The venerable Herrin Hall and Herrin Laboratory buildings, constructed in the early 1960s and home to Stanford’s Department of Biology for many years, have come to the end of their useful lives. Biology laboratories are now largely housed in the more modern Gilbert Biological Sciences and Bass Biology Research buildings (opened in 1987 and 2018, respectively).
Herrin Hall and Labs are being demolished and the site cleared to make way for a new Data Science and Computation Complex. This change offers an opportunity to remember and acknowledge William F. Herrin, for whom the biology buildings were named.
In the 1910s and 1920s, Mr. Herrin served as vice president, chief counsel, and political manager for the Southern Pacific Railroad and was a personal friend of Governor Leland Stanford. It has been reported that “the Southern Pacific, led by land agent B. A. McAllaster and chief counsel William F. Herrin, headed a coalition of regional groups in blocking the U.S. Reclamation Service from building a large dam on the Truckee River and converting Lake Tahoe into a vast storage reservoir to soothe the thirst of the faltering Truckee-Carson Reclamation Project in western Nevada.”
From sustainable beats and food recovery leaps, the year 2025 set a new standard for Stanford traditions and operations.
Project Background There is significant value in buildings (carbon, cost, historical significance) that is lost when the business-as-usual approach of demolition and rebuilding is continued. …
What would have been demolition debris turns into design assets that preserve Stanford’s iconic architecture and divert 141 tons of clay tiles from landfill.
