MARKED PROGRESS IN BUILDING

Progress in the building activities in the University during the academic year 1914-15 has been marked by the completion of two new buildings, the Widener Library and the Cruft Memorial Laboratory; and additions have been made to the University Museum and the Gray Herbarium in the Botanic Garden. The new Germanic Museum and the CRIMSON building on Plympton street are now under construction.

The Widener Library, which will be dedicated on Commencement Day, next Thursday, is now ready for the placing of books and equipment; and this will be done during the summer. It is expected that all of the University books will be transferred from the buildings where they are now housed by the end of the summer so that the Library will be ready for use when College opens next fall.

Cruft Laboratory Well Equipped.

The Cruft high tension laboratory building was finished last January, and courses in Physics and Engineering have been held there since mid-years. The new structure, located between the Jefferson Physical Laboratory and Pierce Hall, is the result of a bequest of $50,000 made by Miss Harriet Cruft for research and instruction in high voltage and high frequency electrical phenomena.

The building is three stories high and contains 25 rooms for research and instruction work, five of which are under ground, and will be used as constant temperature rooms. One room, 32 by 44 feet in area, is to contain a storage battery of 100,000 volts for investigations involving constant potential. It will be the highest voltage storage battery in the world, and will require the solution of many problems in insulation and switching devices.

Powerful Wireless Station.

A steel latticework tower supporting wireless antenna is located on each end of the flat runway on the roof of the building. The new aerial is as large, if not larger, than any used in the United States; it is made up of five wires stretching from the 100-foot standards above the Laboratory across Langdell Hall to Walter Hastings Hall, a distance of over 600 feet. A message has been received from Berlin, a distance of 3,000 miles, and several times stations on the Pacific Coast have been heard distinctly.

Professor G. W. Pierce is director of the Laboratory, and he and Dr. E. L. Chaffee will have direct charge of the work carried on there.

Peabody Museum Enlarged.

An extension of 100 feet in length to the Museum was completed last fall. This is the second addition which has been made since the south wing of the Museum was begun in 1876, when an extension of 40 feet facing on Divinity avenue was built. An addition of 60 feet was made in 1888, and last year the wing was completed by building 100 feet more and connecting the new section with the main building as planned by Louis Agassiz in 1859. The completion of this wing doubles the space for exhibitions in the Peabody Museum, which is the anthropological section of the University Museum.

Section of Herbarium Remodeled.

The reconstruction of the central part of the Gray Herbarium, which was begun in 1912, was completed this spring. This section of the building includes, besides several rooms for special purposes, the main hall, a room of considerable size, provided with two steel and glass galleries and surrounded by a triple row of steel herbarium cases. This room, well lighted and equipped with furnishings highly perfected for its purposes, contains also a bronze relief of Dr. Gray by Saint Gaudens, several busts, and many portraits of distinguished botanists.

As rebuilt, the Herbarium consists of the Kidder wing, at the rear, built in 1910 through the liberality of N. T. Kedder of Milton, and containing a considerable part of the plant collection; the Library wing, the gift of Dr. G. G. Kennedy of Milton, built in 1911 and including the library and administrative offices; the G. R. White laboratories of systematic botany, forming a wing extending toward the conservatories and containing the Harvard and Radcliffe laboratories; and the central section described above.

Museum Well Under Way.

The new Germanic Museum building, for which Mr. and Mrs. Adolphus Busch gave about $300,000, is now in process of construction at the corner of Kirkland street and Divinity avenue. The workmen are completing the framework and pouring cement. It is expected that the building will be ready for occupancy next year.

The new quarters for the CRIMSON on Plympton street will be ready for occupancy with the opening of College in the fall. Even if the interior work on the front portion of the building is not completed, the presses in the rear will be set up and ready for use. The equipment of the Crimson Printing Company will be transferred from the Union during the summer and the company will continue its present relations with the CRIMSON, renting its space in the new building from the CRIMSON, and printing the newspaper under contract.