More Hall Annex
- Year
- 1961
- Style
- Brutalism
- City
- Seattle, WA
The More Hall Annex, better known as the Nuclear Reactor Building, was a squat reinforced-concrete Brutalist structure on the University of Washington campus that once housed a working nuclear research reactor. Inaugurated in 1961, the reactor operated at a peak of 100 kilowatts thermal until it was shut down in 1988 and formally decommissioned in 2007. UW faculty designed the building themselves, using large observation windows around the reactor room as a deliberate argument for nuclear power's safety.
the building
Windows onto the reactor. UW faculty who designed the building set large windows into the reactor room walls specifically so passersby could observe the reactor operating from outside, an architectural attempt to demonstrate that nuclear power was safe rather than something to hide.
A working reactor on campus. The building's reactor ran from 1961 to 1988 at a peak output of 100 kilowatts thermal, making the Annex a functioning nuclear research facility embedded in the middle of a university campus for nearly three decades.
the style
The reinforced-concrete Annex was designed in the Brutalist style by University of Washington faculty members themselves, its blocky, unornamented mass typical of the era's institutional science buildings.
More on Brutalismsignificance
The Nuclear Reactor Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 after a campaign led by an architecture student opposing its proposed demolition. A later demolition plan triggered a lawsuit from preservation groups; a court ruled the building exempt from Seattle's landmarks-preservation ordinance, and though that ruling was eventually overturned, the university demolished the Annex in July 2016 and replaced it with a new computer science building that opened in February 2019.
nearby
- Husky Stadium
- Suzzallo Library
- Raitt Hall
- UW Canoe House/ASUW Shell House/US Naval Training Hangar
- Denny Hall
- Ye College Inn