History

History of East and West Greenhouse Facilities

The West Greenhouse facilitiy located on the main OSU campus presently serve over 60 Principal Investigators with a user group of over 300 research staff. The primary departments are Horticulture, Crop & Soil Science, and Botany & Plant Pathology. Other assigned User departments/units include Cooperative Extension Service (CES) Seed Certification, Forest Science Lab, OSU Seed Lab, and USFS. Loan of space to a variety of other university departments/units is common practice.

East Greenhouse is located at 2801 SW Campus Way on the northwest corner of the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. The facility was built in 1927 by Thompsonbuilt Greenhouses of Portland, Oregon and was historically used by the College of Agricultural Sciences for floriculture, research, and teaching activities.

West Greenhouse is located at 3201 SW Campus Way on the northwest corner of the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis and is bordered by Wiegand Hall on the east, USDA-ARS Horticultural Crops Research Lab on the west, Orchard Street on the north and Campus Way on the south. The West Greenhouse, also built by Thompsonbuilt Greenhouses, was done in eight stages from 1948 through about 1966. A major renovated to the greenhouse roofs was done from 2002 to 2009 with new glass and aluminum extrusion installed. The facility consists of 72 glass rooms, 58 fixed roof lab or head house rooms and covers an approximate area of 93,000 square feet (70,146 square feet under glass). West section 5 (3,240 square feet) was added in 1997. This facility is currently used by the College of Agriculture for teaching and research activities.

 

Responsibility of Operations for the Greenhouses

The authority for both facilities ultimately rests with the President of Oregon State University. In operational practice, for several decades prior to 1979, East Greenhouse was managed and directed by the Head of the Department of Horticulture who supervised a Manager for East. West Greenhouse was operated separately under a Manager who reported directly to the Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station (AES). With management changes in 1979, both East and West Greenhouse operations were combined under one Manager directly supervised by the AES Director's Office. Since the responsibilities of the Director of AES and the Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences were combined under the CAS/AES Dean, the Greenhouse Operations Manager has been directly supervised by a CAS/AES Dean's Office Associate Dean or COO.