Dwinelle Hall

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Located here: Classics, Rhetoric, Linguistics, History, Comparative Literature, South & Southeast Asian Studies, Film Studies, French, German, Italian Studies, Scandinavian, Slavic Languages, Spanish & Portuguese, ETS, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies

History

With more than 300,000 square feet of office and classroom space, an infuriating room-numbering system, and a layout often likened to a maze, Dwinelle is the second largest building on campus. It is named for John W. Dwinelle, a UC regent, state assemblyman, and author of the 1868 "Organic Act" establishing the University of California. In the center is Ishi Court, named in honor of a Native American "found" by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber near Oroville, CA, in 1911 and brought to live in the UC Berkeley Museum of Anthropology.

Because of its site on a hill, Dwinelle has ground-level entrances on four different floors, and the same "floor" may be on two different levels a few feet apart, thanks to the building's dual nature as classroom and office space with their differing height requirements.