herr2ck: Daring Today

October 2024.

Baker Systems--another delightful brick shoebox on the engineering side of campus with tiny windows. I’m about to date myself here a little and make a Spongebob reference:

Seriously, what was it with the Modernists here and designing the ugliest, most banal academic buildings possible? It makes Crown Hall look like a Rococo palace. (I actually like Crown Hall because it was innovative and transparent, unlike the inverse as seen here--unoriginal and opaque.) And before the Modernism apologists start angrily typing, every engineering major I know hates it too, and they actually have classes in the building. Just like how I can say Knowlton is kind of stupidly designed.

Baker Systems is located on north campus, bordered by Dreese Lab to the north, Annie and John Glenn Avenue to the south, Cockins Hall and the Journalism Building to the east, and McCracken Power Plant to the west. It was built on the site of an older veterinary building.

Veterinary Clinic History

The Veterinary Clinic (left) in 1926. On the right is the Neil-17th Building, also demolished. (University Archives)

The Veterinary Clinic, or Veterinary Hospital, was designed in 1908 by Richards, McCarty, and Bulford. It was built from December 1908 to the end of 1910 by L. S. Steward. It was the second veterinary clinic on campus: the original was smaller and located to the south of University Hall. The Board of Trustees voted to demolish it in 1965.

Although I am generally of the opinion that Modernist and contemporary architecture replacing earlier work is inferior in quality, or a treasure of architectural history was lost, in this case I only slightly agree. The Veterinary Clinic was rather bare and unadorned, and after 50 years it was probably way too small for the growing university.

Baker Systems History

The groundbreaking of Baker Systems c. 1966. (Buckeye Stroll)

Baker Systems was designed in 1966 by Croce and Abbot, as the “Systems Engineering Building,” in the Mid-Century Modern style. It has a reinforced concrete frame and brick exterior. Construction began that June by R. W. Setterlin & Sons Co. and concluded in August 1968. At roughly 70,000 square feet, the building cost $3,157,407.

Baker Systems, undated. (Buckeye Stroll)

The annoying thing about buildings on campus built after 1940ish is that there’s hardly any history on them. The only other bit of information I could find was that Baker Systems was the home of one of Ohio State’s SONNET hubs during the late 1980s, a system that allowed emails to be sent between computers on campus.

The Systems Engineering Building was renamed to “The David F. Baker Systems Engineering Building” in 1970, after Dr. David Baker. Baker was a World War II veteran who was the chair of the Department of Engineering from 1964 until his death in a plane crash in 1970. He established the four year undergraduate program for industrial engineering.

Baker Systems currently houses classrooms and offices, as well as the Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory.

Photos

I think Baker Systems was the first aggressively uninteresting building on campus I’ve ventured into. Aside from the basement (read on…), there was pretty much nothing of interest inside, and I was in and out in like 10 minutes. So this is gonna be a short one.

Here’s Baker Systems approaching from the southeast:

Around back, the lovely fall leaves created a nice frame to view the building through.

I’m always a sucker for the warmth of bricks in sunlight.

Here’s another metal sign like the ones that grace every mid-century building on campus. Groovy!

Heading inside, the lobby was very obviously renovated recently, but everything else is stuck in 1968 beyond a new coat of gray paint.

The first floor is classrooms. A large lecture hall is located beyond the door in the above image, whereas the others are intended for smaller classes.

The second through fourth floors are all offices. (I didn’t bother with the fifth.) Pretty much all I did was take this one picture, do a lap of the hallway to see if anything interesting was there, then go to the next floor.

I threw in the towel after a while and decided to try the basement. For whatever reason it was like three flights of stairs down, which seemed unusually deep. I peeked through the window of the door down there, and I saw brightly lit shops with nobody around. Don’t mind if I do…