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The long and glorious life of the temporary Building 20

During World War II in 1943, a timber three-floor structure was hastily erected on the central campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As one of its architects, George McCreery, said, the life of the building was supposed to be for the duration of the war and six months thereafter. It was indicated as Building 20 among the other temporary structures built there and became a home for the Radiation Laboratory, or Rad Lab, which works made a significant influence on science during WWII.

The war ended, and the Rad Lab shut down. But the student enrollments increased in the university, and the temporary structures continued to serve the university needs in post-war times. Building 20 had been used for workshops, offices, and labs, and its occupants utilized their environment in ways that would not be tolerated in a permanent building.

Eventually, Building 20 became the “magical incubator” for many remarkable projects and startups. MIT professor Jerome Y. Lettvin called it the procreative “womb” of the institute. Some of the famous occupants in Building 20 were the LIGO gravitational-wave antenna project, the Strobe Lab of high-speed photography trailblazer Harold "Doc" Edgerton, and the “father of modern linguistics” Noam Chomsky.

Building 20 had been operating for 55 years until it was demolished in 1998. It was one of the longest-surviving World War II temporary structures on the MIT campus.

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