The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory (1892-1917)
CHAPTER 4
THE FIRST DAYS
With the financial support provided, the directors, CH Gilbert and OP Jenkins, in the spring of 1892, contracted for the building of a seaside laboratory, which consisted of a plain wooden structure, two stories in height. By May 14, 1892, construction of the building was in progress with the contractor for the project being a gentleman by the name of Levi Boswell.(1)
An announcement in the Salinas Weekly Index on June 2, 1892, provides an account of the status of the construction project just twenty-five days prior to the opening ceremony. "The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, a branch of the Leland Stanford, Jr., located on Lovers’ Point at Pacific Grove, is being rapidly pushed to completion by a large force of workmen under Contractor Boswell. The site could not have been more satisfactorily selected, as it commands an unbroken view of the sweep of coastline from Santa Cruz to Point Pinos and Monterey. "(2)
Just days before the opening of Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, final organizing of the facility was taken up by several of the first cohort of students, are described in a letter written by Charles W. Greene, Professor of Physiology at the University of Missouri to Walter K. Fisher, Director of Hopkins Marine Station. " Myself, Flora Hartley, now (Flora) Greene, who together with Bradley Davis of Ann Arbor and Ora Boring of California, now deceased, were four enthusiastic young graduate students of Stanford who swept the shavings out of the original Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, arranged tables, stocked aquaria, and set the minor mechanism of that laboratory into operation." (Letter of Correspondence, April 28, 1936). (3)
The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory at Point Aulon in Pacific Grove, California opened on June 27, 1892, with David Starr Jordan overseeing the ceremony. During this first session of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, Charles W. Greene served as one of two assistants at the laboratory for the summer, with Flora Hartley, Bradley M. Davis and Oramanda “Ora” Boring among the small cohort of thirteen students attending that first summer session. (4)
THE FIRST BUILDING
At the time of the opening ceremony, this two-story building, the most prominent feature of the surrounding neighborhood, provided teaching accommodations for fifty students. The structures many windows, a total of ninety-six, provided for the admittance of a welcomed abundance of light. (5) According to Franz Doflein, a visiting scientist from University of Munich, Germany, during the summer of 1898, the redwood lumber used as the building material, provided a pleasant smell and proved to be extremely fireproof. (6)
On the first floor of this building were two general laboratories, a storeroom, and a library room.(7) Also, on the first floor were seven aquaria, along with various glass jars and vessels, used for the study of smaller animals.(8) On the second floor was positioned a third general laboratory running the entire length of the building, (9) facing eastward toward the city of Monterey, and six private laboratories for investigators, facing westward toward Santa Cruz and the outer Monterey Bay.(10) As with the first floor laboratories, the general and private laboratories on the second floor were furnished with aquaria.(11) The running seawater, plumbed to each of the aquaria positioned throughout the building, was procured from a location that guaranteed the source to be pure (i.e. unpolluted).(12) This single building, standing precariously on the bluff of Point Aulon, alone served as the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory during the first two regular summer sessions of 1892 and 1893.
As previously mentioned, a year after the opening the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory a severe winter storm damaged this one existing building.(13) Timothy Hopkins again came forward to bear the expense of repairs to the structure. To provide additional support and help stabilize the building, bracing in the form of two buttressed logs positioned at each of the four corners of this first building.(14) These buttressed logs were left in place to support the building for the next 24 years.
THE SECOND BUILDING
Within the first two years of the seaside laboratory being established, the regular summer session attendance outgrew the capacity of the original first building. Timothy Hopkins once again, through his generosity, provided five thousand dollars for a second building, making at the same time a gift of an equal amount for the purchase of books on biological subjects.(15) In 1894, this second smaller, but a more substantial building, measuring 40 feet long by 20 feet wide was constructed. Stanford Professor of Histology Frank Mace MacFarland provided the following description of the second structure:
"This second building contains a large, well-lighted basement with concrete floor used as a physiological laboratory. Above this concrete basement, the first story is divided into a large laboratory for advanced students, and six private rooms. The second floor has a large room fitted with blackboard, tables and bookshelves, used for lecture room and library, five private laboratories and a dark room for photography. Each private room and laboratory is fitted with aquaria, small and large, and all the necessary glassware and reagents. To the rear of this second building there is positioned a large 20, 000 salt-
water tank."(16)
THE FRESHWATER & SEAWATER SUPPLY
According to OP Jenkins, the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory was abundantly furnished with an excellent supply of freshwater.(17) This freshwater, supplied by a water system constructed by the Pacific Improvement Company, was brought a distance of twenty miles to the laboratory; the source being the headwaters of the Carmel River.(18)
The seawater was acquired from the Monterey Bay, at a location known as “third beach,” this being the seashore across from what is today’s Borg’s Motel.(19) Pumped by a gasoline engine, this seawater was stored in the two elevated tanks from which the supply was then distributed.(20) These two seawater storage tanks were arranged in such a manner that each tank could supply either of the two buildings.(21), (22) One could consider this arrangement of the two seawater storage tanks being designed in such a way as to serve as a backup seawater system, in the event that either of the two storage tanks failed or was down for repair. Throughout both laboratory buildings, the fittings for providing running fresh and salt water were reported to have been rather simple but adequate. The older building was plumbed with galvanized iron, the newer building with block tin, complete the stopcocks being made of rubber. (23) With both fresh and salt water distributed in the buildings, each student had the ability to preserve their collections.(24)
ANIMALS FILL THE AQUARIA
In an article titled The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory that appeared in the journal Science, David Starr Jordan provides a description of what small marine animals were in those seven aquaria and the various glass jars in the first building during the first summer session in 1892.
