10 October 2006 Good Concrete is the Most Important Part

At top, they're cutting the rebar to weave into the wall forms. In the second picture you can see why it takes so long for this part of the project. It's a lot of work! The bottom picture shows the beginning of excavation for the east elevator shaft.

06 October 2006 The Footings Are Ready

The footings are ready! (top) The second picture shows the funny plastic knobs that were put on the rebar for safety. From the air, I think they look like tennis balls, but Dr. Schmidt says they look more like map pins to him. Time to frame the forms for the walls. The framing was a very time-consuming process. The entry forms took almost 3 days to build. Because the wall was to be curved, the forms couldn't be hooked together beforehand and lifted into place the way a straight form could be prepared. All of the walls are reinforced with rebar which must be tied into place before any concrete can be poured. The third picture from the bottom shows preparation for drilling the basement hallway.

29 September 2006 Time for Concrete!

Time to pour the concrete footings! All of this was done within one morning. The bottom picture shows where the support girders will eventually be located.

27 September 2006 Digging the Trenches

The trenches will hold the footings of poured concrete, which in turn will support the walls. The top and middle picture were taken in the morning and the bottom picture was taken at the end of the same day. These guys work fast!

25 September 2006 Drawing the Footings

The location of the footings have been drawn. The lower picture around the tree shows the future location of the front entrance (in orange paint).

20 September 2006 Changing the Profile

The top two photos are from the "DMZ", where thou shalt not go without a hard hat. They show what was formerly the Botany lab and first floor hallway. The next picture shows a good cross-section of the soil gradient as they excavated for the new addition. Someone appears to have had some fun making donuts in the dirt! The 4th picture is a size reference comparing the size of the hole to the surveyor's truck parked inside the hole. The truck is a full-size extra-cab pickup truck. Below that is a picture of the building profile from the east before construction really got started. The 6th shot shows how they removed the stone from the northeastern face of the building. Last is a photo taken after the stone was removed, indicating where the elevator shaft will eventually be located.

18 September 2006 More Progress

At top (#1) is a closeup of the culprit responsible for the water main break. Luckily it didn't affect the building water supply, but it certainly made a mess for the construction crew. The second photo is a view of the "signature" Sweet Gum tree. Below that (#3) is a photo of the tree after gunnite (a very light, spray-able concrete) has been applied to the inside wall of the root ball. The gunnite is intended to support and insulate the root ball. Later (in the 4th photo), I finally gave in to curiosity and peered through the construction door for a picture, which shows the area where the first floor bathrooms and display cases were once located. Meanwhile, (5th picture) stone workers removed the stone from the eastern face of the existing building in preparation for the elevator shaft and expansion. This picture was shot through the window of the current NMR room. The bottom picture shows where excavation is progressing for the new elevator shaft. When the project is done, Stoffer will have two elevators!

14 September 2006 Uh-Oh!

Before the trees were removed, they were trimmed. It was interesting to note that there was a special attachment for the backhoe that looked a lot like a lobster claw. This attachment allowed the operator to pick up branches and carry them to the dump truck. The operator was able to pick up not only big piles of branches, but single branches as well. Some the burly construction crew helped out on the removal of the leaves and branches. It was probably too much to hope that the project could continue without mishap. There were a couple of trees that had to be removed before excavation could continue on the northeastern side of the building. Unfortunately, where once there was a tree and a water main, there was now a natural form of modern art. Over the years, the roots had wrapped so tightly around the water main that when the tree was removed, the pipe came along with it.

13 September 2006 Excavation Continues

Excavation continues in these pictures. Never afraid to learn new things, I asked one of the construction crew what the "big digging thing" was called. He told me it was called a "Trackhoe", which I translated as "backhoe on steroids". The Sweet Gum tree is the centerpiece of the project entry and has to be prepared so that it will survive as the construction proceeds around it. Whether it survives beyond the construction is the subject of much debate.

06 September 2006 Breaking Ground

Excavation for the new addition began on September 6, 2006. It was hard to focus on work because the construction was so fascinating. Having an "aerial" view from the third floor of the existing building is awesome.

The giant chunk of concrete was pulled from the foundation area between the existing building and the lecture hall. The construction crew tried to break it up with jackhammers, but were unsuccessful. They tried several ways to move it, including "rolling" it over and over with a backhoe, (THUD! THUD! THUD!) but it wouldn't move very far. In the end, they used the giant crane which made short work of moving it away. The dump trucks were not able to handle the size and weight of the chunk, so they had to get a huge flat-bed truck to carry it away. You can see how big the chunk was by comparing it to the Bobcat in the picture.

05 September 2006 Getting Ready

Planning and preparations had been going on for at least a year before actual construction began on the Stoffer Addition and Renovation Project. The first order of business was to remove all of the scraggly vegetation and relocate the HVAC system to the south side of the building. (They had to wait for a day of triple-digit temperatures before they could do this, naturally--we baked!). Next came a thorough hydrocleaning, which really made an astonishing difference. Mmmmmmm---clean science is good.

What The Tornado Saw When It Came To Washburn

These are aerial views of campus before (top) and after (bottom) the tornado struck in 1966. It's sadly obvious why some of the buildings couldn't be saved.
Notice in the top photo that the western wing which exists today on Morgan Hall has not yet been added and that KTWU has not yet been built. Although the whole block owned by the university can be seen, the campus has grown and changed drastically since these pictures were taken.

photos courtesy of Mabee Library Archives

Life Goes On

As the community emerged from the shock after the 1966 tornado, the recovery process began. Repairs commenced. The dome was returned to cover the observatory, mangled trees were trimmed, and classes resumed in the fall with the assistance of temporary trailers (top photo). Noticeably missing in the picture is Rice Hall, which used to be just south of Stoffer.

The second photo shows Stoffer Hall in the spring of 1967, when the trees were beginning to recover. The greenhouse currently located by the southern entry was constructed at a later date. MacVicar Chapel, previously located to the west of Stoffer Hall, is conspicuously absent, having been destroyed by the tornado along with Rice Hall.

In the lower picture is a winter view of Stoffer Hall from the west with the city as a backdrop. Little evidence remains of the devastation visited upon the campus by the tornado. Today, the U-shaped parking lot and Bennett Hall are located in the area near where MacVicar chapel used to stand. And forty years later, the three small pine trees planted near the west entry of Stoffer after the tornado are now grown tall.

photos courtesy of Mabee Library Archives

Stoffer and the Tornado of 1966

A tornado, reportedly the equivalent of an F5, struck in 1966 and devastated the campus. Several buildings were so badly damaged that they couldn't be saved. The most common pictures of the damage sustained by Stoffer Science Hall depict the southern view of the building. Although the damage portrayed on the southern side is considerable, few people are aware that the worst damage was on the northern side of the building.

At top is the damaged north side of the building. Few windows are left intact. This photo is a testament of a tornado of such power that even after having traversed several miles and demolishing multiple campus buildings, it still had the strength left to lift and remove the observatory dome.

The northwest damage can be seen (second from top) in this picture taken from the driveway into the Morgan Hall front parking lot. It appears almost like the tornado, as an afterthought, gave the building a parting shot. The western-most lecture hall, ST101, was nearly destroyed, although the other lecture hall appears to have escaped major damage. The three lower pictures show the extent of the destruction from three different angles: the western entry, the north side and from inside the lobby.

All photos by Mike Worsick, courtesy of Mabee Library Archives.