southwest wing of the Quadrangle, most recently known as the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, has been called Instrumentation Research Laboratory in all of the Board proceedings. It had also been referred to as Physiological Instrumentation Research Laboratory (title on contract drawings), and Biomedical Electronics Laboratory.

A grant of $200,000 from the United States Public Health Service covered about half the first cost of the building and equipment. Construction contracts were awarded in December 1960 and it was completed for use in the fall of 1962.⁴

In 1964-65 a $40,000 remodeling project was completed in the wing for Physiology and Pharmacology. King-Bole was the general contractor for that project.

When the College of Veterinary Medicine moved from the Quadrangle in 1976 the vacated structure was allocated to the College of Education and to the Department of Psychology.

Frevert-Ramsey-Drey were selected as architects for a major remodeling of the building in 1976. Bids on that project were received in October 1979, and work on the remodeling was started late in the fall by Webster Construction Co.

The building name was modified to Quadrangle when the Veterinarians moved out and the Diagnostic Laboratory wing became known as Quadrangle North. (See that separate entry.) The Biomedical Engineering wing then lost separate identity and is now considered part of the Quadrangle.