Myers Hall research facility

Housing the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute, Myers Hall serves as an intellectual and physical link among programs in the life sciences.

Photo by Paul Martens

The art deco rendering of Myers Hall, with its limestone friezes and etched Hippocratic quote, have long been a popular site on any tour of the IU Bloomington campus since its construction in the 1930s.

Bedford stone carver Harry Thomas Easton created the limestone friezes that grace the entrance of Myers Hall, the art deco building completed in 1936 to house campus medical sciences courses on East Third Street in Bloomington. Easton incorporated the likenesses of friends to depict (left to right) an anatomist looking in his microscope, a pharmacologist and a physiologist. The IUB Medical Sciences Program has moved to newly remodeled quarters in Jordan Hall.

Architect Frank Adams addresses the audience at the rededication ceremony for Myers Hall and the dedication ceremony for the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute April 12 on the IU Bloomington campus. Seated (left to right) are IU President Myles Brand, IU Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm and Rudolph Raff, Distinguished Professor of biology and director of the institute.

The newly renovated building contains laboratory space for as many as 15 faculty-directed research groups and joint use facilities for advanced microscopy, DNA sequencing, X-ray crystallography and plant genetics. Xiang Zhou (above), a graduate student in microbiology, utilizes the new space in his studies.

Many believe the age of biology has replaced the information age as scientists continue to explore the mysteries of genetic coding. Post-doctoral student Dingzhong Tang checks on some seedlings growing under ultraviolet lights at the new Myers Hall facilities. Basic biology research done on the IU Bloomington campus has contributed to the cloning of animals, the discovery of genes that decide how embryos develop and pioneering work on hormones that control plant growth

Tom Ashfield, a post doctoral student, and Laura Miller, a graduate student, run tests on some plant specimens in one of Myers Hall’s new laboratories. The building was completed as the Medical Building in 1936 and was named for Dean Burton D. Myers in 1958.

Susan Kline-Smith, a graduate student in the Medical Sciences Program, peers through a microscope at Myers Hall. The Indiana Molecular Biology Institute was founded in 1983 to create a campuswide mechanism to foster research excellence in the life sciences that depend on the tools of molecular biology.

Stephanie Ems-McClung works with some specimens under a sterile hood in the new Myers Hall laboratories.

A back view of Myers Hall from Dunn Woods.

For more on the renovation process, go to this Web site:
http://php.indiana.edu/%7Enachase/chase.html#imbi