Medical School to Use $2.5 Million For Remodeling Research Building

The Harvard Medical School has begun a $2.5 million remodeling program, involving two wings of one of its principal buildings. The renovated area will be used by the Departments of Anatomy and Pharmacology for research activities.

The School's building renovation program was assisted by a matching construction grant of $1, 125,000 from the National Institute of Health of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

The completed building will have five floors instead of its present three. One of the School's four amphitheatres will be replaced by three floors of new research laboratories. Additional floors will be added between the existing first and second floors, and between the present third floor and the roof.

When construction is completed, the Department of Pharmacology will occupy the top three floors. The Department of Anatomy will be located on the two lower floors.

The new building program is the second major reconstruction work at the School since its present buildings were dedicated in 1906. In 1954, the remodeling of another building in the School's Longwood Quadrangle added two new floors to the research and teaching area.

The major key to the entire renovation program, besides the addition of new floor space, will be the flexibility of the laboratories, according to W. P. Hooper, assistant superintendent of Buildings and Grounds in the Harvard Medical School.

All partitions and wall and floor cabinets in the new areas will be moveable, so that laboratories may be rearranged as research programs change.

The reconstruction work, one of several building projects planned, will enable the Medical School "to achieve greater ability to carry forward research in the biology of disease," according to Dr. George P. Berry, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.