The Cairns Laboratory is named after Dr. Hugh John Cairns, Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1963-1968. As the Cairns Laboratory, it served as the initial headquarters for Dr. David Spector’s groundbreaking work in spatial recognition and gene expression. However, its origins are much more humble, as the building was first built as a sheep shed.

Around 1910, the Station for Experimental Evolution, a department of the Carnegie Institute, constructed a sheep shed on the site of what is now Cairns Laboratory. Sheep and goats were used to study heredity traits such as twin inheritance, extra nipples, and double horns. The studies attracted attention from the outside world, prompting scientist and inventor Dr. Alexander Graham Bell to donate a black ram with 6 nipples and then, in 1910, a 4-horned, 3-nippled sheep.

The heredity studies were productive and successful, and in 1917 a paper on “Family performance as a basis for selection in sheep” was published conjointly with Mr. E.G. Ritzman, animal husbandman at the New Hampshire Experiment Station, a partner of the Station for Experimental Evolution.