herr2ck: Sawtooth

September 2025.

McPherson Lab, along with Hale Hall, is one of the most extensively modified buildings on Ohio State’s campus. It has received nine additions to date, only two of which stand today, and the original portion has been demolished. McPherson Lab is located on north campus, bordered by Fontana Labs to the north, Denney Hall to the south, and Smith Lab to the west, and it is attached to Celeste Lab to the east.

History

An aerial view of McPherson Lab from 1947. I couldn’t find any earlier photos that showed the original sawtooth portion. (Buckeye Stroll)

The original building that became McPherson Lab was designed as the “Chemistry Building Addition,” meant to serve as an annex to Derby Hall, which was Ohio State’s chemistry building until 1928. It was a single-story steel-framed laboratory with a sawtooth roof. The building was designed in 1919 by university architect Joseph N. Bradford, and after some bungling with the budget and size, construction began in May 1921. Its use began in fall 1922. A 1981 newspaper article claims that it was built as a temporary building.

The Chemistry Building Addition’s original layout.

The first addition, which was of the same design and construction style, was designed immediately afterwards by Bradford in 1923. Its construction began that July and was completed by the fall of 1924.

The building’s footprint after its first addition.

Historic photo of the second and third additions to McPherson Lab. (Knowlton Archives)

The second addition is the oldest extant part of the building today. It was also designed by Bradford in 1927, and its construction began in April. This part of McPherson Lab has a concrete frame clad in brick, and it was designed in the Stripped Classical style. The second addition was built as the new Chemistry Building, replacing Derby Hall. Its construction began in April 1927, and it was accepted by the Board of Trustees in June 1928.

The third addition was built at a similar time and matches the appearance of the second. It was again designed by Joseph N. Bradford in December 1927. Its construction began in May 1928 and was completed around March 1930, but the building was being occupied beforehand.

The new Chemistry Building’s footprint after its west additions.

Interior of the sawtooth portion of McPherson Lab. (Knowlton Archives)

The subsequent additions were all very small, and as such I’ll quickly describe them before continuing with the building’s history. Additionally, John Herrick’s report is inconsistent about which unit did what (he confuses the fifth with the sixth repeatedly and vice versa), so take this with a grain of salt. The fourth addition was attached to the second, and it served as a receiving room with an elevator to an underground storage room. It was built in 1929 and was opened in 1930. The fifth addition was a small structure added to the east end of the sawtooth portion as a laboratory. It was designed by university architect Howard Dwight Smith and was built by the WPA in 1938. The sixth was a two-story addition built in 1939, which was used for petroleum research and paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The seventh sat between the fifth and sixth, and its date of construction is unknown. The eighth was a two-story addition with a penthouse for storing equipment, designed by Howard Dwight Smith in 1948. Finally, the ninth was a small trash room. With all of these modifications, McPherson Lab had around 126,000 square feet of space.

McPherson Lab at its largest extent.

The fifth addition (WPA Laboratory), and likely the seventh addition (mystery addition) were demolished for the construction of Evans Lab starting in 1958, which was attached to the east side of McPherson Lab.

McPherson Lab after the construction of Evans Lab.

By 1977, McPherson was perceived as an aging building that was becoming a safety hazard. Many of its systems were worn out, its plumbing and electrical was found to be not up to code in 1974, and even the plaster and concrete were cracking off. Chemistry faculty claimed that the laboratory wing was poorly designed and aging even while new--one professor said that when he arrived in the 1930s, it was already in poor condition and planned to be replaced. A major design flaw was the expansive sawtooth roof, which allowed fumes to accumulate and created smog on hot days. The chemical drainage system was just an open trough running across the floors and hallways. These conditions limited what experiments students could perform, as certain chemicals were simply too dangerous to use in such a poorly equipped laboratory.

After much effort (decades) to seek state funding, Ohio governor James Rhodes signed a bill providing $16 million for the construction of a new chemistry lab. In 1983, the remaining sawtooth portions of McPherson Lab and the attached additions were demolished for the construction of Celeste Lab. This brought the building to its current square footage of 65,000. It received an extensive renovation in 1999, and it received new modern windows before 2011. McPherson Lab is scheduled for long-term renovation, according to Framework 3.0.

McPherson Lab’s footprint today.

McPherson Lab is named after William McPherson (1864 or 1865-1951). McPherson was an alumnus of Ohio State, receiving three degrees in chemistry. After graduating with his doctorate, he became a professor at Ohio State and organized the Graduate School in 1911, serving as the dean until 1937. He served in World War I as a lieutenant colonel in the Chemical Warfare Service. McPherson also became acting president of the university twice--after the retirement of William Oxley Thompson and George Rightmire. He retired in 1938.

Photos

I started at the northwestern corner of McPherson Lab:

The middle, which shows the fenestration across the building:

I don’t like the new black windows. They are inappropriate to the building’s character and not historically accurate. I do like the little pediment-looking vents on the roof, though.

One of the entrances and the two bays surrounding:

Spandrel detail:

Each entrance is pedimented in the classical manner, but subtly and abstract.

I like the little sunburst/floral design on the capitals:

Pediment detail:

Note the carvings across the frieze--these are symbols of the planets in the solar system. The leftmost and rightmost designs are the Sun. Proceeding from left is Venus (female sign, possibly represents the hand mirror of Venus, goddess of beauty), Jupiter (hieroglyph of “eagle”), Saturn (scythe/sickle representing the god of time), the Moon (crescent), Mercury (represents the head and winged cap of the god Mercury), and Mars (male sign, possibly depicts the shield and spear of Mars, the god of war).

The typical “scarlet sign” is gray here:

McPherson does a lot of similar things as Smith Lab--I wonder if Howard Dwight Smith responded to it with his later design.

I love when sunlight hits building facades like this.

Slightly obscured by foliage, but here’s the entire facade from 18th Avenue:

The cornice and courses are restrained, but they’re there:

The south facade is similar to the west, just shorter.

The west side is under construction at the moment, so I had to skirt around the construction fence for these photos of the east facade. You can see how it makes a sort of C-shape in plan here:

This pedimented entrance appears more recent and Postmodern. It’s very similar to the entrance of Newman and Wolfrom Lab immediately eastward.

Projecting wing:

The central module--I wonder why the leftmost and rightmost windows lack the stone trim:

I really need to invest in a lens hood…I feel like glare is always an issue when shooting into the sun.

Mishmash of various eras of construction here:

The north counterpart:

Again, the north facade is identical to the south one.

The interior of McPherson has been heavily altered and perhaps even gut-renovated at some point. Here is the first floor, which had all the classroom doors open for some reason: