herr2ck: 2026

Mies Me When I’m Gone

Photos vary, from March 2024 to May 2026.

MacQuigg Lab, as it stood from its construction until very recently, was an orthodox Modern composition that was very Miesian with its expansive curtain wall and vertical beams. However, it was gutted and made up with a brand-new Contemporary face as part of the Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Complex project. This is the latest example of the rapidly changing character of north campus, shifting from dated Modernist works to new, shiny glass boxes.

MacQuigg Lab is located on north campus. It is bordered by Woodruff Avenue and Haverfield House to the north, 19th Avenue to the south, the construction site that used to be Watts Hall to the east, and Fontana Labs to the west.

MacQuigg Lab History

MacQuigg Lab nearing completion, c. 1967. (Knowlton Archives)

MacQuigg Lab was built as the “Materials Engineering and Science Building” and was conceived as an addition to the Metallurgical Engineering Building (Fontana Labs). It was designed by university architect W. E. Linch in 1965, and its construction began that May by J. J. Barnes Construction Co. MacQuigg Lab was ready for use in December 1967. With a concrete frame and brick exterior, the building was designed in the Mid-Century Modern style.

More recent photo of the south facade. (Knowlton Archives)

MacQuigg Lab’s most striking feature was its large expanses of Miesian curtain walls, a move very typical of its time. The windows were separated by sea-green spandrels, and metal mullions lined the facade vertically, which provided vertical emphasis. These have since been removed, and they have been replaced by contemporary black windows that do not achieve the same effect. I don’t really like that the renovation is doing away with the little character and whimsy that Modernist architecture could provide.

View of the late 80s glass block walls. (Knowlton Archives)

Before the current modifications to MacQuigg Lab began, a few other alterations occurred. In 1987, the originally open base was enclosed with the glass block walls seen above, likely to expand study space within the building. Additionally, the original, wide cement walkway that spanned the width of the “walk-through space” to Woodruff Avenue was reduced in size between 2007 and 2012. A similar modification was made to the rear, but it occurred much later, between 2016 and 2020.

MacQuigg Lab is currently being renovated as part of the Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Complex project. Like its original program, it is intended to be one of a set of buildings that serves the larger engineering school, as opposed to individual buildings that are more specialized. MacQuigg Lab specifically has been gutted and had much of its facade removed, and it will receive a glassy Contemporary face replacing the original windows and a new interior. This work is being done by DLR Group.

MacQuigg Lab is named after Charles MacQuigg. He was born in Ironton in 1885 and attended The Ohio State University, graduating with his degree in mechanical engineering in 1909. MacQuigg worked a few jobs after graduation, such as a civil engineer at the Santa Fe railroad, but he began teaching as head of the Metallurgy Department at Penn State between 1912 and 1917. He served in the Army afterwards, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Officers Reserve Corps. After his active service ended in 1919, he performed research at the Carbide and Carbon Co. until 1937, where he began his tenure as dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State. MacQuigg held this role until his death in 1952.

Watts Hall History

East of MacQuigg Lab, where the new addition is being constructed, used to lie an older Modernist building known as Watts Hall. It was designed as the “Chemical Abstracts Building” by Potter, Tyler, Martin, and Roth in 1954, intended for the Chemical Abstracts Service of the American Chemical Society, which provided some of the fees for its construction. The building’s construction began that October, and it was completed in 1955.

The Chemical Abstracts Building’s original appearance. (Knowlton Archives)

In 1959, the above architects designed an addition to Watts Hall that extended the building by one story. It was completed in 1961. By 1965, Chemical Abstracts moved off-campus and the building was transferred to the university. It was renovated for usage by Ceramics Engineering and to connect it to the newly constructed MacQuigg Lab.

