From A Pointed Roof To Living Room Of Scientists

The Pyramid in winter, Los Alamos Ranch School, c. 1924. Courtesy/Los Alamos Historical Society Archive

By Sharon Snyder
Los Alamos Historical Society
In the first three years of the Los Alamos Ranch School (LARS), the masters and boys all lived in a large, two-story log building known as the Big House. It contained rooms for students and masters, sleeping porches for the boys, a small library, classrooms, a kitchen and dining area, and a common room with a large fireplace.

​Perhaps with an eye to the future, LARS Director A.J. Connell had a square wooden structure built to the west of the Big House c.1920. The plain frame building couldn’t have been called aesthetic, but it offered quarters for two masters, each room with space for a desk and dresser and a bed on a sleeping porch. The new accommodations were soon referred to as the Pyramid, an appropriate name for a building with a four-sided pointed roof. The masters who moved into the Pyramid gained privacy but left behind modern amenities such as electric lights, indoor plumbing, and hot water.

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