Civil Defense, 1961-1963

This collection documents the construction of new facilities and renovation of existing facilities for Northeastern University's Boston and satellite campuses. The collection also documents accompanying landscaping, interior decoration, and furnishing efforts. Record types include aluminum prints, building plans, blueprints and correspondence between the University and various construction companies, including the architects Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott. The buildings represented are the Cabot Physical Education Center, the Dana Research Center, Snell Library, the Curry Student Center (Ell Hall addition), Speare Hall, Stetson Hall, the old Boston Storage Warehouse, and White Hall.

The collection also represents facilities that Northeastern owns and operates outside of Boston such as Henderson House, the Warren Center in Ashland, MA, along with suburban campuses in Lexington and Burlington, MA. In addition to actual building blueprints, the collection contains numerous land plans of possible expansion. Of special interest is a 1960s civil defense report and evaluation of Northeastern's ability to deal with a nuclear attack and the plans and provisions taken to prevent panic. The majority of this information is from John Hancock Insurance Company, but there is also correspondence between the University administration and the Civil Defense Committee for colleges across the United States.

Negatives in the collection, including negatives of Henderson House, the suburban campus, general land plans, the Life Sciences Building, and the Warren Center, were removed and can be found in the University Photography collection.