herr2ck: Jupiter

November 2024.

Caldwell Laboratory (Lab for brevity from here on out) is mostly uninteresting, but I LOVE the relief of a fist holding three lightning bolts over the main entrance. It’s very Aperture Science-y and harkens back to a time of atomic age scientific progress. The design reminds me of Jupiter, the chief god of the Greco-Roman pantheon and the god of electricity. Modernism is not only a style of architecture--it is also a term for a larger philosophical movement, where we were believed to have a “theory of everything” and bear great power over the world (which, similar to architecture, the later Postmodern movement rejected and postulated that we do not and cannot know it all). Although Modernism’s attempts to create utopia and social change through architecture are generally looked back upon as foolish (hindsight is 20/20), I do genuinely believe that most architects of the time generally had good intentions, and it was often the systems and government meant to maintain their works that failed them.

Caldwell Lab is located on north campus, bordered by Bolz Hall to the north, the Journalism Building to the south, Scott Lab to the east, and Dreese Lab to the west. Unfortunately, I was only able to find one historic photo of Caldwell Lab by itself for this post.

History

An undated photo of Caldwell Lab after its second addition. (ECE Alumni Society)

Caldwell Lab was designed in 1949 by the firm Sims, Cornelius, and Schooley (now Schooley Caldwell) as the “Electrical Engineering Building.” Designed in the Mid-Century Modern style, it has both a reinforced concrete and steel frame and a brick exterior. Contracts were awarded that May, and construction finished by autumn 1950.

The Electrical Engineering Building’s original footprint.

An addition was designed in 1957 by Bellman, Gillett, and Richards, and was built in conjunction with Bolz Hall. It added two wings onto the northeast and southeast side of the building. The first addition was fully completed in December 1959.

Caldwell Lab after its first addition.

Caldwell Lab (far right), as it appeared after its second addition. (Buckeye Stroll)

A second addition was designed in 1964 by Tully and Hobbs, which added a third floor to the southeast wing and filled in the space between the two. Construction began that October and the space was released for use on August 18, 1965. After this addition, Caldwell Lab’s cost was $1.3 million, and it has about 65,000 square feet of space.

Caldwell Lab’s current footprint.

Professor Caldwell, undated. (ECE Alumni Society)

The Electrical Engineering Building was renamed to “Caldwell Laboratory” in 1958, after Frank Caldwell. Caldwell began his tenure as an assistant professor teaching physics in 1893 before switching departments to electrical engineering in 1897. In 1903, he became the first chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, a position which he held until his retirement in 1930. (He was succeeded by Erwin Dreese.) Outside of Ohio State, he apparently worked on the lighting of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and was appointed to the Ohio Committee on Motor Vehicle Lighting Legislation.

Photos

Nothing crazy special going on here, just run-of-the-mill north campus Modernism.

The original building’s western facade:

The thing that defines Caldwell Lab, as you will come to see, is a series of odd design choices that make sense within the zeitgeist of Modernism but are not seen on other campus buildings from that era. The first and most obvious is this sheet metal curtain wall on the north side, which is original to the building:

A more orthodox approach to this idea is Denney Hall, which takes on a more Miesian approach to the curtain wall with subdivided bays beneath each window mullion. Here, if you squint your eyes, the whole thing looks like one massive plane of metal.

The entrance is almost classical (albeit more Art Deco abstracted)--fluted pilasters, column capital-esque carvings, and the central relief:

Loading dock:

Around back, the windows get much bigger:

This shot of the penthouse came out really well completely on accident:

Here’s a normal Caldwell hallway on the first floor, which is classrooms:

A little blurry, but this is weird--earth tones in a 1950 building? I thought the mid-century era was all baby blue, pink, and pea green.

Going down to the basement, I saw these two sights: a locked red door and an old-looking cart.

The second floor is…grayer…

It holds TA offices. Once I got up to the second floor and began wandering more, I started to get lost…this building is such a maze in plan. The additions and no windows really make it almost Backrooms-esque.

The third floor holds all sorts of fun labs, like the “Transportation Systems Lab” and the “Electronic Materials and Nanostructures Lab.” I saw these ominous sign on one near the stairwell:

For whatever reason, pretty much every surface in Caldwell was millennial gray-ified except the northeast stairwell. This original light fixture clings to life on the crumbling ceiling:

The closest I’ve been yet to actually roofing a campus building, on the fourth floor right by the stairs:

The fourth floor is faculty offices:

Hanging on the wall by the northwest staircase is this cool print of the original Caldwell Lab building, which I unfortunately cannot find anywhere online.

I have some bonus pictures from almost a year later (September 2025) when a “suspicious device” prompted the evacuation of Caldwell and sent in the bomb squad. Said device was some moron’s class project. The north side had caution tape up and a cop car blocking the road: