Today's post is another historical entry. As noted in my previous posts on the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis College, and the University of St. Thomas, I had been in Minneapolis for a few days for a board meeting and the weather there was very mild. I returned to the Memphis area where the highs are in the 90's and the humidity is severe. After a day of mowing my lawn in this heat, it had me reflecting about living in the southwest. It would get hotter in Lubbock, Texas, but the humidity was almost nonexistent. In the midst of one particularly hot summer there, my friend Keri, who was from southern Arizona, remarked that although quite warm, Lubbock paled in comparison to the heat she lived with for most of her life. It was not an understatement. I have been to various parts of Arizona in the summer and at times it was like being in a frying pan. One time driving through Arizona on my way to California, the tires on the car I was driving literally began to melt and come apart. Yet, I have also been in northern Arizona in the winter and not only was it cold, but there was also snow. A conference I attended many times was for years held in Tucson in February and it was delightful. All of this had me thinking of the first time I visited Arizona.

I was in Phoenix for the Second Biennial Conference on Minority Issues in Prevention in February 1998 and had the opportunity to visit the campus of Arizona State University for the first time. The conference was co-sponsored by Arizona State and the meeting was at a hotel in Tempe not too far from campus. The weather was perfect. The great weather and several hours of free time allowed for a very nice visit. I had been delayed leaving Lubbock, TX, where I was a doctoral student, due to rain of all things (we didn't get too much rain during my years there) and arrived in Phoenix to find spring in full bloom. 
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I had always intended to visit Arizona State, but this was my first opportunity. Being an academic nerd, I wanted to go by the Psychology Building to meet a professor there whose work I knew and who shared something in common with me – the same name. Stephen G. West was a full professor there at the time, and I had read many of his papers and I wanted to meet him or least see his office. As it happened, he was there looking at data on his computer. I introduced myself and told him I was a doctoral student at Texas Tech. As we chatted for a time he paused and remarked “Given the number of people in our field these days, I imagine it’s not statistically significant that there would be two of us who are Steve West’s”. Only an academic would say such a thing! He reminded me of Alan Reifman at Texas Tech, another individual who was a master at statistics and data of all kinds. He was right by the way; I have met a number of Steve West's in higher ed over the years. There was a Stephen P. West at UC Berkeley (I think he has retired), and another Steven G. West is the president of the University of the West of England. That Steve West, like me, has conducted research in addictions. Academe is a small world.

Since 1998, I have been to several universities and colleges in Arizona. I have probably spent more time at the University of Arizona than the rest combined. But given my reminiscing, I thought I would share some photos from my visit twenty-six years ago. As this is a recollection post, I won't dive too much into the history of the university. I will note that like many of the universities I have written about, ASU began life as a normal school, that is, a teacher training college. Of course, today it is an extremely large research-intensive university. It was at the time of my visit, and it has only grown since. If I get back that way and get to tour the campus I will write an additional post with more historical information.

I took what I considered a large number of photos with my point and shoot film camera of the era - 43! Two were duplicates, so today you have 41 scanned photos from my visit over a quarter of a century ago! I started to retouch them and correct glare, but then decided the historical look was fitting for the entry and left them as is. We start with two photos of my initial destination - the Psychology Building. The building sits at the corner of McAllister Avenue and Tyler Mall. Most sources say the building opened in 1971 however, it was not dedicated until April 26, 1973. That leads me to believe that construction began in 1971. I may be wrong about that, but it makes sense to me that it could be the case. The building was designed by local architecture firm Schwenn and Clark Associates. Donald Burnett Schwenn was a native of Iowa who came to Phoenix in 1959. He first went to work for the local architecture firm Ralph Haver & Associates. He would later start his own firm, initially called Schwenn and Associates. He would be joined by Phoenix native Gerald "Jerry" LaMont Clark. Clark would leave the firm in the 1970's. Both have notable reputations in Arizona both individually and for their work together. It comes in at 78,906 square feet. The building has been updated since my visit. 

The photo below is Old Main, the oldest structure standing on campus today. When it opened in 1898 it obviously was not called "Old". Back then it was simply called the Main Building. It was constructed about sixty feet north of the original four-room building in which classes began 1886. Unfortunately, you cannot make out too much detail in this old photo. In addition to red brick, the structure is clad in local stone quarried from the Tempe Butte nearby. The cost of construction came in at $44,071.34. That is about $1,668,206 in August 2024 value. It was the largest building in the area for quite some time and had the distinction of being the first building in Tempe that had electricity. 

