Walter's Lab

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Talk	Walter's Lab	No theories

City:	Boston
Jurisdiction:	Massachusetts
Country:	United States
First Seen:	Pilot
Mentioned:	Key Locale - All Episodes
Connections:	Science Team Fringe Science Explorations Doctor William Bell

Walter's Lab is located in a basement section of the Kresge Building, Longwood Campus of Harvard University, Boston, MA.

Contents 1 The Actual Lab 2 The Fictional Lab 3 Quotes 4 Floor Plan 5 Trivia

The Actual Lab

The Kresge Bldg lab of Dr. Bishop is located on one of Harvard's many campuses in the Boston Metropolitan area. In real life, the lab is located here. In the photo to the right, it is the odd-shaped building next to the main avenue... decidely different from the one portrayed in the show.
 Non-Fictional Building and Occupants
The Kresge Center for Environmental Health followed a tradition of working to understand the problems of cities and proposing standards and measures to protect public health. Established in 1958 as the Division of Environmental Health Sciences and Engineering at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), the inter-departmental consortium of researchers and teachers was renamed the Kresge Center in 1966. James Whittenberger was the center's first principal investigator and the architect of environmental science at the HSPH. Whittenberger, "one of the giants in environmental science" according to the director of the center's respiratory biology and inhalation toxicology core, had a strong interest in respiratory physiology but felt that the center should expand its focus beyond his own physiological emphasis.
Since its' inception, The Kresge Center has branched out into toxicology, environmental medicine, radiation biology, and occupational health. As a result of this expansion, the Kresge Center has initiated and participated in groundbreaking environmental research throughout its history and has continually contributed to public health policy formation. Researchers at the Kresge Center have devised and implemented a variety of new tools for conducting public health research. The center now has five core research programs: radiobiology and experimental carcinogenesis, biochemical and environmental toxicology, respiratory biology and inhalation toxicology, environmental epidemiology, and occupational health.

The Fictional Lab

Walter's Lab is located in the basement of the Kresge Building on the Longwood Campus of Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the site of Dr. Bishop's highly controversial, and often failed, Fringe Science experiments during the 1970's and 1980's. The laboratory was shared with Dr. William Bell for much of that time. It is unknown whether the lab was built specifically for Bell and/or Bishop, or whether it existed before that era, for other scientific explorers. In the early 1990's, the lab was shut down after Bishop was institutionalized, following the questionable death of his assistant, Carla Warren.
In 2008, during the course of the Pilot episode, and at the request of Agent Olivia Dunham, the FBI had the lab re-opened so Bishop could study, and cure, Agent John Scott's cellular decay. The lab was initially used to perform a synaptic transfer between Agents Dunham and Scott. There were many notes attached to various pieces of equipment in the lab: attached to the lighting box is a note which says "Turn off the lights".
The lab is equipped with various devices used for scientific research; some were present before the re-opening of the lab, and some were supplied by the FBI at the request of Dr. Bishop. One of the most prominent pieces of equipment is a large metal (sensory-deprivation) tank, which was used to immerse Olivia in supportive saline-water during her Synaptic Transfer.

Equipment added after the lab was reopened includes:

• A standard FBI forensics work package
• An optical coherence holograph (for flesh study)
• 2,000 lbs of silicon
• At least five anonymous blood samples from varying donors
• A NASA-grade micro-organism detector
• A two-year-old Bos Taurus aka. "Gene" - the cow

In the Season 4 timeline:

• Walter has turned his office into a bedroom, and lives there
• An aquarium and a mini-octopus

Quotes

• "So much... so much happened here... and so much is about to."- Walter (after his liberation from St. Claire's Hospital}

Floor Plan

A series of scraps appear to make up a blueprint floorplan for Walter Bishop's (and William Bell's) laboratory, as they appeared in Walter's Lab Notes. When properly sized and assembled, they provide the plan below:

Trivia

• Much of Harvard University is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Kresge Building, and the Longwood Campus, is located nearby in the southwest corner of Boston proper.
• Kresge is primarily occupied by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). While much of the HSPH is science-oriented, it is unlikely that the lost freshman in The Ghost Network had a "Poli-Sci 101" class scheduled in that particular facility.
• In his lab notes for There's More Than One Of Everything, Walter refers to the decision about the size and shape of the laboratory having been made personally by S. S. Kresge. The timing of Walter's early research is unclear, as is the idea that he may have been acquainted with the real S. S. Kresge.
• The sensory-deprivation tank bears a note which says "Watch your hands, heavy doors! Save your fingers, close with care."

—   Unanswered Questions   —

Theories about these questions should be addressed at the associated episode page

1) Do not answer the questions here.  2) Keep the questions open-ended and neutral: do not suggest an answer. More details...

• Why were freshman looking for "Poli-Sci 101" in the basement of a dedicated science facility?
• Does the Fibonacci ratio of the laboratory's dimensions lead to greater success (failure) of the projects initiated there?
• Is the portion of the laboratory shown (above) located in the upper left of the floor plan?