Evans Hall (UC Berkeley)
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Evans Hall is the
statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
,
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
, and
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
building on the
campus of the University of California, Berkeley The campus of the University of California, Berkeley and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th-century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck (best known for the San Francisco Pala ...
.


Computer History importance

Evans Hall also served as the gateway for the entire west coast's
ARPAnet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
access during the early stages of the Internet's existence; at the time, the backbone was a 56kbit/s line to Chicago. Because of its proximity to the engineering school, and the location of both the departments of Computer Science, and Mathematics, Evans Hall was the building in which the original vi text editor was programmed, as well as the birthplace of Berkeley Unix (BSD), and Rogue, which was further developed there by Glenn C Wickman, and Michael Toy. Rogue's origins included the
curses A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, ...
library, which Rogue was originally written to test. Additionally, both
Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...
and
Postgres PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
were originally coded in Evans, under Prof.
Michael Stonebraker Michael Ralph Stonebraker (born October 11, 1943) is a computer scientist specializing in database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational databa ...
's direction. The office of Professor Doug Cooper, who wrote the widely used programming textbook "Oh! Pascal!", was in this building.


Architecture


Construction

Evans Hall is situated at the northeast corner of campus, just east of Memorial Glade. It was built in 1971 and is named after
Griffith C. Evans Griffith Conrad Evans (11 May 1887 – 8 December 1973) was a mathematician working for much of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He is largely credited with elevating Berkeley's mathematics department to a top-tier research d ...
, chairman of mathematics from 1934 to 1949 who combined the fields of mathematics and economics. The architect was
Gardner Dailey Gardner Acton Dailey (1895-1967) was an American architect, active in the San Francisco area in the 20th century. Dailey was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He came to California in 1915 to work for landscape architect Donald McLaren, found assor ...
.Keller, Josh
No Stirrings of Pride
The Chronicle of Higher Education 6 July 2007. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 1 November 2010. To read without a subscription: http://www.joshmkeller.com/stories/evans.html
In the 1990s, this building saw significant renovation including seismic retrofits and a new paint job. Today, the building sports a blue-green exterior with orange-red accents.


Safety concerns

As part of the University's ''New Century Plan'', the building is recommended for demolition and replacement, due in part to its unsafe earthquake readiness rating. In 2000, it was proposed that two shorter buildings replace Evans Hall. Although Evans Hall's seismic rating is poor, the rating is common on the UC Berkeley campus with over fifty buildings sharing the rating. A rating of poor translates to that a major earthquake would likely cause "significant structural damage and appreciable life hazards". During the early 2000s, because of rusting of the frame of the building, "large pieces of concrete began falling off the face of Evans Hall without warning". Repairing the building cost two million dollars. In February 2022, the University announced that due to cost, Evans Hall will not be seismically renovated and will be demolished.


Aesthetic complaints

Evans Hall was voted one of the ugliest buildings in UC Berkeley by its student body. Evans Hall is known for its large number of windowless classrooms. '' The Chronicle of Higher Education'' has called it "an imposing concrete structure that most people on the campus would like to see demolished". Former chancellor
Robert M. Berdahl Robert Max Berdahl (born March 15, 1937) is a retired American college and university administrator. Biography Born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Berdahl received a Bachelor of Arts from Augustana College in 1959. Additionally, he obtained a Mas ...
has described the building as without "stirrings of pride in placement, or massing, or architectural design". Some complain the building disturbs the view of the San Francisco Bay. Math related murals have been painted inside the building in protest against its aesthetics. Evans Hall was repainted a gray-green so that the building would blend into the Berkeley hills.


Rumors and legends


Suicides

A series of students at the university have committed suicide at Evans Hall, primarily by jumping off ninth or tenth floors of the building.Tabak, Nate
"Police Investigate Man's Death Following Plunge From Evans Hall."
The Daily Californian. 5 April 2002. Web. 12 November 2010.
This has led some to believe the building is haunted. It has also spawned an untrue rumor that the University has put a "suicide alarm" on the tenth floor of Evans Hall.


Unabomber

There is a widespread rumor that math professor
Theodore Kaczynski Theodore John Kaczynski ( ; born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber (), is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide ...
taught in Evans Hall. He would later become an environmental terrorist known as the Unabomber. Official publications from the University have repeated the rumor. In reality, it is impossible that Kaczynski taught in Evans Hall as he left the University in 1969 and the building was not constructed until 1971. He actually had his office in temporary buildings that have since been torn down.


References


External links


Evans Hall
The Daily Californian * Alfred Twu
Evans Hall
Open Computing Facility The ''Open Computing Facility'' is an ASUC chartered program at the University of California, Berkeley, first founded in 1989. The OCF is an all-volunteer, student-run, student-initiated service group dedicated to free computing for the great ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Evans Hall (Uc Berkeley) Skyscraper office buildings in California University of California, Berkeley buildings Buildings and structures completed in 1971 Brutalist architecture in California Modernist architecture in California 1971 establishments in California