If you’ve ever climbed up the stairs to the fifth floor of Morey Hall, you’ve probably noticed the narrow flight of stairs. They go up even farther and lead to what you might assume is the sixth floor of Morey Hall, probably housing more offices and classrooms.
While many people probably would not be curious enough to hike up that last flight of stairs, those who are would find a locked metal door with some pretty creepy graffitied messages on it.
Facilities Manager of Operations and Maintenance Mark Englerth provided more information about what’s behind that door.
“Morey was built with an attic space,” Englerth said. “The attic became home to several mechanical systems.”
According to Englerth, much of the attic is used for ordinary equipment like phone lines and chimneys.
Throughout the history of the building, there have been some unusual mechanical devices housed up there. One of the first was a “unique and interesting design for a heat removal system.” This system used induction and convection to cool Morey Hall.
“The chimneys are lined with rows of pipes that, when heated with hot steam, induced a draft that sent the hot air rising through the chimney, creating a draft within the building,” Englerth said. “The convection currents that resulted produced moving air that created a source of comfort cooling.”
This system was taken out of practice as costs to produce steam were increasing and the system was too expensive to use.
“In today’s environmentally friendly approach to energy conservation, such a system would be frowned upon,” Englerth said. “The system was eventually replaced by a system of electric fans that operate in a similar way.”
