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UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

 

The Changing Campus: 1930

By 1930 WRU had acquired most of the property on Adelbert and Abington Roads for the new medical school complex and University Hospitals of Cleveland. Both moved from their downtown locations. For the first time the Medical School was located on campus with the university. The downtown presence of WRU was continued, however, with the establishment of Cleveland College in 1925.


WRU also made another large set of purchases during the 1920s: the property bounded by Bellflower Road on the north, East Boulevard on the west, Euclid Avenue on the south, and the College for Women campus on the east. The purchases included a number of buildings, the most significant for the university being Hitchcock Hall and Thwing Hall (since 1980 known as Thwing Center).


Case, in its continuous effort to provide separate facilities for each of its departments, added the Warner Building, located next to Rockefeller Mining and Metallurgy, for the Mechanics Department and Civil Engineering. The Charles William Bingham Mechanical Engineering Building was completed and the old Mechanical Laboratory was razed. The Ether Drift Research House (Interferometer Shed) was also added to campus. Here physicist Dayton C. Miller continued the ether drift experiments first begun by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley.

Number of buildings in use by Case in 1930: 14.

Number of buildings in use by WRU in 1930: 83.


University campus
This aerial, taken circa 1932, shows WRU, Case, and the surrounding area. Euclid Avenue is the vertical line in the center of the photo. The lagoon is to the left of Euclid Avenue.
This map provides a view of the Case and WRU campuses. Using the lagoon in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the new Severance Hall as an orientation device, you can see the WRU and Case campuses to the right. The Mather campus is above the lagoon and Art Museum. Compare this map with the aerial photo above.
map
University campus
Here is an aerial view of the medical complex, Adelbert Road, and the Adelbert and Case campuses. The small, unlabelled building to the immediate north of Case Main is the interferometer shed used by Dayton C. Miller in his ether drift experiments.
 
Information was compiled by staff of the Case Western Reserve University Archives, November 2004.