The set below has four photos of what was then called the John J. Ross-William C. Blakeley Law Library. The building was quite new when I visited, having opened in the summer of 1993 and dedicated on November 5, 1993, less than five years prior to my visit. The building was designed by the Atlanta-based architecture firm Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects. Those who are interested in campus architecture likely know the firm. They have designed buildings at Carnegie-Mellon, Clemson, Emory University, Ohio State University, Syracuse, Tulane University, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Connecticut, and Wellesley College. The building cost $7.37 million to construct, which is just over $17 million in 2024 dollars. The law school and library has since moved into downtown Phoenix and the building is now Ross-Blakley Hall, home to the English department since 2017. The law library continues to carry the same name as well. The name comes from William C. Blakley, a local attorney and law school alumnus (Class of 1971) and John J. Ross. Ross was a Harvard trained attorney who was also a member of a prominent local firm. The first three photos in this set are of the north façade looking southwest. The last photo is the west façade as seen from across some intramural fields.

The set below begins with two photos of the Hayden Library, or more formally, the Charles Trumball Hayden Library. The library opened in 1966 with a formal dedication on November 22nd of that year. The building was designed by the Phoenix-based firm Drover, Welch & Lindlan, which is now known as DWL Architects + Planners. The building cost $3,345,773 to construct, which is about $33.4 million in current value. It is difficult to see from these old photos from my point and shoot 35mm film camera of the era, but what you see here are two views of the below grade entrance to the library. Apparently, when the building opened in 1966 it had ground-level entrances. Starting in 1989, the underground entrance you see here was (I believe) the sole entryway to the building. However, the library underwent an extensive twenty-two-month renovation in the years since my visit, and when it reopened in 2020 above ground entrances were reintroduced. Interestingly, the renovation came with a $90 million price tag. That works out to be about $112.7 million today. That is considerably more than the original price tag for the building even when adjusting for the cost of inflation. Part of that difference is related to the expensive of modern safety systems that were not required or even in existence in the 1960's, and part is due to the technology infrastructure that a modern building requires. From additional outlets to Wi-Fi and other wiring, we simply have more to put in a building regardless of any architectural features or furnishings. Still, the massive difference in cost shows just how much inflation has risen in sixty years. 

In the first photo, you can just make out West Hall. The building takes its name from its location. The last of four buildings constructed to create a quad, West was completed in 1936. It opened as a women's dorm. Just to the right in the same photo is McClintock Hall, also a dormitory. It is named in honor of James H. McClintock. A native of California, he moved to Arizona at age fifteen in 1879. He graduated from ASU (Class of 1887). He was for a time Justice of the Peace for Tempe. He joined the army during the Spanish-American War, during which he would rise to the rank of Colonel and be awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medial. He would later serve as the postmaster for Phoenix.
 
Charles Hayden was born in Connecticut in 1825 and like many of his era moved west in adulthood. He settled in Arizona when it was still a territory and established himself as a businessman, first in Tubac and later in Tucson. He would also become a judge and from these activities would become politically connected and wealthy. He moved to present-day Tempe in 1873 where he established a mill, a store, and a ferry across the Salt River. Indeed, the community was first called Hayden's Ferry. He used his political connections and heft to lobby for the creation of a normal school in Tempe which of course is now ASU. He believed the territory was in need of more teachers, a philosophy likely facilitated in part by the fact that his wife Sallie Calvert Davis was a teacher herself. Thus, important to the founding of Tempe and ASU, it is natural that such an important building as the university's main library would carry his name. Mount Hayden in the Grand Canyon is also named in tribute to him.

I didn't take any photos of the inside of the building, but I wish I had. It is interesting and it was jumping with activity during my visit. Academic libraries were experiencing what I would call a golden age in the 1980's and 1990's. The number of scholarly journals had increased substantially, yet they were still very much high-quality outlets. Collections ramped up, and research universities such as Arizona State and others had collections eclipsing the one million mark; many had collections in the multi-million range. Digital card catalogs came out and made it easier to locate things in collections, and databases for journals moved from book-form to CD's. Technology had not gotten to the point where everything was online, and hence people actually went to the library to do their research. Most collegiate libraries were buzzing with activity from early morning until late at night. It didn't matter if you were at a research university or a small liberal arts college, students and faculty were always going to the library. Today, most academic journals are online, and although the online format makes it much easier to get information, there have been a great many mediocre and less than credible online journals crop up. The largest crowds in many collegiate libraries are in the coffee shop, not the stacks. Times change, and a lot of what has happened - the ease of access to information, the ability to get information 24-hours a day - are good things. I still prefer going to the library and miss those days. 

