Building for Sciences Will Cost $12 Million

The new undergraduate science center will cost about $12 million and will probably be built at the corner of Kirkland and Oxford streets, Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, assistant dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for resources and planning, revealed yesterday.

Trottenberg said in an interview that the area between Lawrence Hall and Oxford St. was considered the logical site for the center, since it is near several laboratories and other science buildings. The only building on the proposed site is a frame house occupied by the Graduate School of Education, and, when the School's new headquarters on Appian Way are completed, the house will no longer be needed, Trottenberg noted.

First Cost Estimate

His estimate of the center's cost is the first that has been given by a University official. The Faculty appropriated $1 million for the project at its monthly meeting last week, and the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and private sources are expected to supply the other $11 million.

The Corporation has not chosen an architect for the center, but each department has already been allotted a fixed portion of its 250,000 square feet, Trottenberg said. The Physics and Chemistry Departments will be the largest tenants, each with about 13 per cent of the total area.

Next come the Mathematics Department (8 per cent), the Natural Sciences division of the General Education program (7 per cent), the Geology Department (4 per cent), the Statistics Department (2 per cent), and the Biology and Astronomy Departments (both under 1 per cent).

Lecture halls and classrooms will take up more than 10 per cent of the total space. Over 22 per cent will be used for "facilities peculiar to the building as a whole"--principally a "very large" science library that will include the University's general research collection, part of which is in Widener.