The Two Towers: Main

The department of Economics was planning a Centennial-year conference focused on the problem of water, thus for the first time uniting Political Science, the engineering departments, and the Hydraulic Laboratory.

Donald Zwiep, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, under whose direction the laboratory was operated, made known his intention to increase its value as an educational facility on both graduate and undergraduate levels. "The real reason for its present and future existence," he said, "is the laboratory's contribution to the total educational program at Tech."

As early as 1940 Kenneth Merriam, who had been chairman of the W.P.I. Research Committee, had suggested that an experimental station be established at the Alden Laboratory, and many persons were later to contemplate such a development with enthusiasm. Professors Hooper and Neale planned for the day when, from a facade at the street, the facilities would sweep down past the pond, past the Susquehanna model on one side, the Niagara Falls power project on the other, to the tree-lined valley, where Tech's advance guard of research might ideally find its station. But while potential and planning were making their own homogeneity, the laboratory continued its own hydraulic experimentation in the sylvan setting where the never-ending sound of running water told and retold the laboratory's colorful story. In the plans for a new building there was provision for Diesel pumps. " 'Prof' Allen wouldn't like it," says Professor Hooper. "He didn't like tired water."

Worcester Tech's expansion was circumscribed only by inadequate funds.

No matter how he arranged the statistics in his comprehensive and frequent reports of "The Money Behind W.P.I.," David Lloyd, the business manager, never could list a reserve as big as his wish. There was, however, much more money than ever before, thanks largely to his own insistence that financial management not succumb to glamorous but transitory inducements. "Our growth has been steady and sound and will continue to be so," he stated firmly. The words somehow gave the same solid feeling as having money in the bank.

A fifty-per-cent increase of staff in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering was being added in the same careful way as each of the four floors was placed in the department's new building on West Street. This structure, deliberately designed for the future as well as for the present, recognized the unusual alliance of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, so alike yet so different, by providing separate wings for each division and a common center where they might meet in administrative and correlated functions.

Meanwhile, the Salisbury Building was flexing its tired partitions in anticipation of another change-over--this time to house the humanities and social studies. Boynton Hall, with its granite steps hollowed by a century of travel, one spiral staircase still securely