Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

THE NEW BUREAU LABORATORIES 71
Chase, the small Maryland community on the border of the District of Colum-
bia, there were but two buildings, occupied by a preparatory school. The
Bureau up on the hill was invisible from the avenue, and these lone school
buildings, just north of what is now Upton Street, served to show staffers
and strangers alike on the way to the laboratories where to leave the electric
cars.4°
The mechanical building was above ground but excavation for the
physical laboratory had not begun when Dr. Rosa, with the architect's plans
before him, described for Science magazine the Bureau plant as it would
appear when completed. Both buildings were to be constructed of dark red
brick with Indiana limestone trim, the smaller mechanical laboratory two
stories tall but with its basement at ground level on the north slope of the
hill. The physical laboratory, four stories tall, would be supported solidly
on concrete piers in a largely unexcavated basement.
Since the principal experimental work of the Bureau was to be car-
ried on in the physical laboratory, later called South building, it had to be
free from mechanical and magnetic disturbances and therefore housed
scarcely any machinery. All heavy equipment was located in the mechani-
cal laboratory or North building, its basement and partial sub.basement
taming the boiler room, engine and dynamo room, storage battery room,
and a refrigeration plant with a capacity equivalent to melting 30 tons of
ice a phenomenal for that time. Through a spacious tunnel 170 feet
long leading out of North building's sub-basement, a maze of air ducts, steam,
gas, and water pipes, and electrical circuits supplied the major facilities of
the laboratories in South building.
On the first floor of North building were the heavy current and alter-
nating-current instrument testing laboratories, the instrument shop, and stock
and shipping rooms. High potential laboratories and magnetic and photo.
metric laboratories occupied the second floor, with a proposed hydraulic
laboratory on that floor extending through the ceiling into the attic. Another
photometric laboratory and storage rooms occupied the other half of the
attic. With its heating and ventilating plants, machinery, and special facili.
ties, North building was to cost $125,000. Additional laboratory space
was created in 1931 when the roof was raised and a third story added to the
building.41
In the huge physical building, facing south overlooking the city of
Washington, all the laboratories were to be provided with gas, compressed
air, vacuum, hot and cold water, ice water, and distilled water. All windows
'° MS, Dorsey, "Some memories of the early days."
41 Ostensibly added to make North building conform architecturally with the other build-
ings in the quadrangle. NBS Annual Report 1928, p. 42.