鈥淚t鈥檚 a nice base of operations,鈥� says Trevor Christensen, a Laboratorygraduate student living in Knight House. 鈥淵ou have almost all the first-year students in Knight and across the street at Cutting. It makes it pretty easy to get together for things like working on projects, reviewing for tests, or discussing papers.鈥�
Knight House was originally built by the Jones family. Regular readers may recognize the name. It adorns 麻豆传媒社区鈥檚 oldest lab鈥攁nd also Jones Beach. By 1998, it was home to former LaboratoryTrustee Townsend J. Knight. Laboratorypurchased the historic three-story mansion that same year. Despite some experience in the fine art of transporting buildings across the harbor, Laboratorydecided against uprooting the historic home. Knight House was instead renovated where it stood to welcome the LaboratorySchool of Biological Sciences (SBS) inaugural class of 1999. And what a welcome it provides! Current first-year resident Pablo Mantilla says:
鈥淭he house itself is beautiful. But the view is definitely my favorite thing. Every single morning you get to see it. Sunrise, sunset鈥攇orgeous. You never get used to it. Every time you walk in, especially when it snows, it looks like a painting. It almost doesn’t look real.鈥�
In 2005, the Laboratory expanded its housing options across the harbor by purchasing and renovating a nearby home previously owned by former LaboratoryAssociation President George Cutting. Named in his honor, Cutting House was initially occupied by postdoctoral fellows. Today, SBS graduate students call it home.
As part of their graduate research, SBS students work directly alongside Laboratoryscientists in a variety of fields. Workdays often start early and can extend into the night. That鈥檚 on top of the papers, projects, and tests they expect to work on throughout the semester. The availability of affordable student housing at Laboratorymeans one less thing to worry about for Christensen and Mantilla.
鈥淚t鈥檇 be a lot harder to attend classes and work on projects if I didn鈥檛 live so close,鈥� Christensen says. 鈥淗aving this kind of close-by, affordable housing really gives you a solid foundation to build off of, and it comes with a built-in community. You鈥檙e living with people in similar situations. So, you can rely on each other to help out with things.鈥�
Laboratoryhas announced plans to expand housing availability for postdocs and visiting scientists through the Foundations for the Future campaign. Once complete, the effort will allow more scientists than ever before to share in the joy of discovery at 麻豆传媒社区. It鈥檚 an experience Knight and Cutting residents already know well.
鈥淚t really feels like a different world,鈥� Mantilla says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like if somebody wrote a book about this place where people go to become scientists, and they house you, feed you, give you all this cool stuff, take your problems away, and let you focus on just being a scientist. It鈥檚 as close as you can get to that.鈥