Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-86
BALTIMORE: Well, he was a member of the Board of Trustees, so I’d met him, but I got to know
him better through trying to interest him in building what became the Broad building [the Broad
Center for the Biological Sciences]. You know, there were a lot of fits and starts in that before
we found the right path and the right level of interest. But we built the building.
LIPPINCOTT: The architecture’s very unlike what it’s next to.
BALTIMORE: Right.
LIPPINCOTT: It looks a little like MIT. [Laughter]
BALTIMORE: No, no, no. MIT at that point had, actually, terrible architecture.
LIPPINCOTT: Now it has some very funny-looking thing by [Frank] Gehry.
BALTIMORE: Well, now it does, but it didn’t then. You’re obviously not a lover of
contemporary architecture. [Laughter]
So Eli said to me, in our final negotiation over his funding the building, “One of the
requirements is that we get a notable architect.” And I said, “That’s fine; I think that’s what the
campus needs anyway.” The campus had great architecture until the 1950s, and then almost
everything built after that is just functional—or eclectic, like the Beckman Auditorium.
LIPPINCOTT: Oh, yes—that’s awful, I think.
BALTIMORE: Well, it was Edward Durell Stone, who was the last great architect—but Stone at
that point was very influenced by, and had just been to, Morocco, so he built us a little Moroccan
temple. It’s an odd thing to have on our campus. And then we had the big buildings—well,
Millikan Library, which everybody dislikes and which was sort of foisted on us by the donor—
and then the big buildings that flank the court.... [Pause]
LIPPINCOTT: It’s called the Court of Man.