60 i^ 100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



Old Main even people in the separate thin-WcJled rooms upstairs knew what 

 the others were doing. Now researchers have more privacy, enough that 

 they may never even see or meet each other. More people, vvdth their special 

 needs and interests, have brought changes. 



The separation does have advantages in our increasingly specialized 

 world, which demands continued output and progress of its students — not 

 that those early leading researchers did not produce as much and as high 

 quality work as any competitor today. Working together in one lab can bring 

 inconveniences such as noise and lack of privacy. University of North 

 Carolina embiyologist Donald Costello reported that when he had worked 

 at the MBL when M. H. Jacobs was director, he caused problems with the 

 noise from his centrifuge. Jacobs felt that eight linear feet of counter space 

 should be enough research space for anyone. Costello found himself in a 

 room with twenty-six other researchers, though his own eight linear feet did 

 not actually connect with anyone else's. His work required centrifuging, and 

 the typical centrifuge of the day put out a terrific racket. Since he ran it for 

 up to twelve hours a day, nonstop, the noise drove him a little cra2y. He 

 would go out to sit by the waterfront and recuperate, but not all of his 

 labmates could do the same, as some were engrossed in projects that 

 demanded their constant attention. Costello asked Jacobs to give him a 

 separate place for at least his centrifuge in order to spare the others; but the 

 director responded that no one should object to the sounds of science. Only 

 investigators with significantly more research stature were entitled to pri- 

 vate work space in those close quarters. In fact, considerable effort went 

 into planning whose laboratory space would be where in the building. 



When Old Main went down, reportedly because its old wooden struc- 

 ture no longer met fire codes, many people mourned its demise. "Can't we 

 spray it with something?" supporters asked. With a grant obtained to 

 construct a new building and inspectors' reports militating against remod- 

 eling, the old building fell. Pieces of its familiar shingles reside among family 

 treasures in many Woods Hole cottages. Old Main was a place for everyone 

 to know what everyone else was doing. It began in 1888 as one 63-by-28-foot 

 two-story ft^ame building, erected at a total cost of $1,600, on land costing 

 $1,300 for a 78-by- 120-foot lot. Whitman then added another section in 1890, 

 and another in 1892. The total reportedly cost about $3,000 and, as Costello 

 suggested, with that initial investment 'probably more significant scien- 

 tific work was done than has ever been done in any $3 million building 

 ever created since." That building, one might reasonably claim, trained 

 the first generation of American experimental biologists. 



Otlier sepai'ate wooden buildings of tlie same unassuming style fol- 

 lowed thereafter, with an alarming regvilarity tliat tlireatened the ti'ustees' 

 sense of economic well-being. Certainly, tlie MBL did continue to attract 

 more £ind more people each year, but that might be only a temporaiy 



