{"id":1680,"date":"2008-01-16T17:34:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T22:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2014-12-16T17:34:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T22:34:52","slug":"first-maryland-hall-gem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2008\/01\/first-maryland-hall-gem\/","title":{"rendered":"First or Not, Maryland Hall a Gem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"maryland<\/a>
The Mechanical and Electrical Engineering building, shown during construction in 1914, would be named Maryland Hall in 1931 in appreciation of the state\u2019s contribution to establishing Engineering at Hopkins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the beginning, there was Gilman Hall\u2014or was it Maryland Hall? History grants Gilman Hall status as Homewood campus\u2019s first academic building, but there exists some speculation as to which building actually first welcomed students.<\/p>\n

There is no debate, however, as to Maryland Hall\u2019s role in putting the School of Engineering on the map.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s origins trace back to 1912, when the Maryland State Legislature passed the \u201cTechnical School Bill\u201d that made it possible for Johns Hopkins to establish the Department of Applied Science and Advanced Technology, the precursor to the School of Engineering. The state of Maryland that same year agreed to pay for the construction of two engineering-specific buildings at the university\u2019s new Homewood campus.<\/p>\n

Construction on Homewood\u2019s first two academic buildings, the Mechanical and Engineering Building (later renamed Maryland Hall to honor the state\u2019s role in establishing the Whiting School) and Gilman Hall, began in 1913. The Mechanical and Engineering Building was completed in 1914.<\/p>\n

Joseph Evans Sperry designed the building, which cost roughly $285,000\u2014a bargain when you consider the price tag of its new neighbor, the recently completed Computational Science and Engineering building: $37 million.<\/p>\n

Not to say that Maryland Hall was not state-of-the-art for its day. It contained classrooms and labs equipped for experiments in photometry, high-voltage electrolysis, wireless telegraphy, fuel analysis, refrigeration, materials testing, and a range of other uses.<\/p>\n

In the June 1914 edition of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, C.C. Thomas, a professor of mechanical engineering, wrote that the new building was designed not just for undergraduate instruction in engineering, but the \u201cinvestigation of problems fundamental to the industries and to the advancement of engineering knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main portion of the original building had three floors, an attic, and a one-story structure at its rear called Machinery Hall. The hall, in use through the 1950s, was 200 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 24 feet high. It featured a traveling crane for the handling of heavy machinery and an electrical switchboard that controlled all the space\u2019s functions and \u201cexperimental circuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major General George W. Goethals, a civil engineer who famously supervised construction of the Panama Canal, gave the keynote address at the building\u2019s dedication ceremony on May 21, 1915. The university dedicated Gilman Hall on the same day, but by some accounts Maryland Hall was finished and occupied first, according to university archivist James Stimpert.<\/p>\n

So why is Gilman regarded as the first building? Stimpert has a theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps this was because Gilman housed the School of Arts and Sciences, which had been around since 1876, while engineering was the new kid on the block and had no history, yet,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe there was also some resistance to engineering on the part of some Arts and Sciences faculty, who feared that the School of Engineering would be a trade school rather than an academic division and would, therefore, lessen Hopkins\u2019 prestige.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the beginning, there was Gilman Hall\u2014or was it Maryland Hall? History grants Gilman Hall status as Homewood campus\u2019s first academic building, but there exists some speculation as to which building actually first welcomed students. There is no debate, however, as to Maryland Hall\u2019s role in putting the School of Engineering on the map. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-development","issue-winter-2008"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFirst or Not, Maryland Hall a Gem - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2008\/01\/first-maryland-hall-gem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"First or Not, Maryland Hall a Gem - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the beginning, there was Gilman Hall\u2014or was it Maryland Hall? 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