The mounting sentiment to save Shanklin Laboratory (“’Shanklinistas’ unite: Students question building’s demolishment,” Feb. 22, vol. CXLIII, no. 31) is right on target. The architects were America’s most famous firm ever, McKim, Mead & White. Among other notable monuments, they were the architects of New York’s Pennsylvania Station, finished in 1910 and regarded as one of the greatest architectural achievements of all time.
Destroying Shanklin Lab, a large and handsome structure in the neo-Georgian style built just 18 years later, would be an embarrassing footnote to the tragic demolition of Penn Station in the early 1960s. Sam Greene, Wesleyan’s late distinguished professor of architectural history, was proud of Wesleyan’s cluster of consistently styled McKim, Mead & White buildings setting off the splendid Olin Library, and I doubt he would have been in favor of tearing down Shanklin. If the present architects cannot find a reasonable way to reuse the building, I’m sure others could.
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