The third photo in this set is of the trees of the library's courtyard area looking south. At least, that is the direction I think it is facing. I have looked at online photos and I believe this to be the case. If correct, that means the building itself is to the left and the view is overtop of some stairs leading down. Regardless, this is the Cady Mall by the library. You may not be able to tell it from these scanned images, but there were oranges all over the trees in the third photo. Being a student at Texas Tech, I had assumed we were having a warm winter in Lubbock, yet the oranges on the trees in Tempe took me by surprise. Obviously, metro Pheonix is warmer than the Llano Estacado.

The set below are the buildings of the School of Business. The first photo is the Business Administration C Wing. Groundbreaking for the building occurred on October 5, 1982 and it was formally dedicated in March 1984. It was designed by GSAS Architects. The building comes in at 105,400 square feet and cost $9 million to complete (about $27.2 million in 2024 dollars). The tennis courts you see here are no longer there. I may be wrong, but I believe that the current McCord Hall sits where they were once located (McCord was built long after my visit). If you know, please leave a comment. In some online photos the open stairwell you on the left side of the building appears to have some kind of slatted covering to it and the windows all have awnings.

The second through fifth photos show the connecting walkway between the Business Administration C Wing and the "New" Business Administration Building. The "New" part had been dropped by the time of my visit, for obvious reasons. It was completed in 1968, long before the C Wing and thus was no longer new. It was designed by Pierson, Miller, and Ware Associates of Phoenix. It comes in at 79,593 square feet and cost $1,541,721 to complete (not quite $15 million in today's value). This area now looks quite different. The waterfall and fountain are gone. I think the courtyard changed upon the construction of McCord Hall. The sign for the college has changed as well. The black lettering has been changed to silver and it now reads "W. P. Carey School of Business". The center column also has some kind of tile feature on it. I have not been there since this was changed. The new courtyard seems nice, but the old one looked nice as well. Perhaps it was in poor shape. The tile on the column does not appear to add much in terms of visual appeal to me, at least not in the online photos I have seen.

The first photo below is the Memorial Union, ASU's student center. Groundbreaking for the Union occurred on October 25, 1954, and it was officially opened in 1956. At that time, it had 106,000 square feet. It has been renovated and expanded several times since. I am not really sure just how big it was in 1998 when I visited, but today it has 254,000 square feet. As you might expect given the name its time of construction, it is meant to recognize those who died in military service, primarily in World War II and Korea. I am sure it more generally memorializes all who died in service of the nation. Two additions had been completed by the time of my visit, one in 1972 and another in 1984. The 1972 addition was the work of architect Thomas Stuart "T.S." Montgomery. A fire broke out in 2007 requiring repairs and renovation which were completed in August 2008. A significant renovation was undertaken in two phases which were completed in 2017. The second photo is a fountain which is just to the northwest of the union. Hayden library can be seen on the right of that picture.

The set below has two photos of the south façade of the Computing Commons building which sits at Palm Walk and Orange. The second photo shows the palms of Palm Walk along with some very good examples of early- and mid-1990's bicycles. It was also a relatively new building when I visited. It was dedicated on June 19, 1992. The building was designed by Anderson Debartolo Pan, Inc., a Tucson-based firm. The firm's founder was Jack Debartolo, Jr., His son, Jack Debartolo has an architecture firm in Phoenix. One of the firm's principals was Richard “Andy” Anderson who among other things was noted for his work on Olympic and Superbowl facilities. The firm grew to be one of the largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the nation and at its peak had five regional offices and more than 300 employees. The name of the company ended when it was bought out in 1995.  

The first photo in the next set is the Student Recreation building which sets southeast of the school of business complex. It was dedicated on August 17, 1989. It was designed by Parkin Architects in conjunction with Gabor Lorant Architecture, Inc. You cannot tell it from this photo of the main entrance, but it is a massive structure. It houses gyms, fitness equipment, swimming pools, and related spaces. There is also an olympic sized swimming pool behind it. The second photo is Physical Education West, which sits on the north side of the business school complex. 

The buildings in this set have a similar vibe as some of the buildings on the campus of the University of California, Irvine. Back in the 1990's at the time of my visit, there were so many Californians attending Arizona State that people used to jokingly refer to it as the University of California, Phoenix.

The set below all center on the Arizona State University Bridge which crosses over East University Drive connecting the main campus with the dorms, athletic facilities, and parking structures on the north side to the main campus on the south side of the street. Pedestrian bridges are quite common on college campuses these days, and although they were not rare then they were not something you saw as much as you do today. It reminds me of the original pedestrian bridge at the University of Tennessee. The first two photos were taken looking west toward the bridge. You can see a similar but clearer photo of the bridge on Dr. Mark Butler's blog here. He did his postdoc at ASU. The bridge is still there, of course, and it is fundamentally the same. The signage has changed, however. At some point, the words were removed and were replaced by the stylized ASU logo which appears to be backlit at night.

