OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Industrialist Simon Ramo (born 1913 in Salt Lake City, UT) and his wife, Virginia Smith Ramo (1916-2009), donated the funds to build the Ramo Auditorium in the late 1960s. Ramo, who earned a doctorate from Caltech in 1936, was an expert in microwave research and the development of RADAR. He co-founded the defense giant, Ramo-Wooldridge, with Dean Wooldridge (1913-2006), both Caltech graduates and ex-Hughes Aircraft employees, to produce technologies resulting in an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system for the United States. Ramo-Wooldridge became Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge (TRW) in 1958, a leading contractor for the US Air Force's Atlas Rocket Program. The Ramos were also generous donors to Virginia's alma mater, the University of Southern California, which named the Virginia Ramo Music Hall, in her honor.

The Ramo Auditorium measured 73 feet deep x 60 feet wide, with a stage 24 deep and 32 feet wide. It accommodated 381 people for "lectures, films, small concerts, experimental stage presentations, musical theater, symposia, and conferences." Its projection booth contained "Houses sound, lighting controls, and projection equipment." (See "Venues," California Institute of Technology, Campus and Community Relations Office,Accessed 06/26/2012.) It was fully ADA-compliant in 2012.

PCAD id: 17948