Greene Building, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Greene Building is home of the School of Architecture at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Named after Benjamin Franklin Greene, it has its own library for exclusive use by the architecture students. The second floor contains a gallery for students’ work, the basement third, and fourth floors contain multiple studios,open 24 hours a day for students and faculty to complete projects. The architecture library contains 30,000 books and 100,000-plus slides. [http://www.rpi.edu/academics/resources/libraries.html]

The basement floor now houses the wood shop. This state of the art shop includes a milling machine, two laser cutters, many wood working machines, and plenty of space for students to construct models.

History

The building was completed in 1931 at a cost of $400,000, shortly after the School of Architecture was founded. The building was named in memory of Benjamin Franklin Greene, Director of Rensselaer from 1847 to 1859. The names of fifteen of the most renowned deceased American architects were cut in stone above the second-story windows: Bulfinch, Burnham, Goodhue, Hooker, Hunt, Jefferson, Latrobe, McComb, McIntyre, McKim, Mills, Renwick, Richardson, Sullivan, and Upjohn.

External links

* [http://www.arch.rpi.edu/ RPI's Architecture Department]
* [http://library.rpi.edu/architecture/ Architecture Library]