On the left is the George M. Bateman Physical Sciences Center. Dr. Bateman was the first Ph.D. to be hired at ASU. He came to Tempe in 1927 and developed the sciences for the university. He retired from ASU in 1968. On the right is the Palo Verde dorm complex. You can just see Palo Verde East in the first photo, with Palo Verde West on the other side of the bridge in both photos. Construction on Palo Verde East began in 1962 and was completed in 1964. Construction on Palo Verde West began in 1964, and I believe it was completed in 1966. Both were designed by the architectural firm Cartmell & Rossman. They look the same but are not identical. East comes in at 96,490 square feet whereas West is 99,000 square feet. Recent news reports have noted that East is in need of renovation. I believe West was renovated sometime after my visit, but I am not certain of that. 

The last photo was taken at the highest point of the bridge looking south toward the heart of campus. One of the things that surprised me about the bridge was just how steep it was compared to other pedestrian bridges with which I was familiar. The walkway is named Palm Walk for obvious reasons. The palm trees seen in this photo are apparently no longer there. After about a century of growth they were, as you can see, quite tall. Starting in 2016 they were replaced by date palm trees which are shorter and have a lower canopy for shade. They also produce dates, of course, and the university has an annual date harvest.

The next set of photos are of a group of buildings on the Cady Mall southwest of the Memorial Union. The first photo is what is now called Discovery Hall. I believe it was opened in 1948, although some sources say 1950. It could be that construction began in 1948 and it was finished in 1950, but I cannot say for sure. It opened with the name Sciences Building and it housed those units. I believe it was later called the Agriculture Building, although I may be mistaken about the name, and it merely housed agriculture units.

Across the mall from Discovery is the ​Interdisciplinary B building, seen in the second photo. My very quick online review provided me with virtually no information about the building aside from the fact that in recent years a solar panel array was installed on its roof (a common feature of many of the buildings at ASU these days). 
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At the end of the Cady Mall on the west is the Student Services Building. Groundbreaking for the building took place on December 8, 1986. The building is the work of the architectural firm Lendrum Design Group. It was dedicated on March 15, 1988. 

The next set of photos are of buildings that are not actually close to one another physically. I just put them in this set readability.
 
The first photo is of ​the Irish Hall B Dorm. There are three buildings called Irish Hall A, B, and C respectively. One of them was built in 1940, and I assume that is what is now called Irish Hall A. The various sources I found online contradicted each other about the dates of each building and having found no original source information I can't say for sure. The large tree seen in beside the building is no longer there and the little ones on the left are now much larger. The trees on the right are also gone. Its sometimes strikes me as weird that I have outlived trees. The buildings are named after Fred "Cap" M. Irish. Irish was an early sciences faculty member, as well as being the first football coach (1896-1906), first athletic director (1896-1913) and first registrar (1925). He also received an honorary degree from ASU in 1940. Although his tenure as football coach covered ten years, the team only played eight seasons. Further, they only played twenty games during that time! Some years saw them play only one game. Overall, he finished his coaching career with a 12 and 8 record. Just beyond the building is another dorm which also has a shared name, Best Hall B. As was the case with Irish, I was unable to find out too much about the building. It takes its name from M.O. Best, a member of the Arizona Board of Regents in 1945. In the background on the right, you can see the Grady Grammage Memorial Auditorium. There is a set of photos on it below.​

The second photo is the Barry M. Goldwater Center for Science and Engineering. It sits near the Psychology Building (see above). Groundbreaking for the 188,000 square foot structure took place on Saturday April 9, 1988. The building was designed by the large Anshen & Allen Architects firm (subsequently acquired by Stantec in 2010). Anshen and Allen was a prolific firm in all respects, and they designed buildings for many colleges and universities around the world. Construction costs for the building came in at $25 million, or some $81.4 million today. Mr. Goldwater, a Phoenix native, was a United States Senator and presidential candidate. A veteran of both World War II and Korea, he retired from the Air Force Reserve as a Major General.
 
​This set concludes with a photo of the Music Building. As you can see, the large circular portion of the building is reminiscent of the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium (see below). The building was designed by William Peters of Taliesin Associated Architects. Construction on the 84,039 square foot building began in 1970. 

