MIT, building 10

Photo 36, Apr 2012

MIT, Great Dome of building 10, from MA Ave. bridge

The Great Dome, which sits atop Building 10 and is featured in most publicity shots, is modeled on McKim, Mead, and White's Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, which is in turn an imitation of the Pantheon in Rome. The Dome was originally planned to be a cavernous assembly hall but budget limitations threatened to prevent construction of the Dome altogether. A smaller library (now the Barker Engineering Library) and lecture hall (10-250) instead replaced the volume. Jarzombek describes the library as a "capacious oculus [admitting] light into its center, and its perimeter surrounded by a row of Corinthian columns. Four curved topped aedicules [add] a counter-punctual element. More baroque in flavor that what one normally might have expected from Bosworth, the building seems in fact to be an inside-out quotation from Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral.

Photo 155, Sept 2010