by Mina Healey

I knew my parents got married at MIT, but I didn’t really think twice about it until I started exploring the campus when I got here in September. What building did they get married in? Do I have a class there now? It’s crazy that twenty-five years ago my parents got married here, and now I’m a freshman going to class in this same place. So finally I ask my dad if he knows what the name of the building was.

“Oh yeah! It was, uh, Warren, definitely Warren. You know? The one right on Mem Drive?” He kept insisting that it was called Warren, but that was when it clicked. Walker! They got married in Walker Memorial. Besides the fact that there is no building at MIT called “Warren,” Walker seemed like the only logical place the wedding could have been. This was an amazing discovery. For one, I actually knew which building Walker was, and I had taken my very first MIT test in that very building.

This made me wonder what else Walker was used for. From weddings to math diagnostic exams, Walker seemed like a pretty versatile space, and I wanted to find out more about it. Also, Walker is one of the older buildings on campus, so there was bound to be some interesting history within its walls.

I had been inside Walker a few times before, but it was always to take a test in the gym on the third floor. I never actually looked at Walker – I was too caught up in making sure I was on time for my exam and actually in the right place. So to start my research I went to Walker when I wasn’t in a rush, and it was such a different experience. I walked up the simple yet elegant front steps and pulled open the large wooden doors into the fascinating building. There were beautiful paintings on the walls of the first floor, wonderful old architecture, and many, many rooms. Tall ceilings, large doorways, and an aura of history added to the experience. There were people in the main Morss Hall on the first floor, and people going up and down the stairs. Come to think of it, no matter what time or day I have been in Walker, there is always something going on, or at least people walking about. I didn’t want to just follow these people into random rooms because that might have seemed a little strange. So I turned my research to my faithful friend, the Internet.

It was slightly difficult to find information on the actual history of Walker Memorial by solely using Google search. Almost every other link that came up was from some event-planning website trying to get you to book your event at Walker. But this information alone told me lots about Walker. Not only was it being used for outside events in the ’80s when my parents got married, but people still use it all the time. Other than event planning, Google brought me to a good number of websites of MIT student groups and the fact that they either are located in Walker or have meetings there. Voodoo Magazine^[1], WMBR (which stands for Walker Memorial Basement Radio)^[2], The Rainbow Lounge^[3], and the Graduate Student Council^[4] are just a few of the many student activities housed in Walker. It was odd to find this information, because I had never heard of Walker being used for so many events. I began to think of Walker as a sort of underground student center.

But I had a feeling that there was much more to Walker than what I could find so easily on the Internet. So I made my way over to Hayden Library and as soon as I told the clerk working at the archives that I was researching Walker, she handed me a stack of papers and told me where I could find even more information. That was when I went into detective mode. I felt like some old-time investigator, sifting through thousands of pages of old documents, yearbooks, and newspaper articles. It was actually pretty interesting, unearthing proposals for the construction of Walker, or reviews of meals back in 1921. Now I was getting somewhere. I was finding interesting and informative material, from the original source. And I was right: Walker is full of history, and it was waiting for me to find it.

 

There had been plans to build Walker in Boston before the move over to Cambridge, but this was put off because of funding, and then because MIT was going to gain a new location anyway. This delay meant there was time to really mull over what Walker needed to be, and to perfect it. ^[5] “Walker Memorial…was conceived not simply as a gymnasium but as the social center of student life,” Philip Alexander said in his book, A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT, and this really summarizes what Walker was meant to be. Maybe nowadays, many students have only been inside Walker to take tests, but from what I learned at the archives, Walker once was even more of a center of student life than the current Student Center.

Walker was named in honor of the third president of MIT, Francis Amos Walker; he was a large proponent of student facilities, so it only made sense to build it with the students in mind.^[6]  The building was designed by Williams Bosworth, who designed many other older buildings on campus, but Walker is quite different than the other old buildings on campus. For instance, compared to Building 10, Walker is extremely plain. It’s comparatively small, no huge dome, and no large courtyard. In the book, When MIT was “Boston Tech”, by Samuel C. Prescott, I read that Walker, the person, was the one who decided on this practicality over extravagance. There were not sufficient funds to have both adornment and utility, so he chose utility. He describes Walker as a “useful building,” but having an “unlovely exterior.”^[7] Even before it was built, architects were planning on Walker being very useful, which meant being versatile and multi-purpose.

I found references to Walker in almost twenty of the Technology Reviews in the archives. A lot of the times, just some event going on at Walker was mentioned, or there was a picture of students walking on the steps. But I found the most information on the presence of dining in Walker Memorial. The first review of dining I found was in the 1921 Technology Review, and it wasn’t the best review; Walker dining was thought to be too expensive, and people had stopped eating there. MIT decided to hire some new management, and by 1923 Walker dining was flourishing. According to the 1923 Technology Review, Walker dining was serving about 1500 students a day. By 1940, Walker was one of the busiest student centers in the country, and was open from 11 A.M. until after midnight. (I guess this is the beginning of the infamous late nights at MIT.) As I read on, I found that before Hayden Library was built, Walker also had a library. In 1948, the dining hall in Walker was remodeled to serve as a student lounge while still serving food, so students spent even more time there. This information really surprised me, because I would never imagine everyone going to Walker to have dinner, and hanging out there until late hours of the night. Walker is still used often by students, but not as much as back then. A few of my friends have actually asked me for directions to Walker recently.

As Walker was becoming the main center of the MIT campus for students, the whole of the campus was expanding. Around the 1950s, west campus was arising, with new dorms, Kresge Auditorium, the chapel, and other buildings across Massachusetts Avenue. Finally, in the 1960s, the Stratton Student Center was built, because the center of student life was shifting.^[8] At this point, activities were moving out of Walker and into the new Student Center.

I found some blueprints in the archives from 1962 presenting ideas about remodeling Walker. It was called “Preliminary East Campus Study: Additions to Alumni Houses,” and was drafted by Marvin Goody and John Clancy on June 15th, 1962.  In their plans, they proposed having a dining hall for the East Campus dorms, a dining hall for the Senior House dorm, and even a dining hall and lounge for faculty. Obviously some of this was never followed through on, but these kinds of ideas are what make Walker so special. Walker was in fact used as a faculty lounge and cafeteria, and it served food for students until quite recently. Its ability to be used for so many different purposes makes it forever changing, even without being remodeled.

 

Walker may no longer seem like the center of student life at MIT, but it is still a focal point of student activity, even if it’s in the background now. Almost every student will take a test there, or attend an event there, listen to WMBR, or will find out that their parents got married there. They might not eat lunch and dinner there like in the 1930s, but Walker has maintained one thing throughout the years: its practicality. Looking at my life alone, Walker has proved its role as “useful building”. My parents began their successful marriage at Walker, and now their daughter is taking her tests in that same building. Walker never needed to be extravagant or over-the-top, because it adapted to what was needed at the time.

 

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