The set below begins with a view of the Life Science Tower E Wing. Like the Computing Commons Building, it was designed by the Anderson Debartolo Pan architecture firm. It was opened in the same year as Computing Commons, having been dedicated on September 30, 1992. It is connected by the bridge seen in the last two photos to the Life Science Tower C Wing. The C Wing is the part you see in the last photo. It opened considerably earlier in 1972. It was designed by the architecture firm Varney, Sexton, and Sydnor.

In this set, we have a few photos of the Grady Grammage Memorial Auditorium. The iconic building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. What I am about to write will sound heretical to many. But I will admit, I am not terribly fond of many of Wright's designs. A few of his houses speak to me, but most of his larger scale work seems cartoonish to my eyes. I know this is sacrilege to most architecture buffs, but they are just not my cup of tea. My older brother is a big Wright fan, and we have had some disagreements about him over the years. Like many (perhaps most) architecture buffs, he can't seem to fathom how anyone (let alone his younger brother) could not fawn over everything Wright designed. I had, of course, seen many photos of Grammage prior to my visit and I was excited to actually see the building in person. It is interesting and generally fits with the rest of campus (at least the way campus looked back then). I was disappointed that I was not able to go inside. I have to say that it is one of only a couple of his commercial designs that I like. I don't love it, but it has a 1950's element to it that I appreciate. Despite what I would call a 1950's vibe, the building is a product of the 1960's. Groundbreaking occurred on the morning of May 23, 1962 and construction began in earnest a short time later on June 5. The 134,705 square foot structure was completed on September 16, 1964 at a total cost of $2,720,000 (just over $28.3 million in 2024). That was quite a bargain. 

Grady Gammage was born in Arkansas in 1895. He had tuberculosis and, in a move that was common at the time, moved west in 1912. He began working as a groundskeeper at the University of Arizona, from which he would graduate with both a bachelor's and master's degree. After graduation, he moved to take on the position of superintendent of the Winslow, Arizona Public Schools in 1922. In the summer, he taught courses at Northern Arizona State Teachers College, now Northern Arizona University. He moved there full time in 1925 when he became vice president. Amazingly, he was named the 7th president just a year later. He would stay at NAU until 1933 when he moved to Tempe to take the presidency of ASU. He would stay at ASU as president until his death in December 1959. He had been wanting to build a new auditorium on campus since 1956, when the roof on the existing auditorium had collapsed. He was friends with Wright and asked him to design a new one. Wright had previously proposed an opera house for King Faisal II of Iraq to be built in Baghdad. When Faisal was assassinated in a coup in 1958, the project was obviously scrapped. Wright used the opera house as the basis for ASU's auditorium, hence the 1950's vibe I get from it. He even picked the site on campus for the project. But like Gammage, Wright would die in 1959. Architect William Wesley Peters would finish the details. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The last photo of this set was taken at Gammage looking back toward campus. You will have to really look to see why I took this photo. The curved lights along both sides of the walkway really impressed me. 

The set below give you three views of Sun Devil Stadium, the home of the ASU football team and at the time the Fiesta Bowl. My good friend Keri completed her master's degree at ASU and she was there in 1992 when my alma mater Tennessee played (and lost to) Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl. She had seen a number of teams come to town but remarked that the largest and most openly supportive group were the Tennessee fans. She may have said obnoxious, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt and leave it as "openly supportive". I was not surprised either way. Vol fans are true believers in their team and their open enthusiasm can be seen by some as supportive and by others as obnoxious. Just eleven months after my visit, Tennessee would return to the Fiesta Bowl to beat Florida State and win the National Championship over Florida State 23 to 16 on January 4, 1999. Back then, the stadium had seating for 73,379 but it has shrunk by nearly 20,000 today. Reducing seating is not uncommon today. Universities are adding luxury suites and other amenities and the need for the space to make those changes often comes at the expense of overall capacity. 

Everyone knows that the athletics teams at ASU are named the Sun Devils. As is often the case, this was not actually their first name. As noted above, the university began its life as a Normal School, and it was this orientation that led to their first name: the Normals. I kid you not. I didn’t look it up, but I don’t know of any other university that used that moniker. I can’t imagine they were the only Normals out there though. It's a weird enough name that I imagine at least one other Normal School used it. None the less, it isn’t a particularly great nickname to have. But the name had staying power. They were called the Normals from 1885 until 1922. They subsequently changed their name to the Bulldogs and had a matching mascot. You can read reports online that at in between being called the Normals and the Bulldogs, they were the Owls. There is no official record of that being the case, and at one point the university's historian said the university never used the name or any kind of owl mascot. Regardless, the Bulldog name hung around until 1946, when the current Sun Devils name was chosen. The story goes that then football coach Donn Kinzle was on a run along the Salt River when a dust devil formed near him. From that, he immediately came up with the idea for the Sun Devil. The idea was put to a vote and the students overwhelmingly chose it as the mascot. Regardless of name, the university’s colors have seemingly always been maroon and gold. The sign in the second photo has Sparky the Sundevil on it. Sparky was the creation of ASU alumnus and Disney animator Berk Anthony, although the design was modified over time.

