Hello,

I've lately been trying to find information on the closing of the Morley Chemistry Labs. My inrigue has grown as I have not been able to find much of anything (Observers from those years are curiously missing in the library basement, the Wiki says nothing, and there is general little knowledge the building even exists). Story has it a mercury spill caused it to close approximately 18 years ago. An event like this must have made papers, but I can't even a blurb about it online.

Please help.

Joseph Gigliotti:

Hello,
I've lately been trying to find information on the closing of the Morley Chemistry Labs. My inrigue has grown as I have not been able to find much of anything (Observers from those years are curiously missing in the library basement, the Wiki says nothing, and there is general little knowledge the building even exists). Story has it a mercury spill caused it to close approximately 18 years ago. An event like this must have made papers, but I can't even a blurb about it online.

As to the existence of the building, there is plenty of info, even if we restrict ourselves to the online world. For example:

http://www.case.edu/its/archives/Buildings/morche.htm

http://www.case.edu/tours/historical/stop14.html

But of course, these don't address the apparent abandonment of this beautiful building.

I went after news of such an event by searching the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Lexis-Nexis full text coverage of the PD goes back to 1992 and does not include any mention of such an event. The Cleveland News Index goes back into the early 80's, and I didn't find anything there either. Although I spent a few minutes at the microfilm machine looking at some fun articles from back in the day "University learns to do more with less!" and the first articles about what is now KSL, published in 1989 (the library opened in 1996). There WAS an article from 1987-88- a series of articles actually- that discussed the closing of all labs on campus that had radioactive materials in them, so I don't think the topic itself was taboo.

The next step I would take if I were you would be to contact both the University Archives (368-3320) and the Department of Occupational and Environmental Safety (368-2907). Informally, you might track down one of the long-time faculty in Chemistry and see if they know the story.

I know this doesn't give you the answer you are looking for, but there are some avenues you can follow.

This is interesting. Last spring, I also sought out answers as to what happened to this building. No such luck. Its amazing how you don't even really realize the building is there until someone points it out. I'm surprised it hasn't been demolished and something else built there, since there is a lack of space on campus. Perhaps because there's still a large mercury spill? Interesting how there is 0 info out there in through standard easy-to-use methods.

Michael-

There was a whole lot more discussion not long ago on another thread here on Forum:

http://forum.case.edu/read/7/15893/page=1