Government Grants Million Dollars For Nine-Story Research Building

The United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has awarded a $1,369,460 matching grant to the school of Public Health for construction in mid-1960 of a nine-story research building (shown above). "The matching grant" stipulates that the institution match the sum, dollar for dollar.

The School first conceived of the project when the Rockefeller Foundation gave it a large sum for "construction purposes." Since then, a "quiet campaign" has raised almost enough money to equal the government gift.

Laboratories for research in environmental health and nutrition will occupy most of the building's 38,000 square feet. In the basements and on the first four floors the division of Environmental Hygiene will study space biology, air pollution, aviation health and safety, and highway safety.

On the remaining stories, the department of nutrition will study the relation of nutrition to obesity and heart disease.

The new facilities will stand at the corner of Huntington Ave. and Shattuck St. in Boston. They will replace two remodeled hospital buildings and "rented and borrowed" space now adjacent to the construction site.

A second stage of the building program looks ahead to the addition of four more floors soon after the opening of the building.

The edifice, said John C. Snyder, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health, will "greatly strengthen the objectives of the School." The school aims at prevention and control of diseases of two kinds among population groups: those emerging in urbanized and technologically advanced groups, and those afflicting backward civilizations.