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of rooms that were assembly rooms or conference rooms, that were two stories in height, or higher than the rest of the architecture. But it was all redwood frame construction, flagstone or limestone walks and so forth. Very California. Cypress trees and so forth. The fact that when the structure was finished, it won the AIA, the American Institute of Architecture's gold medal award for the year it was finished, indicates that it was a distinguished job that Bill Wurster had done, and that it was on the top of the hill with this wonderful setting didn't detract from the architecture.

We built enough space to open, as I recall, in the fall of '53 (but I'm not sure it was '53) with thirty-five fellows from -- mostly from the United States. I believe there were a couple of foreign fellows in the first class. We always wanted to get some distinguished foreign participation in the group. I think one year we had as many as eight fellows from offshore. Anyway, we opened in the fall and built our lower building down on the hill independent of the first building that housed, I guess, fifteen small offices that could be used for fellows in another -- same kind of structure, but in another site.

The idea was there wouldn't be any telephones in the rooms. The offices opened on a walkway that encouraged visiting back and forth. The view from the offices were sensational, and the vegetation, everything was just about as ideal as it could be. In fact, it was so pleasant that there were times when I wondered whether any work would get done, because it was just such a change in atmosphere from the bricks and mortar of university campuses. We had a beautiful dining hall, a library, a large meeting room, some administrative offices. The interior work was all done by Florence [S.] Knoll of Knoll Associates here in New York. She worked with Wurster on the completion of the buildings.