Color photo of Watts Hall after its addition. (Knowlton Archives)

Watts Hall has its own Wikipedia article, which is unusual for a rather pedestrian building. However, it was likely due to a terrorist attack that occurred there in 2016. As students evacuated the building after a suspected fluorine leak, an attacker influenced by ISIS propaganda drove a car into the courtyard intending to strike students. He exited the vehicle and attempted to stab students. The attacker was shot and killed by police officers after refusing to drop his weapon.

Watts Hall was demolished in 2022 for the construction of the BMEC project.

Photos

Like Campbell Hall’s third installment, most of this post’s material is going to be older photos I had laying around, except for one I took today right before I left Columbus for good. As such, that makes that final picture the last one I will ever take on campus for this blog. The rest are construction progress, which is pretty unusual fare for this blog.

This view in March 2024 shows MacQuigg gutted, with its interior and Miesian windows missing:

Demolition ongoing on the east end:

A similar view in September 2024, with more of the interior exposed:

You can see the concrete floor slabs pretty well. On the east end, the elevator shafts of the addition were being poured:

This view from November 2024 shows progress on the concrete structure:

Another angle:

From the Arps Garage in January 2025 (this is when I was shooting Evans Lab):

Some steel framing for the brick veneer was up at this point.

By September 2025, the exterior was nearing completion. In the rear, all that’s missing is a few windows and some cladding:

Windows are in place:

Looks like the masons were laying brick that day:

Metal framing of the glass box thingy:

Windows on MacQuigg were mostly placed:

This building was completed in late April or early May of 2026, as I remember the south side of Woodruff being finally walkable around finals season. However, I don’t think the interior was ever open to students. I grabbed this photo literally right before I hit the road back to Illinois:

You know what? I don’t really like it. The addition doesn’t relate well to MacQuigg except through its massing, the glass box on the corner looks out of place, and MacQuigg has been stripped of whatever little character it once had.

Sources:

https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/24059

https://knowltondl.osu.edu/Browse/objects/facet/collection_facet/id/18

https://www.dlrgroup.com/firm-news/the-ohio-state-university-biomedical-materials-engineering-complex/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133531078/charles-ellison-macquigg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Ohio_State_University_attack

Campbell Hall, pt. 3 - “Home Ec”

September 2024.

Back to part 2

I never got around to finishing my coverage of Campbell Hall before graduating and leaving Columbus. (As of upload, I have left and will not be returning until I fully move out in June or July.) Despite the university saying that Campbell would be renovated and opened this May, that didn’t seem to be the case, and as of at least May 10, 2026, it was still surrounded by construction fencing and unopened. Regrettably, this final installment will just be some random photos I had floating around from September 2024.

If you want to read this building’s history, go back to part 1.

Photos

East facade mostly covered by greenery:

These windows were gutted, but the surrounding framing and everything was still intact, which looked really uncanny:

Fun fact I learned--that metal ornamentation around the windows is actually not original and is a later alteration. This surprised me, since it is still pretty Beaux-Arts in style. The original detail between the windows is this stone spandrel with grill-like vertical carvings:

I remember being pretty angry at these gross black mullionless windows awaiting installation, thinking that they were destined to be another contextless renovation to a historic building. However, these were actually installed into the Mid-Century Modern addition, and the historic facade has more period-correct replacements.

Some of the windows were actively being removed:

Sources:

N/A

Life/Blog Update 2: Electric Boogaloo

While I wouldn’t say things have been quiet, I definitely have been mass uploading over the course of like two days and going MIA after. I was also pacing things such that one major city a month was being uploaded. Even if nobody reads this besides robots on the internet, I wanted to update this blog regarding where things are at right now.

I’ll get the personal stuff out of the way first. I’m graduating in a little less than a week. Exciting, but also very sobering, and I’m really going to miss Ohio State and Columbus. I’ll be back in Illinois this summer, and my plans are going to be even more murky, since I don’t know if I’ll be able to return to my internship that I had last year. Additionally, with gas prices being what they are, I likely will not be making many road trips over the summer like I did last year. Luckily, I’ll be working my butt off on clearing out my massive queue of photos, since I’ll have more free time.