Next, we have what was known as the Wells Fargo Arena at the time of my visit and which is now called the Desert Financial Arena. The home to basketball, commencements, concerts, and other activities, the arena opened in 1974 as the ASU Activity Center. The name had changed to Wells Fargo in 1997, only about a year prior to my visit. The name would change to Desert Financial in 2019. Groundbreaking for the arena occurred in 1972 and when it was completed the price tag came in at about $8 million or about $56.6 million in 2024 value. That is pretty inexpensive. The arena seats 14,198. For such a large university and one that was previously part of the Pac-12 and now part of the Big 12, the arena seems both old and a bit small. The arena was designed by Phoenix-based architecture firm Drover, Welch & Lindlan, the same firm that designed the Hayden Library.

A friend of mine in high school had grandparents who lived in the Phoenix area, and he had visited the campus prior to our senior year and brought back some brochures and such. I had always found the idea of living in the desert southwest to be intriguing and looked earnestly at the catalog he had picked up at ASU. It seemed too far away to consider seriously at the time, and by that point I had narrowed the list of schools to which I would apply to a small group and felt I was too far along the path to change directions. Walking around campus did not make me regret my choices, but I liked the campus a lot none the less.

I thought about something as I finished this post. These days, campuses have their logos plastered everywhere on campus. I generally include a photo or two of the various lamppost signs in every post because they are so common. Logos crop up on doormats, soap dispensers, and even water towers these days. That was not always the case, and indeed it was not the case when I visited ASU in 1998. The only things I remember are visible here: the building signs all had the stylized ASU on them, and the stadium had the Sparky the Sun Devil mascot. Universities have spent a lot of effort (and money) creating style guides and brand standards in the last twenty years, and the plastering of symbols on campus is just one part of it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I don't think anyone at Arizona State (or anywhere else) in 1998 felt it was particularly necessary. As an undergraduate, I was a Tennessee Volunteer, and I did not need everything on campus to be painted orange and white and have logos on it to make me feel like I was part of the campus culture. To be sure, I wore Tennessee t-shirts (as seen in various posts in this blog), but aside from building signs and things up around campus at Homecoming and commencement, there was not much on campus that carried the Tennessee brand. The campus and the school's reputation were its brand. In terms of brand standards, universities these days feel it's necessary to have a brand like a commercial product or company. They put the school colors and logos on everything to facilitate a campus culture. I think that is all good and well, but a lot of research indicates that students feel less connected to their schools today than in just about any other period in modern history. It seems that despite the tremendous effort to help create a campus culture, students are generally less likely to think of themselves as part of their college community, and certainly less so than in my day when such things were nonexistent. Times change.

As noted in my previous post on the University of Minnesota, I was in Minneapolis for a board meeting and had some time to look around the city thanks to an extremely early morning flight. It has been a while since I posted on a community college, so when I saw that the hotel in which I was staying in Minneapolis was just less than a mile’s walk from campus I made sure to visit. As I have mentioned in my posts on Arkansas State University Mid-south, Northwest Mississippi Community College, and Southwest Tennessee Community College, community colleges are often viewed as "less than" four-year colleges and universities. This is particularly case for many faculty at four-year institutions. The mission of two-year schools is, of course, different than that of four-year schools, but different does not necessarily less. Thus, I try to give attention to these colleges as often as I can.

What would become the college started life as a school for girls. It was founded by Elizabeth Fish in 1914. Ms. Fish was the first principal and namesake of the school. It was independent of the local school district and provided training mainly in domestic sciences. Boys would be admitted in 1921. It merged with the Minneapolis Public Schools and in 1932 it would acquire a new name, the Mary Miller Vocational High School. Mary Miller was a pioneer in the area and opened the first school in Minneapolis in 1852. Although the name was lost, Ms. Fish is remembered today with a scholarship at the college that bears her name, the Elizabeth Fish Memorial and Bertha Beret Endowed Scholarship. Sometime in the 1960’s the name would change to the Minneapolis Area Vocational Technical Institute. It would change again in 1965 to the Minneapolis Community College and was part of the Metropolitan State Junior College. That name did not last long either, as by 1974 it was changed to the Metropolitan Community College System. The Metropolitan Community College System was short lived, so the school changed its name again to Minneapolis Community College in 1979. Sometime in the early 1980’s the college moved to its current location on Hennepin Avenue, on a 9.59-acre site adjacent to Loring Park. In addition to acquiring a new site, it once again received a new name, the Minneapolis Technical Institute. That name was also short lived, and it was renamed the Minneapolis Technical College within a few short years. That name actually stayed around for a few years, although not a terribly long time. In 1995, the state created the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. As part of that effort, the college was combined with the Minneapolis Community College and in 1996 the institution emerged with the name of Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC). The name changed to its current moniker in 2022. That is a significant number of changes in such a short time. So much so, in fact, that the college still has the Minneapolis Community and Technical College name on the side of the Technical Building (see below) and a variety of other things.  

