The Saint-Pierre Cathedral (A.D. 1225 - 1568) of Beauvais, France was the inspiration behind Wilson Hall.   During the early 1950's there was a need for a new large accelerator facility in the United States, therefore a group called MURA (Midwestern Universities Research Association) was formed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission specifically to take on this enormous task. By the early 1960's the accelerator research panel had made several recommendations about the accelerator project. The panel reccomended that four things needed to be constructed to get the project under way. What the panel had suggested was that a super high current accelerator be constructed, a proton accelerator of approximately 200 GeV ( this would be Fermilabs original main ring) be constructed, storage rings needed to be constructed and a design study for an approximately 800 GeV machine needed to be formed. On November 21, 1967 President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill allowing the go ahead of the Fermi National Accelerator and by early 1968 congress approved funding to build the laboratory. In 1967 the Fermilab cost $243 million with an additional $120 million in 1983 to complete the Tevatron. The site chosen by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was just outside Chicago Illinois in a small town called Weston, Illinois. The first person chosen to take on the complicated task of running the Fermilab was Founding Director Robert R. Wilson, and from the outset Robert committed the laboratory to firm principles of scientific excellence, esthetic beauty, stewardship of the land, fiscal responsibility and equality of opportuniy (Fermi website, http://www.fnal.gov/pub/contact/index.html).