Yerkes Observatory to become luxury spa (Reuters/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

Thursday, June 8, 2006; Posted: 11:37 a.m. EDT (15:37 GMT)

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- The 109-year-old Yerkes Observatory, where astronomers discovered the Milky Way galaxy's spiral shape and made other advances, will become an anchor for a spa and luxury homes, the University of Chicago, its owner, announced on Wednesday.

Thirty of the 80 acres (32 hectares) along Lake Geneva in Wisconsin that surround the ornate, stone observatory housing what was once the world's largest telescope will remain undeveloped.

Private developer Mirbeau Cos. agreed to pay the university $8 million and a share of room and property taxes for rights to build a 100-room spa and 72 luxury homes.

While scientific advances and light pollution reduced the observatory's usefulness in recent decades, some of astronomy's leading lights once worked there.

Edwin Hubble, who would go on to find evidence of the Big Bang theory, studied at Yerkes, as did Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who made discoveries about the evolution of stars. Beginning work at Yerkes in the 1930s, William Morgan would deduce the spiral shape of the Milky Way.
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/06/08/yerkes.observatory.reut/index.html

http://astro.uchicago.edu/yerkes/

Goodbye, Old Paint. The 40'' telescope at Yerkes is still the world's largest refractor, and the pinnacle of lens-making by the famous craftsmen of Alvan Clark & Sons.

[Kutjara]

1. And another piece of America's history...

...gets paved over to make room for yet another crop of McMansions.

In 100 years, when nobody will be able to remember a time when America was dominant in the sciences, we won't even have these museum-pieces to point to for proof.

But we'll have spas! By God we'll have plenty of them.

[robinlynne]

2. can't even reply. your article speaks for itself.

[Dudley_DUright]

3. Sad

A grade school trip to the Yerkes helped to kindle my lifelong interest in physics and astronomy.

[BlueJazz]

4. Only in Fucking America would we screw up a national Landmark...

..to build a bunch of Spas... AAAGGGG!

[MADem]

5. The article isn't really clear. They aren't going to remodel the place,

are they? Or are they just going to use the surrounding land to construct the spa and so forth? What does "will become an anchor" mean? Will it be a building that is near the spa, so the design can mimick it, or what?

I think they oughta make it into a museum, at the least...

[benburch]

6. When I was a University of Chicago student...

...they let us use it visually on hazy nights. This is SO FUCKING SAD. The University of Chicago is not the institution I came to love any more.