William G. Kerckhoff Laboratories: Home of the Biological Sciences

The William G. Kerckhoff Laboratories of the Biological Sciences were built in 1928 to house the Institute's new biology division. Thomas Hunt Morgan, an eminent biologist at Columbia University, had been hired to head up the division, and he was deeply involved in every detail of the building's construction, from the location of rooms to the exact placement of electrical outlets. The building continued the Spanish theme of architect Bertram Goodhue's campus master plan, using cast stone carvings to represent the work that still takes place within. The west façade features a profusion of animals, fish, and plants, while the south façade's long expanse of plain wall is broken up by ornamental stairwell towers and windows decorated with crabs, seahorses, lobsters, octopi, peapods, and corn.