Maseeh Hall

I now have a name to call the building next store! At GRT training a few weeks ago, I asked if it had a name. It used to be Ashdown, but then the new building that I lived in became Ashdown...and this building was called Old Ashdown. The presenter laughed and said, "Well---it depends...do you know someone with 20 million dollars?" Fast forward a couple of weeks to this press release: "MIT Alumnus gives $24M to expand the Institute's undergraduate student body" - an honor which comes with the naming of a new building. Almost all academic buildings on campus are known by number, but the dorms are actually referred to by name (Simmons, Bexley, Baker) ---instead of my building, which while it is named the Dorrance Building, is always called building 16.

"Maseeh Hall, which will open in September 2011, will accommodate 460 students and will form an important new center of student life at the Institute. The renovation of this historic building — which opened as a grand hotel on the Charles River in 1901 — will add another undergraduate living and learning community to MIT’s residential options. The renovated facility will include a dining hall designed to encourage informal interactions and to support a full meal plan for residents and dining for other members of the larger MIT community."

All right Maseeh Hall---hurry up and finish so I can see trees out my window again. Thanks in advance!