Friday, May 9, 2008

Contruction site tour

Today I had the chance to go on a tour of Dean Hall, which is currently being renovated. It was way cool. I've never been on a construction site like that - I even got to wear a hardhat.

This is the west side, the "back side" of the building.
Dean Hall Construction - West entrance

We then started on the third floor. To get there, we climbed an exterior stairwell. Let it be known that I have a certain nervousness about stairways which open stairs, and about heights, so I got a little anxious climbing this thing. But it is very safe and I did not fall.
Dean Hall Construction - west side exterior stairwell

When we got to the third floor, we saw footprints in the concrete. Not new ones, but ones from 60 years ago or so when the building was first constructed (or maybe it was built in the 1960s, not sure).
Dean Hall Construction - 3rd floor, 60 year old foot prints

The second and third floor have very cool lounges being constructed in the front of the building - they are going to have an excellent view of the university and be bright and sunny. Right now, however, they are a maze of bars.
Dean Hall Construction - 3rd floor, lounge area

Another view from the third floor level, but at the top of an exterior stairwell that we are about to descend.
Dean Hall Construction - 3rd floor exterior stairwell

We descended, went through the 2nd floor which has lots of labs and classrooms, then finally got down to the first floor, which was of interest to me, being where the museum is. For all of that, I only got a couple of photos. This first one is the exhibition space. Or will be, eventually:
Dean Hall Construction - exhibit space 2

We got into where the collections space will be and I snapped a photo of what will be the archives room:
Dean Hall Construction - Archive room

That doorway you see is from the previous life of Dean Hall. It will be a wall in the future. The tour was very cool. For the past several months I've been looking at the plans of the museum, trying to visualize what sort of tables and shelves should go in there and how it will look. So now I've seen the space, and let me tell you, it looks big. We are going to have so many shelves to put things on. It's going to be excellent. I am especially excited about having a unified space - right now museum spaces are spread out on the first floor of the current building, and we need to navigate public hallways to move between spaces. If I get back into the building before it's finished, I am sure I will take more photos and keep you updated.

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