The Many Homes I Have Known at CSHL

[David Micklos]

In my years at CSHL, I have probably had more offices than anyone. In moving about, I have had the chance to have a personal experience with several notable buildings on the campus.

Like most administrators, I began my career in the Nichols building, in the winter of 1982-83. There I shared with Pat Kurfess a single 7-foot table, while Jim Watson and Bill Udry figured out where they could put their new public affairs officer. Their solution would make me the only “migratory” administrator in CSHL history.

In those days scientific meetings were held in Vannevar Bush Lecture Hall – running from spring through fall, with a welcome rest in the winter. Jim and Bill determined that they could get some extra use out of Bush by making it my winter office. To accomplish this, a carpet was laid in the anteroom at the bottom of the front steps and two desks were brought in – one for me and one for an assistant.

While large and having rest rooms near at hand, the space was drafty. In the dead of winter, we resorted to several space heaters to ward off the cold. It was also isolated, and people stayed away unless there was serious business to transact. This was great for establishing my independence, but made it hard on the assistants who were stuck there with me.

With the advent of the spring meeting season, my assistant and I were uprooted and moved to small desks behind the book stacks on the second floor of Carnegie Library. Unlike Bush, this space was cramped and warm. There was no room at all in which to carry on a conversation with a client, but we did have the company of Susan Gensel (Cooper) and her friendly staff.

This cycle was repeated for three years, until I moved into new quarters in the Oliver and Lorraine Grace Auditorium, in 1986. Like the building’s signature overlarge dormers, my new space was airy and purpose-built for public outreach activities. I had my very own bookshelves and storage closets. However, by the time I moved in into Grace, I had also started an education outreach program. So the Grace offices were initially the crowded home to what would become three separate departments: Public Affairs, Development, and the DNA Learning Center (DNALC).

My dreams for a permanent, spacious, and private office soon evaporated. Within weeks of moving into Grace, an extra desk was moved into my office for photographer Sue Zehl (Lauter). In spring 1988, I traded my lovely Grace office for quarters in the run-down former elementary school that would become the DNALC. There I reinstated the sturdy Steelcase desk and Eames chair from my nomadic days for 13 years of additional service. That ensemble moved from place to place within the DNALC, including time spent in the musty basement office that was subject to occasional flooding from the boys’ restroom above.

Ultimately, the generosity of the Dolan Family allowed me to settle down and achieve the spacious sort of office that had narrowly eluded me 15 years earlier in Grace. In 2001, I moved into the Biomedia Addition, one of the first facilities in the world purpose built for Internet publishing. There I have been quite happy indeed.