The first photo is of the Ackerberg Science Center (foreground) and the Technical Building as I approached the campus from the east along Hennepin Avenue. Ackerberg got its name in honor of Sanders "Sandy" Ackerberg. Mr. Ackerberg was a former member and president of the college’s foundation board. Born in Minneapolis in 1923, Ackerberg was part of the Greatest Generation and as such fought in World War II. He was a B-24 pilot in the 7th Army Air Corps in the Pacific. After the war, he returned home to enroll in the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated with a degree in architecture (Class of 1949). He lived out his life as an architect and developer in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, I was not able to find out much about the building which carries his name. Mr. Ackerberg passed away in December 2009. 

As you can see and as noted above, the Technical Building still carries the college’s previous name. I was a bit surprised by that, especially seeing as how it would be east enough to modify the sign. The college’s logo is still the same. The enclosed walkway you see extending from the building connects to the college's parking deck on the other side of Hennepin. An aside here on this point. Growing up, I always called such structures "parking garages". When I moved to Richmond, Virginia I found the locals there refer to them as "parking decks" when they are above ground, and "parking garages" when they are below ground. Still, regardless, many people there simply call them parking decks. This parking structure at Minneapolis College carries a fairly common Midwest moniker, a "parking ramp". To this day, I still use the Virginia style for decks and garages despite the fact that in Memphis where I live today everyone calls both versions a parking garage. Regional colloquialisms are interesting things and unfortunately thanks to the ease of information sharing in our technical age, less common. The Technical Building opened in either 1979 or 1980. I've seen both dates online and am unsure of which is correct. It opened with the name "T Building".  The last four photos show the Technical Building's west façade. The greenspace you see in these photos was completed in 2010. The enclosed walkway you see in the last photo connects the Technical Building with the Helland Center (see below).

The college had moved to its present site in 1967 and there were four buildings on campus from a previous tenant. I am not sure what happened to those structures, but believe they were all razed to make way for the current buildings on campus.

​Next, we have two photos of the Management Education Center. The land on which it sits was once the location of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's Minneapolis location. I don't believe the existing building, at the least the part with the dark black glass, was part of that office but I may be mistaken. The older building was undergoing some kind of work to make it suitable for their new baccalaureate initiative. ​This sits behind the Ackerberg Science Center to the south.

The set below begins with a view of Wheelock Whitney Hall from Hennepin Avenue looking south. It is one of two buildings to carry the Wheelock name. It takes its name from Wheelock “Whee” Whitney, Jr. A classmate of future President George H.W. Bush at both Phillips Andover and Yale University, and like President Bush was in the Navy during World War II. Mr. Wheelock was a businessman who, among other roles, was CEO of the J.M. Dain & Company and was president of the Investment Bankers Association of America. His first wife, Irene, who passed away from cancer in 1986, struggled with alcoholism which led Wheelock to co-founded the Johnson Institute, an addiction treatment center. He was also the chair of the National Council on Alcoholism. He was active in all manner of health concerns in Minnesota where he helped to found the Minnesota Council on Health and served on the boards of the Minnesota Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Minnesota Council on AIDS. ​The building was named in his honor in 2003 and houses the college's library. Mr. Wheelock died in 2016 at age 89.

The second photo shows an enclosed walkway connecting the Lee and Barbara Kopp Hall, which is more or less attached to Whitney, to the Technical Building. Enclosed walkways are, of course, a staple in Minneapolis and other locations in Minnesota, where they protect pedestrians from the intense winter cold. Kopp opened in 1978 as the C Building. Lee Kopp was a businessman who worked for the Dain Bosworth company for thirty years before he founded and led the Kopp Investment Advisors company in 1990. He and wife Barbara founded the Kopp Family Foundation which supports a variety of causes, but which largely supports college students via numerous scholarships. The Kopp's have donated more than $2.2 million to the college since 1995. The last three photos are of south side of Kopp Hall.

