Email #71 – Damn It, Stamets, Get It Right!

Not everything I write is true, of course, but I think it is when I write it up. Here are some corrections and addenda to some of my former emails. Let me know if I make other mistakes.

1. Here is the dumbest thing I've written - in Loop Group Email #64 - "Steam Pipe Exits Building" on Jan. 15, 2007. Professor Brian Johnson noticed my stupidity immediately, but no else did. Here's what I wrote:

"The old steam pipe at this location went through the wall on the left and then went vertical & underground outside Architecture Hall. I doubt that any of you remember that. I certainly don't."

Of course you and I don't remember that because it never happened. Like the new steam pipe, the old steam pipe at this location went vertical through the floor at the west end of the building, not horizontal through the wall. My excuse is, well, um..... I have no pictures in detail of the old pipe at the west end, and therefore no memory. That was because of the constant high contrast lighting conditions at the pipe near the window, and I wasn't using HDR last summer. As much as I shoot in Architecture Hall, there are still gaps in the record.

However, I did find in my archive a whole room photo taken July 13 that clearly shows - at high magnification - that the old steam pipe exits the building by going vertical through the floor at the west wall. That is shown in the top attached photo. Brian Johnson is right!

2. In email #59 - "Ground to a Halt" on January 3, I wrote that there are three surviving buildings from the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held here on campus in 1909 : Architecture Hall, Cunningham Hall and the College Inn. None of you caught my error, but I've since learned that there is a fourth AYPE survivor: the Engineering Annex over near the UW Power Plant. I went to take a look at it, and from the outside it still looks very 1909, as shown in the attached photo. I suspect that the stairs in the foreground are part of a post-1909 addition.

Does anyone know of a fifth AYPE survivor?

3. In email #31 - "Red or Orange in 1908?" last September 22, I made the argument that - during construction - the steel frame structure of Architecture Hall was painted orange with industrial red lead paint. Therefore I assumed that steel structure seen in the historic photograph on Aug. 27, 1908 was actually orange at the time the photo was taken, and not black or gray as the photograph would suggest.

An extreme digital enlargement (attached) shows the steel columns on the east side to be partially painted with something. Perhaps at the time of the photo, they had just started painting the steel. I still believe that the steel structure was eventually painted orange, but it may not have been painted very much on the day that this historic photo was taken (Aug. 27, 1908). The steel columns shown in this enlargement were not exposed in the current renovation so it was not possible to check them for paint.

John Stamets
Feb. 9, 2007

See also #31, #59 and #64