I’m going to graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in August. I have preliminary plans set up for a more cursory campus architecture survey (I am NOT going in-depth on mediocre and poorly known buildings again) and some road trips across Illinois. I’m not sure what the workload will be like just yet, however. Might share more as things gel a bit, might not.

As for the blog itself, my queue is absolutely staggering. My Columbus photo folder in my computer has something like 200 individual folders (which will each be a separate article), which is what I’m trying to get through first. I very recently finished the vast majority of photos for Columbus, and the last few are places I’ll stop by on the way to somewhere else. I have about 20-something articles completed so far, and I’ll start to upload those soon. It’s been challenging to keep up the pace, since I just had a massive final review and I’m busy with end-of-semester things. My uploading schedule may also shift to posting as soon as I finish individual articles.

I have also visited so many other cities that are also awaiting write-ups. They are:

Warren, Ohio (way back in October 2025, so that shows how far back this all goes)
Niles, Ohio
Wilmington, Ohio
Yellow Springs, Ohio
Xenia, Ohio
Lafayette, Indiana (not West Lafayette just yet, but I’ll get there eventually)
Findlay, Ohio
Bowling Green, Ohio
London, Ohio
Washington Court House, Ohio
Delaware, Ohio
Marysville, Ohio
Lancaster, Ohio
Zanesville, Ohio
Cambridge, Ohio

I did Zanesville and Cambridge today. I am 100% going to Cleveland, Cincy, and Dayton, and I’ll do my best to knock several others out. No Toledo and Akron anymore due to distance, and I’m gonna suck up my mediocre coverage of Youngstown. I’ve been prioritizing photography since I’m leaving Ohio in two weeks, and I figured I can worry about writing when I’m stuck back at home, since I can’t exactly drive eight hours to Podunkville, Ohio (county seat of Middleofnowhere County) after moving out.

Stay tuned for those Columbus uploads, and I’ll try to pick up the pace as my responsibilities slow down. As always, thanks for reading.

Toronto Trip, pt. 6 - Miscellaneous

August 2025.

Back to part 5

My final Toronto post will cover some miscellaneous places that didn’t have a neat spot in my other articles.

Toronto Skyline

I got these rather hazy photos of the skyline from a visit to the Toronto islands:

Gooderham Building [missed]

My number one destination in Toronto was the Romanesque Revival Gooderham Building. However, it was completely obscured by black netting due to renovations when I was there, to my frustration. I’ll just write about its history anyways, despite lacking photos.

The Coffin Block in 1888. (Heritage Toronto)

The site that the Gooderham Building occupies was formerly occupied by the Coffin Block, Toronto’s first flatiron building, which was built circa 1830 in the Georgian style. In 1845, it became an annex of the Wellington Hotel on Church Street.

1895 view of the building. (Wikimedia)

The Gooderham Building was designed by David Roberts Jr. for George Gooderham, who owned Toronto’s Gooderham and Worts Distillery (now the Distillery District). Upon completion in 1892, the building sported 12-foot ceilings, brass finishes, and the first manual Otis elevator in Toronto. It cost $18,000 and was the most expensive office building in Toronto at the time.

1977 photo of the exterior. (Canada Historic Places)

It served as the distillery’s headquarters until 1952 and was sold in 1957. In 1975, the building was saved from demolition and partially restored, and it was designated a heritage building that year. Further restorations occurred in 1998.

Wood Gundy Building

Historic photo of the facade. (ACO Toronto)

This Beaux-Arts heritage building has been reduced to a standing facade that is part of Scotia Plaza. It was built in 1898 as the John McKay (or Kay, my sources conflict) Store to replace an earlier headquarters building and designed by Samuel G. Curry. John McKay/Kay merged with W. A. Murray and Company in 1910, and it was later sold in 1923. The company moved to 462 Yonge Street around this time, and the building was then occupied by Wood Gundy Company, a financial firm that handled government bonds.

