DESCRIPTION OF LABORATORIES 7 
the gift of God. All our city can do toward obtaining it, be our richness and willingness a 
thousand-fold what they are, is to ensure the rare and glorious plant a meed of freedom, light and 
warmth, for blossoming upon our soil. Few of us are such pessimists as to doubt that in so vast 
a population as ours here genius exists — not sown, it is true, broadcast, for nowhere is it thus — yet 
existent, scattered up and down. It is for this community to foster, to discover. By help of the 
good gift that Mr. Thompson Yates has given in these finely-built and finished Laboratories this 
much in one direction can be done. The problem to which a wise State turns is the discovery 
less of things than men. By these Laboratories, if adequately supported — and this, at present, they 
are not — our community can create opportunity for the exercise of powers which come from 
sources within itself, but are utterly beyond its power to produce at will. Their loftiest function 
is creation of this opportunity. For that aim the studies in them must be followed witli no one 
single technical purpose, but must be wide of scope and full of access to all kinds of students, man 
and woman alike, and suited to a score of technical ends. Within the walls of the Thompson 
Yates Laboratories must be fostered and grow up no single-faculty school, but a University school. 
So shall they prove a cornerstone for the up-building of many crafts, and a touchstone for the best 
ore of intellect within this city's bounds. Hac otia stud'ia fovent. 
The Thompson Yates Laboratories 
By the Architects 
The Thompson Yates Laboratories occupy a position on the north side of the University 
College site, and on the edge of the Old Quarry. Owing to the nature of the ground, considerable 
difficulties, involving both time and expense, were experienced in obtaining a secure foundation ; 
and a portion of the building stands upon concrete piers, average 35 feet in depth, below floor of 
basement — the basement floor being 12 feet below grovmd floor. 
The buildings are L-shaped in plan, and may be described generally as an oblong block 
104 ft. by 44 ft., out of which extends on the north side another oblong block measuring 75 ft. 
by 30 ft. Simplicity has been the aim of the plan. The staircase, of quadrant form, finds its 
place naturally at the intersection of the two arms of the structure, and from its landings access is 
obtained (with little or no expenditure of space corridors) to the various Laboratories, large and 
small, of which the building is composed. In bringing together a collection of apartments, some 
of which are to accommodate large numbers of workers, while others are the private studies of 
individuals, it naturally results that some of the rooms need to be lofty, but that in others a high 
ceiling would mean waste of space. It will therefore be found that a free use has been made 
of the expedient of mezzanines. The great rooms of the ground floor, the laboratories of 
Bacteriology, Morbid Histology, Experimental Pathology, Pathological Chemistry, &c., are no less 
than 17 ft. high ; but the smaller rooms of the same floor, devoted to the Demonstrator and to 
Photography, are low enough to allow of a good deal of useful accommodation being inserted 
between their ceilings and the first floor proper. Between the first floor and the second the same 
device is repeated, l^he first floor is mainly occupied by a Lecture Theatre, by two large 
