Princeton University has received an unspecified amount in a gift to rebuild and expand Guyot Hall to consolidate its Department of Computer Science which is currently spread out across nine different buildings.
Officials have proposed to rename Guyot Hall as the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Hall to honor the donors, Eric Schmidt, a businessman and software engineer, and his wife, Wendy Schmidt, a businesswoman and philanthropist.
The hall, named after Princeton’s first professor of geology and geography, Arnold Guyot, was built in 1909. The Guyot name will be recognized in a newly built space related to environmental science programs located elsewhere on campus.
“Eric Schmidt’s brilliant career as a computer scientist makes the Schmidt name especially fitting for the new home of Princeton’s world-class Department of Computer Science,” university president Christopher L. Eisgruber said.
The gift, which will come to Princeton through the Schwab Charitable Fund, will renovate the hall in such a way that the original Gothic architectural details of the building’s exterior are preserved. The hall will also have an increased capacity for the future growth of the department’s faculty and student body.
“We are deeply grateful for Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s gift, which makes it possible to have a central location for computer science in which we can create intellectual collisions and serendipitous encounters between faculty and among students, creating human connections that spark new ideas across campus and beyond,” Jennifer Rexford, the Gordon S. Wu Professor of Engineering and chair of Princeton’s computer science department, said.
Construction on the hall is scheduled to begin in 2024, and is expected to be completed in 2026.
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