Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-87
BALTIMORE: Yes, it’s called the Court of Man, for some reason. Which are big and sort of—
just wrong. [Laughter] But anyway, they do the job, and the space is terrific, and we get a lot of
work done. But if you look at the engineering buildings—Keck [W. M. Keck Engineering
Laboratories] and Spalding[ Eudora Hull Spalding Laboratory of Engineering]—they’re all very
uninspired buildings, and certainly uninspired by the history of Caltech architecture as well as by
the contemporary trends of architecture. There was an attempt to go back to build in the style of
the original, of [Bertram] Goodhue and [Myron] Hunt, and, actually, I inherited a master plan
which explicitly said we would do that. And the first building that was built according to that
plan—which I had nothing to do with—was the one that Gordon Moore supported, the Moore
building [the Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory of Engineering]. The Moore building has, in
the front of it, an arcade, very much reflecting the arcade that is in the courtyard between the
biology and the physics buildings. So I said, “Look, from my point of view, that’s the wrong
thing to do. You don’t try to go back and re-create history. Architecture is a moving influence,
and if you want to get good architecture, you’ve got to move with the influence of the
contemporary architects. And if you want to get throwbacks, well, you can build them, and there
they are, and they’ll do the job. But in that particular case— You know, the arcades are the
most wasteful thing you can imagine, in terms of space utilization. The same thing is true—
although it’s a building I really like—of Avery House. So I said, “It is time to break with this,”
and I had to convince people, and I had to convince the Pasadena City Council. They had an
architecture group we had to convince, and I had to appear before them personally and argue for
the building, but I was able to get them—
LIPPINCOTT: Did you choose the architect
BALTIMORE: Well, I was involved in choosing the architect, along with a trustee committee that
Eli was centrally involved in. It had to be somebody Eli would appreciate. And I don’t think,
from a donor’s viewpoint, that’s a bad requirement—particularly somebody like Eli, who’s very
aware of the currents in contemporary architecture and really loves architecture. I will never
forget the session we had in which we interviewed four or five of the world’s great architects and
finally chose Jim Freed to do the building.
LIPPINCOTT: Who else did you interview