Clement Chemistry Building
Clement Chemistry Building is located at the south end of the Long Walk and houses the Chemistry Department and Cinestudio, a movie theater.
In the 1930s, efforts to construct a building for the Chemistry Department accelerated as the existing facilities were deemed makeshift and unsuitable, as they were located in the basement of the Jarvis Physics Laboratory. The head of the Chemistry Department at the time, Professor Vernon Krieble, solicited the help of Martin W. Clement, Class of 1901, a Trustee of the College, to raise the funds for a new building. They succeeded, and in the fall of 1934 construction began and was completed in 1936. Goodwin-Woodward Hall was built later, adjacent to the building. At the time, the building was a state-of-the-art design of the McKim, Mead, and White firm and was studied by members of other universities looking to build similar facilities. It included a large auditorium for the showing of science or educational films on 35mm projectors.
The then-anonymous main donor for the chemistry building (businessman Walter P. Murphy) had requested that the building be named after Martin W. Clement. This appellation was carried out in 1963, after Clement retired from the Board of Trustees and gave his consent. The building was then officially named the Martin W. Clement Chemistry Laboratory and the auditorium within the building was named after Vernon K. Krieble.
By the late 1960s, the Krieble auditorium was seldom used. In 1969, it gained a new life after being repurposed by the Trinity Film Society, a student group on campus. The auditorium was refurbished in the style of a 1930s movie theater and became known as Cinestudio. In 1970, the theater hosted its first public showing and continues to function as a movie theater today. The showings range from foreign films to art house films to popular movies.
Sources
Public Art CT: McKim, Mead and White Architects.
Trinity Reporter, Winter 2020.
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, p. 74.
The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 298, 302-303.