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News Release

Office of News and Information
Johns Hopkins University
901 South Bond Street, Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Phone: 443-287-9960 | Fax: 443-287-9920

July 25, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Dennis O'Shea
443-287-9960
dro@jhu.edu


New Campus Quadrangle Named for Deckers

A new development on the southern edge of The Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus will be named the Alonzo G. and Virginia G. Decker Quadrangle, in honor of the Baltimore couple's decades of service to and generosity toward the university.

The university's board of trustees voted at its June meeting to name the new quad, which will rise west of the existing Shriver Hall, replacing what is now a parking lot. The existing Garland Hall will form its northern edge.

Alonzo Decker Jr., the longtime chairman and CEO of Black & Decker Corp. who died in 2002, was a university trustee and presidential counselor for more than 30 years. He chaired the university's groundbreaking Hopkins Hundreds fund-raising campaign in the 1970s. Virginia Decker has been a member of the advisory council for the university's School of Professional Studies in Business and Education.

"The development of this important new quadrangle as the southern gateway to Homewood is a perfect opportunity for us to honor the Deckers and their commitment to Johns Hopkins," said William R. Brody, president of the university. "Just as Al and Virginia have helped advance the university on so many fronts, Decker Quadrangle will help build our future in undergraduate education, interdisciplinary research, service to the community and our alumni, and areas as yet uncharted."

Site preparation work for the quad has already begun and full-scale construction will start in September. A 28,000-square-foot admissions and visitor center, which will also house facilities for alumni meetings, will anchor the quadrangle on its southern edge, facing out toward the community and serving as a welcoming landmark for prospective students and other visitors. A 79,000-square-foot interdisciplinary computational sciences building will define the quad's eastern border. Clark Hall, a biomedical engineering building completed in 2001, stands across from the computational science site; the quad also contains two sites for future buildings.

Underneath Decker Quad will be a three-level, 604-space garage, covered by a grass field. The garage will provide parking for university employees and visitors and for the nearby Baltimore Museum of Art. The project is scheduled for completion in 2007.

Alonzo Decker headed Black & Decker Corp., the company his father cofounded, from 1964 to 1975 and was instrumental in the development of the portable home electric drill and the portable drill. A graduate of Cornell University, he was awarded an honorary degree from Johns Hopkins in 1986. Starting in the early 1970s, he and Virginia Decker contributed millions of dollars in support of programs on the Homewood campus, at the Peabody Institute and at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Over $7 million in proceeds from the sale of Mr. Decker's final gift, a bequest of the couple's home and farm property on the Sassafras River on Maryland's Eastern Shore, will help fund construction of Decker Quadrangle.

That gift counts toward the $2 billion Johns Hopkins: Knowledge for the World fund-raising campaign. Commitments to the campaign now total more than $1.81 billion, more than 90 percent of the goal. Priorities of the campaign, which benefits both The Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, include strengthening endowment for student aid and faculty support; advancing research, academic, and clinical initiatives; and building and upgrading facilities on all campuses. The campaign began in July 2000 and is scheduled to end in 2007.


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