printable versionLet's get ready to rumble—Fairchild Auditorium being prepped for demolition
BY MADOLYN BOWMAN ROGERS
Fairchild Auditorium, which has served as the site for lectures, courses, symposia and many events including the annual Match Day ceremony for medical students, will be demolished to make way for a new building.
The landscape of the School of Medicine is about to change. After more than 30 years of use, Fairchild Auditorium and its attached bridges will be demolished to make way for the school's new Learning and Knowledge Center.
The auditorium was closed earlier this month in preparation for demolition. Courtyard walls will come down the week of Oct. 22, said project manager Maggie Saunders. The auditorium itself will be dismantled in November, around the same time as the bridge between Fairchild Science Building and the Lane and Alway buildings. The Fairchild-Beckman bridge will be removed during the winter break.
Faculty, staff and students interested in learning about the school's construction plans are invited to a community meeting at 1 p.m. Oct. 29 in the Clark Center auditorium, Saunders said.
Fairchild Auditorium will be replaced by the state-of-the-art Learning and Knowledge Center; construction is scheduled to begin in early 2008. The LKC facility will include classrooms, simulation-based learning centers, a conference center, student facilities and the dean's suite of offices.
The LKC will also include a large meeting venue; in the interim, events that typically took place in Fairchild Auditorium are being moved to other campus venues, such as the auditoriums of the Clark Center, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the Chemistry Building and the Beckman Center.
Fairchild Auditorium was completed in 1976 as part of the Sherman Fairchild Center, which includes the adjacent Fairchild Science Building. Approved by former dean Clayton Rich during a period of rapid expansion at the medical school, the complex was originally conceived as the Sherman Fairchild Center for the Neurosciences, according to school archives. The center, designed by the architectural firm of Stone, Marraccini and Patterson, was funded by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation at a total cost of around $10 million.
The Fairchild Science Building housed the newly created departments of neurobiology and structural biology when it opened in October 1976. The auditorium, a one-story building of about 10,600 sq. ft, had seating for almost 400 and opened in November 1976. The center's dedication ceremony on March 12, 1977, featured speeches by many prominent Stanford scientists, including Hugh McDevitt, Lubert Stryer, Eric Shooter, Arthur Kornberg and David Hamberg.
Since its inception, the auditorium has been an integral part of campus and community life. It has been the site not only for lectures, courses, conferences and symposia, but also for receptions, poster sessions, town hall meetings, fairs and graduations. Each spring, graduating medical students have gathered in the auditorium's lobby area for the annual Match Day ceremony.
Artwork from the auditorium will go to Lane Library and the LKC, Saunders said. The sculpture that was located in the auditorium lobby will be displayed in the dean's courtyard of the Alway Building.
Madolyn Bowman Rogers is a science-writing intern in the medical school's Office of Communication & Public Affairs.