Building Names at MLBS

Buildings

Ruth Patrick Hall

Jefferson Dining Hall

Wilbur Laboratory

Murray Hall

Cottages

In the 1930s Ivey Lewis, Director of Mountain Lake Biological Station, set out to find admirable southern scientists to name the station cottages after. With a $1,800 budget, an assistant, Charles Young, and connections throughout the South, he took suggestions and compiled a list of scientists who contributed “various and noteworthy” additions to biology. He dedicated at least one cottage to each southern state, and sought to honor scientists that may never have had formal recognition.

Lewis and Young posted advertisements in newspapers throughout the South asking for the state’s great and early biologist, and received many letters from friends and colleagues of scientists. Although names have been added after the original list that Lewis and Young made, the majority of Mountain Lake cottages are named after these “pioneers in Southern biology.” More recent cabins take names after individuals that have lived at and contributed to Mountain Lake. 

Audubon Clayton Jefferson Mitchell
Banister de Schweinitz Laing Rafinesque
Bartram Elliott Le Conte Reed
Burns  Gattinger Lewis Schoew
Catesby Hariot Maphis  
Chapman Hentz-Mohr Michaux

 

 
Sources:
 
Special thanks to Henry Wilbur for sharing his knowledge of Mountain Lake Biological Station history. Other information is from MLBS historical records dating to Ivey Lewis’s directorship.