I like the elaborate pilasters, windows, and cornice.

Dominion Public Building

1872 engraving of the Italianate buildings on the site. (Wikimedia)

The site of the massive Dominion Public Building was occupied by warehouse-stores, which were destroyed in the Great Toronto Fire in 1904. With the demolition of the seventh custom house dating to 1876, construction on the Dominion Public Building began in 1926. It was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Thomas W. Fuller and James Henry Craig. The eastern section was completed in 1932, and the western end was finished in 1936.

1935 postcard of the building. (City of Toronto)

After its usage as a customs house ceased, the building was used for government offices. With the sale of the building in 2017, it is being converted to retail use as part of the CIBC Square development.

The building curves in plan with Front Street, kind of like the Neoclassical “circus” buildings in London. It has a simple classical expression with a repetitive facade, only interrupted by the large central portico.

One of the CIBC Square buildings rises behind:

Portico detail:

It is a pretty simple Ionic design lacking a pediment, only a denticulated cornice.

These vaulted entrances are pretty cool:

The Well

I got this random shot of this contemporary building, which has some interesting High Tech influences such as the stair tower and exposed trusses.

That’ll finally do it for Toronto. Thanks for reading!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_Block_Building

https://aviewoncities.com/toronto/flatiron-building

https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=8311

https://www.heritagetoronto.org/explore/building-toronto-map/building-toronto-gooderham-building/

https://www.acotoronto.ca/building.php?ID=3409

https://tayloronhistory.com/2014/07/01/john-kay-wood-gundy-building-toronto11-adelaide-st-w/

https://www.acotoronto.ca/building.php?ID=2307

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-86279.pdf

https://www.torontojourney416.com/dominion-public-building/

Toronto Trip, pt. 5 - King Street West

August 2025.

Continuing from my previous post on Yonge Street, we’ll jump back a bit to Yonge’s intersection with King Street. This’ll be brief, but it covers some pretty architecturally significant buildings.

One King West (Dominion Bank Building)

1879 Second Empire building that formerly stood on the site. (Wikimedia)

The Dominion Bank was chartered in 1869, and its first location opened on King Street in 1871. With the opening of its first branch a year later, it became the first Canadian bank to have two locations in one city. In 1879, the bank moved to the intersection of King Street and Yonge Street, its current location, into a Second Empire building designed by William Irving.

Historic photo of the existing building. (Wikimedia)

Dominion Bank continued to grow rapidly into the latter half of the 19th century, and in 1914 their second headquarters was completed. This 12-story skyscraper was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Darling and Pearson. They occupied the building until 1955, when they merged with the Bank of Toronto to form the Toronto-Dominion Bank. (Keep reading for the history after 1955…)

This building specifically would still house a branch of TD until 2000. It became part of the One King West residential skyscraper in 2005.

Pretty solid example of a Beaux-Arts skyscraper. The base is a dark gray ashlar with monumental vaulted windows and an entrance portico. The shaft is more subtly detailed with small pilasters and details in the spandrels. Corinthian pilasters and double-height arched windows crown the top.

North facade, with that signature three-part expression:

Detail of the entrance portico, which uses engaged Doric columns and a detailed entablature above:

Canadian Bank of Commerce Building

1895 view of the 1890 building formerly on the site. (Wikimedia)

The Canadian Bank of Commerce was founded in 1867 and originally headquartered at 59 Yonge Street. In 1890, the bank moved to its current site on King Street West into a Romanesque Revival building designed by Richard A. Waite.

Historic photo of the current building. (TorontoJourney416)

As the bank continued to grow in the early 20th century, it commissioned a larger skyscraper designed by associated architects John Pearson (of Toronto firm Darling & Pearson) and New York firm York & Sawyer. This late Beaux-Arts design was completed in 1931 and became the tallest building in the British Empire at 34 stories.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961 to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), but unlike Toronto Dominion, they still use their original building as headquarters. However, it is now part of a larger complex of International buildings completed in 1972 by Pei Cobb Freed.

