Ashdown: Home of the Brains

With Tech Reunions two days away, we thought it might be nice to take a trip down memory lane. "Ashdown House: The Home Where Science and Technology Live" is a 2006 documentary created by two School of Architecture and Planning grad students depicting the dorm's history from 1937 and the important minds who lived there and shaped history. It includes interviews with Jay Forrester SM ’45, the inventor of RAM; chemistry Nobel laureate Elias Corey Jr. ’48, PhD ’51; and Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart ’56, SM ’63, the first lunar module pilot, reminiscing from outer space.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0_qUdoK3wk&hl=en&fs=1]

Ashdown House was the first MIT graduate dorm and one of the oldest in the U.S. Of course, it's no longer a grad dorm, there is now New Ashdown, aka NW35, at 235 Albany Street that houses grad students. (Undergrads will occupy W1 [the original Ashdown] after renovations are complete.) One can only wonder what the occupants of New Ashdown will go on to accomplish in their lives.