Daniel S. Schanck Observatory

Outfitted with telescopes, clocks, and other scientific equipment donated to Rutgers, the Schanck Observatory served as the university's first building of science and was used to provide instruction to its students from the mid-nineteenth through the late-twentieth centuries.

Since the completion of the renovation of the building, alumni and volunteers have hosted daytime guided tours of the historic observatory and vintage telescope on special occasions, such as Rutgers Day.

David Murray (1830–1905), professor of mathematics, natural philosophy and astronomy, proposed building the school's first astronomical observatory to the college's president, William Henry Campbell (1808–1890), and its board of trustees.[2]: p.91 [4]: pp.42–43, passim.

[7] In 1865, the trustees hired architect Willard Smith who provided a plan for a small two-story octagonal Roman Revival building designed after the Tower of the Winds, a first-century BC structure located in the agora of Athens, Greece that housed an ancient water clock and sundial.

[5][6] The Schanck Observatory was dedicated on June 18, 1866, with an address given by Joseph P. Bradley (1813–1892), a Rutgers College alumnus (AB 1836) and prominent attorney who four years later was installed as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The university's astronomy department operates a modern observatory—the Robert A. Schommer Astronomical Observatory—that is located on the roof of the Serin Physics Laboratory (built 1963) on the Busch Campus.