MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

MIT's Building 20: The Magical Incubator Story, Anecdote, or Reminiscence

Little Red Riding Bike

Lisa Ann Bella
isabell@mit.edu

My earliest memory of MIT is of Building 20. I was about 4 years old. I used to ride my red bicycle with training wheels that had a little license plate on the back that said "LISA" through the hall of that old musty building. My father and mother occasionally took me into Cambridge and I would ride my bike along the Charles River. We always detoured through Building 20, my father had space in that building and he would always stop and show me something or check and make sure everything was OK.

Being the kid of two longtime MIT employees, I have spent most of my life at MIT, one way or another. My first paycheck came at the age of ten from RLE's Mary Scalleri for collating papers during a day off from school. Although I have been working at MIT for 12 years, every time I pass through Building 20, smell that old familiar musty odor, I see myself riding through the halls on my little red bike.