The construction of Homewood's Hodson Hall begins this summer with a rare event: the demolition of a Johns Hopkins University building. Merryman Hall, the home of a number of student service offices as well as the campus mail room, custodial and audio-visual offices, will be torn down to make way for the new classroom building.

The work is scheduled to begin on June 25 and take about three weeks.

Framed by the east entrance to Merryman are Homewood archivist James Stimpert, of MSEL Special Collections; Baltimore Heritage president John Maclay, a 1966 graduate of Hopkins; and Travers Nelson, of the Office of Facilities Management, manager of the design and construction of Hodson Hall. The elegant woodwork will be salvaged when Merryman is torn down.

Constructed in 1948 as a temporary building, Merryman was first occupied by the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and contained supersonic and subsonic wind tunnels. It didn't receive its name, though, until 1975, when the Aeronautics Department moved into Ames Hall. The moniker chosen belonged to Joseph Merryman, who in 1688 became the first known owner of what is now the Homewood campus.

Thanks to the generosity of contractors and preservationists, a piece of Merryman Hall will be saved for posterity. Hodson Hall builder Kinsley Construction and its demolition subcontractor, STOP Construction, will donate the cost of salvaging the elegant woodwork at the east entrance of the building. The material will be given to Baltimore Heritage Inc., a nonprofit historical preservation organization headed by Hopkins alumnus John Maclay, for keeping until a final home is found.

The advent of the new classroom building created a round robin of staff relocations that began in early spring.

The offices of Student Employment, Academic Advising and Preprofessional Advising; the Career Center (formerly Career Planning and Development); and the Counseling and Student Development Center have been relocated to Garland Hall, where they join Admissions, Financial Aid and the Registrar to create a center for student services.

The Controller's and Treasurer's offices have moved from Garland to Johns Hopkins at Eastern, along with a small contingent from Hopkins IT Services. The offices of the President and other administration remain in Garland.

The mail room, which was temporarily relocated to the loading dock at the Bloomberg Center, is about to move to its permanent home in the Gilman Hall tunnel, where the roofing shop had been. The latter relocated to the Wyman Park shops building, along with custodial offices. They are joined there by audio-visual services, which will move into Hodson Hall when it is completed in 2002. Art and photography studios were relocated earlier in the year to the Mattin Center.

Limited road closures are expected for demolishing the east end of Merryman; signs will be posted at the campus entrances when the road is closed.