I understand the exterior uses Romanesque Revival ornamentation and arches, but the building has a form more typical of Beaux-Arts architecture, and the interior (which I sadly missed) is a recreation of Roman baths.

The massive vaulted portal on King Street:

The bands of ornament are Romanesque, along with the slender columns embedded into the wall. However, the tympanum sculpture is more classical in nature.

One of the smaller vaulted windows, which seems to have its original frosted glass intact:

I liked this streamlined portal on the west facade, a pretty unorthodox move:

Toronto Dominion Centre

The banking hall under construction in 1967. (Toronto Society of Architects)

Remember how I left off halfway through the Dominion Bank Building’s history? Well, here’s where it resumes. The merger of Bank of Toronto and Dominion Bank was completed in 1962, and the bank planned to build a new headquarters building to reflect its influence. Their first choice was Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, who proposed a design with the structure exposed to the elements. The bank asked Bunshaft to reconsider, but he resigned in protest. Local architect John Parkin, who would have worked with Bunshaft, then submitted a proposal for a 100-story tower with a plaza that had a sunken courtyard and banking hall. At this point, one of the advisors suggested Mies van der Rohe, who instantly disliked Parkin’s plan. Mies was technically a consultant on the project, but he was essentially the primary designer, as it is identical to Mies’s other International-style skyscrapers.

1966 view of Bay Street. All of these buildings have been demolished except the Toronto Stock Exchange, the light gray building. (Wikimedia)

The site consists of an entire city block bordered by King Street to the north, Wellington Street to the south, Bay Street to the east, and York Street to the west. Numerous Gilded Age buildings, such as the Rossin House and Bank of Toronto’s old headquarters, were demolished for the project. Despite preservationists’ protests to save these buildings, the developers argued they would not fit in stylistically with the modern complex. Construction began in 1964 and the first completed building was the TD Bank Tower in 1967, which became the tallest building in Canada at 731 feet tall. The banking pavilion and TD North Tower were completed in 1968 and 1969. The Toronto Dominion Centre would be Mies’s last major commission before his death.

The complex was expanded after Mies’s involvement ended. The first new building outside the original three was the TD West Tower on the southwest corner of the site, completed in 1974, and the TD South Tower across Wellington Street was built in 1985. The final Miesian building on the site was 222 Bay Street, which was built around the Toronto Stock Exchange Building and completed in 1992. These were all designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects, who had worked with Mies on the original buildings.

A famous anecdote in the Toronto Dominion Centre’s history is the death of Garry Hoy. Hoy was a lawyer working on the 24th floor of the TD Bank Tower. In front of a group of visiting students, he ran into the glass window in his office to prove that it was unbreakable, a feat he had performed several times before without issue. However, this time the entire window and frame came loose from the building, and Hoy fell to his death.

The Toronto Dominion Centre was designated a heritage building in 2003, and it has since been recognized as a landmark by several other institutions.

I wish I had done these towers a little more justice. Mies is one of the best Modern architects and considered every single detail about his buildings. They characterize common ideals of both his work and Modernism as a whole--monumentality, structural honesty, massing and repetition favored over applied ornamentation, and urban plazas instead of densely packed buildings. I don't necessarily agree with these design choices or think they belong in the urban landscape, but they’re still important to architectural history.

TD North Tower:

These are the ubiquitous black boxes that Mies designed at the end of his career. At the time these buildings were completed, they dominated the skyline and were considered to be very innovative.

One-story, double-height banking hall:

It’s interesting that this is its own module instead of part of a larger building, like a Beaux-Arts banking hall would be. It does look cool, but it seems logistically difficult.

A Miesian building would never incorporate a historic building into itself. There is something almost perverse about this design in the eyes of orthodox Modernism.