The scene on New Year's Eve.
The CS Department's expansion into the 3d floor of the CIT took giant strides over the holiday break when workmen broke through the floor between the third and fourth floors. They plastic-wrapped the stairwell from the fourth to the fifth floor, similarly masked off the third-floor area just below, and then jackhammered through the floor. It was a noisy business -- the jackhammer made sure of that -- and a dusty, debris-filled one too. But by today, when CS staff returned to work, the noise and dust were over and only the great hole (now suitably protected by sawhorses) remained.
Over the next month the hole will be smoothed out and the stairway extended down to the third floor. This addition will be enclosed in glass and steel so as to satisfy the fire code. A transparent column going down the middle of the two floors of stairs will contain a portion of the department's computer museum.
For more photographs, check out http://www.cs.brown.edu/~twd/ConstructionGallery/index.htm