"In the aquaria I notice many specimens of salpa, large transparent tunicates, reaching a length of four or five inches. There are nudibranch mollusks (Aplysia) nearly a foot in length, and a twenty-armed star-fish (Pycnopodia) whose span covers the whole height of one side of the aquarium. This creature has been timed in making a circuit of the four sides of the aquarium, covering the distance of about nine feet in just four minutes. Immense jellyfishes that will almost fill a bushel basket are also very common, and sea anemones, reaching a size by which the largest of the Atlantic seem like marigolds compared with sunflowers. Tunicates, chitons, limpets, sea urchins, sea anemones, octopus, and squid exist in great abundance and variety. Among the fishes are also many forms of interest in the aquaria, numerous species of blennies and sculpins abounding about the rocks."(25)
Ray Lyman Wilbur. Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, California. Photograph Courtesy of Stanford University Archives.
THE WORK OF THE LABORATORY PROVIDES FOR THREE CLASSES OF PEOPLE
In the foundation of Hopkins Seaside Laboratory the directors have had in mind three different but very closely related fields of usefulness, the same being filled so admirably on the Atlantic coast by the [Woods Hole] Marine Biological Laboratory under the able direction of Dr. C. O. Whitman.(26)
Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, while associated with Stanford University, was not limited to the faculty and students of this institution for its usefulness. In addition, the facility was to provide education and research opportunities to those not associated with the academic institution.(27) The regular sessions of the laboratory were held during the summer months, when teachers, students, and others desiring to attend, had their vacations, while the use of the buildings was open to investigators throughout the year. This original organization of the facility provided for three classes of participants: 1) the faculty, undergraduate and graduate students of Stanford University, 2) the scientific investigators and 3) teachers and students beyond those associated with Stanford.
Undergraduate and Graduate Students: The undergraduates from Stanford University were encouraged to spend their summers at the laboratory to learn about marine organisms from direct experience. As presented by Jenkins (1893): Naturally, students in the biological departments in the University who wish to extend their work in the Seaside Laboratory, they are made welcome.(28) Stanford students attending the summer session at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, were not limited to those whose chosen major was physiology or zoology but included those with chosen major of Botany, Entomology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Geology Economics, English, History, French, German or Education also took part.
Graduate students from Stanford University were also encouraged to spend their summers at the facility. A. G. Maddren (1898) describes the typical graduate student who would have an interest in spending time at the seaside laboratory. Advanced students in zoology, physiology, and botany, who wish to continue their studies under the very favorable conditions of a well equipped marine laboratory, and to become acquainted with the problems and methods of research in biological lines.(29)
The Investigators: According to Jenkins (1893): The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory while carried on under the auspices of the University [was] by no means to be regarded as simply a provision for members of that institution. Its advantages are planned for and freely offered to investigators from whatever source. In this work it is not to be at all looked upon as a rival to any of the well-equipped laboratories already in existence, but rather as a collaborator with them. The field it occupies is both unique and important. It would be a serious neglect of biological opportunities to leave it longer unoccupied. The problems, which are now present on this Coast, and those, which will open from time to time, will attract investigators from other regions. There is now a home provided for them. Those of this coast engaged in biological study it is confidently expected will take a lively interest in the work of the Laboratory. (30)
Teachers and Students: According to MacFarland (1902), the purpose of allowing teachers and students to take part in laboratory courses in botany and zoology was to raise the standard of scientific instruction in the public schools of the state by giving teachers and others the facilities for becoming acquainted with the marine fauna and flora and the best methods of their study. (31)
The following description provided by Maddren (1898) presents the course of instruction offered to those teachers and students able to attend: For this group of workers regular courses will be conducted on various subjects, accompanied by lectures and individual instruction at the worktable and in studies on the collecting grounds and in the preservation of material. These courses give thorough drill in the laboratory methods of study, in dissecting, and in the use of the microscope. They are especially helpful to teachers of these subjects in High Schools and to teachers in Nature Study in any department of schoolwork. They are elementary in character and may be undertaken by those without previous biological training.(32)