 By the 1890s , the observatory had become crowded by the rapidly growing university . <unk> of the <unk> along College Street just to the south , and the large quantities of metal used in the modern buildings surrounding the site threw off the instruments . A new magnetic observatory opened in 1898 in <unk> , at that time largely empty fields , [ 1 ] leaving the downtown campus location with its meteorological and solar observation duties . 
