Microsoft campus

Microsoft settled on a Redmond plot in January 1985, 29 acres to be developed by Wright Runstad & Company, leaving its Bellevue headquarters [1]. Work started that August, and the company took up a facility costing $25 million on February 26, 1986, with its initial public offering coming some weeks later [1]. That first campus covered 30 acres, held six buildings and fit about 800 people, a number that grew to 1,400 by 1988 [1]. The ground had been chicken farms in the 1920s, ultimately demolished, and the original buildings were numbered in sequence with one number skipped because a permit delay turned indefinite [1]. A pond among those buildings was nicknamed Lake Bill, for Bill Gates, and managers were thrown into it to mark a successful launch [1]. The site was leased from a pension fund manager until Microsoft bought it in 1992 [1].