Construction on Princeton’s Schmidt Hall enters demolition phase

More than a century after Guyot Hall first opened its doors, construction crews are beginning to demolish the interior of the historic building as it transforms into Eric and Wendy Schmidt Hall, the new computer science building.

Guyot Hall, the former home of the geosciences department since 1909, is currently being “renovated extensively,” including mostly interior renovations. Geosciences formally moved into the newly constructed Briger Hall in 2025. The sitework at Guyot includes work on exterior utilities and the removal of hardscape surrounding the building, adding a new 131,000-square-foot structure to the current 98,000-square-foot hall. 

Wendy Schmidt, one of the new building’s main benefactors, said in a statement to The Daily Princetonian that the new building should serve as a place of collaboration where students have easy access to AI and machine learning tools for cross-disciplinary research. “When Eric [Schmidt] was an undergraduate studying Electrical Engineering in the E-Quad at the far edge of Princeton’s campus, there wasn’t even a major in Computer Science … Schmidt Hall symbolizes this transformation in the way we broadly use technology and use it for good,” she wrote.

The renovations were facilitated by a “transformative gift” from Eric Schmidt ’76 and his wife Wendy Schmidt, according to a University press release. Eric Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011 and later as executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. He also served as a University trustee from 2004 to 2008.

Currently, the computer science department is spread across several buildings on campus, including Friend Center and Corwin Hall. The new facility is set to bring the department together under one roof. 

“Once demolition and sitework finishes, digging for the foundations for the addition will begin, as well as renovation of the existing Guyot Hall building,” University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince’.

As the new home of the computer science department, Schmidt Hall will serve as a “vibrant and interdisciplinary hub for computational thinking,” according to the Facilities website. It is part of an initiative by the university to accommodate a growing School of Engineering & Applied Science community on campus. 

“Schmidt Hall should serve as the center of the campus, where student curiosity is fed by access to the rich resources of the faculty who guide them, and where students have access to AI and machine learning tools that enrich their studies, support their investigations, enable them to make new connections, and to conduct transformative research in all fields,” Wendy Schmidt wrote.

When construction is complete, the project will preserve much of the original building’s historic character while significantly altering and expanding its interior, according to Hotchkiss. The renovations will provide additional classrooms, teaching laboratories, offices, and collaboration meeting spaces. The building will also include a new indoor bike room and community spaces. 

“The current spread-out nature of our department has slowed this natural collaborative process,” wrote Szymon Rusinkiewicz, chair of the computer science department, in a statement to the ‘Prince.’ “We envisioned Schmidt Hall as not only a unified hub for these populations, but also as a prominent, centralized crossroads on campus to enable stronger links between computer science and other departments.”

Schmidt Hall will be home to two large lecture halls, smaller classrooms, and an “active learning” classroom designed for small-group instruction.

Kyle Jamieson, a professor and director of graduate studies for the computer science department, wrote that Schmidt Hall “promises not just more chance encounters between individual faculty and students, but importantly more interactions among labs in [the computer science] department and across the many centers and other departments close by.” 

The new facility will also provide new laboratories for both undergraduate and graduate student research in computational imaging, fabrication, robotics, human-computer interaction, wireless networking, and electronics. 

Rusinkiewicz wrote that many of these spaces exist now but “were retrofitted into whatever spaces we could find in the Computer Science building and Friend Center, meaning that instead of being designed as lab spaces from the outset, they were shoehorned into former office or library space.”

The Schmidts have made multiple philanthropic donations to the University in the past. In 2009, they established the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund, originally a $25 million endowment supporting the development of new technologies in the natural sciences and engineering. The couple also established the Schmidt DataX Fund, which expands data science research and education at Princeton. In 2020, the Schmidts provided a $5 million gift to establish an endowed professorship in Indigenous studies. 

According to Hotchkiss, workers have encountered original architectural elements that will need to be integrated with new construction, as well as structural connections around the building’s original windows that will need to be strengthened.

Frederick Fisher and Partners, the main architectural team behind the project, declined to comment.

Once demolition and sitework are finished, construction will move towards digging the foundation for the new additions. Renovation of the existing Guyot Hall building will also begin. It is slated for completion in Spring 2030, according to Hotchkiss.

“As artificial intelligence weaves its way into every subject and discipline, Princeton students need to be educated in the broadest way, so that the capabilities of new tools remain just that–tools in the service of broadly humanistic goals and not the other way around,” Wendy Schmidt wrote. “Schmidt Hall should be a center for this philosophical approach, which emphasizes Princeton’s historic focus on undergraduate education ‘in the nation’s service and in the service of humanity.’”

Riley Price is a News contributor for the ‘Prince’ and a member of the Class of 2030.

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