Rensselaer.MAG/March '99- At Rensselaer

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Lighting Research Center

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

LRC Moving to Historic Gurley Building

Thomas Griffin Gurley Building

Historic home: the Gurley Building

The School of Architecture's Lighting Research Center (LRC) will move to the historic Gurley Building on Fulton Street in Troy. The LRC is expected to move into the building in late summer after substantial remodeling has created laboratories, offices, and teaching spaces there.
  Rensselaer has signed a five-year lease for approximately 25,000 square feet, a 50 percent increase over the LRC's current quarters across the river in Watervliet. This will provide space for the continuing growth of the LRC, the world's largest research and education center dedicated to lighting.
  "This relocation into downtown Troy brings our faculty, staff, and students closer to campus and makes it possible for us to participate more fully as members of the Troy community," said Mark Rea, LRC director.
  The LRC's move out of Rensselaer's Watervliet facility will make room there for continued expansion of the Incubator Program. At present, 21 incubator companies lease space both in the Watervliet facility and a building on the Rensselaer campus.
   "This project brings together the heritage of the 19th century and the promise of the 21st," said Russell Leslie '80, associate director of the LRC and the architect who is directing this project. "We are helping to preserve a building that is on the National Historic Register, turning it into a technological lighting showcase that will serve as a home for research and teaching."
   The Gurley Building was completed in 1868, after the great fire that destroyed much of the city, as a new home for W. & L.E. Gurley, makers of precision instruments. William Gurley was a Class of 1839 graduate and trustee of Rensselaer. The firm, now known as Gurley Precision Instruments, continues to occupy the first floor.