The set below begins with two photos of the Philip C. Helland Center. Construction began on the building in 1984. A renovation and addition was completed in 2012 which added 5,416 square feet to the building and connected to the Irene H. Whitney Fine Arts Center next door. The renovation and addition was the work of LHB Architects, a Minneapolis-based firm which has designed buildings at Carleton College and Lake Superior College among others. Philip Helland was the founding chancellor of the Minnesota Community College System, a position he held for twenty years until retiring in 1993. He graduated from Augsburg University (Class of 1942) and joined the Army Air Corps during World War II. He flew he flew 29 missions as a navigator. If you are keeping count, that was four more than he needed to get to go home to the state. For actions in the war, he was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, four air medals, and four bronze stars. After the war he earned a master's in teaching from the University of Minnesota and later an Ed.D. from Teacher's College, Columbia. He and his wife donated funds to create the Philip and Ruth Helland Scholarship at Augsburg in memory of Judith Maria Helland. He passed away in 2012. The first two photos show another enclosed walkway, this one connecting the Technical Building with the Helland Center. The third is a close-up of the front (west façade) of the building. The columns and glasswork you see in that shot are part of the 2012 renovation/addition. The Helland Center is the college's student union. The fourth photo is the same enclosed walkway, this time viewed from the opposite looking westward. The last photo is the Irene H. Whitney Fine Arts Center. It is named in honor of Wheelock Whitney's late first wife Irene (née Hixon). It was built sometime in the 1980's and was renovated as part of the 2012 effort. It has a performance hall, exhibition space, classrooms, and offices. Mrs. Whitney passed away from cancer in 1986.

I will close with the Minneapolis College version of the ever-present campus lamppost sign. Today, Minneapolis College has 9,131 students and a lovely campus near downtown. The campus has some 1.2 million square feet of buildings and an operating budget over $53 million. In 2023, the college awarded 744 Associate degrees, 486 Certificates, and 107 Diplomas. It is an important component of higher education in Minneapolis and the rest of Minnesota.

I was walking back to my hotel after visiting Minneapolis College and the route I took had me beeline my way to the Minneapolis campus of St. Thomas University. If you are familiar with the university, you know its main campus is a few miles away across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. Given the time, I would have loved to make my way over there, but as is always the case time was not something I had in abundance. None the less, I was pleased to be able to see the Minneapolis campus. These days, it is not uncommon for universities to have satellite campuses, particularly in nearby communities or the downtowns of major cities in the same state. Often, these are “centers” which are located in rented facilities. Even when such centers are in university-owned buildings, the locations are typically just classroom spaces with a few faculty and administrative offices, not full-fledged spaces as you would find on campus. In St. Thomas’ case, the campus is owned by the university, the facilities carry the same architectural themes as the main campus, and entire colleges/schools are located on the campus. Although not unique, this kind of thing is not the standard. 

The university’s roots go back to 1885. John Ireland, the Archbishop of the then-named Diocese of St. Paul, wanted to establish a Catholic seminary in response to the growing number of immigrants arriving in the area. Ireland was a highly influential person in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and the region. His background is better left to another post where I can dive more into his work getting the university started. Perhaps if I can get back to the area and visit the main campus in St. Paul, I can dedicate more time to him. You can look him up in the meantime. In addition to the university, he was instrumental in getting two massive cathedrals constructed in St. Paul and Minneapolis respectively.  An existing Catholic Industrial School was chosen as the site for the new institution and subsequently renovated for that purpose. The new institution was to be a seminary, high school, and college. It opened its doors to students on September 8, 1885, as the St. Thomas Seminary. Over time, the institution spun off the high school and seminary, became the College of St. Thomas, and finally the University of St. Thomas in 1990.

St. Thomas began offering classes in Minneapolis in 1987. At the time, they rented space in the former Powers Department Store building at 5th Street and Marquette Avenue. The location was a success and quickly gained steam. So much so that the university moved quickly to establish a permanent location in downtown.  

The photos that follow have the buildings in order as I saw them walking back from Minneapolis College. The first building I came to was the School of Law Building. The building is the work of Opus Architects and Engineers, now called the Opus Group. The firm has experience in the design of academic buildings for a number of colleges and universities including the nearby University of Minnesota. They also designed Schulze Hall (see below) as well as McNeely Hall on the main campus in St. Paul. In all, the company designed and/or built nearly two dozen of St. Thomas’ buildings. Opus was founded by St. Thomas alumnus Gerald “Gerry” Rauenhorst (Class of 1948). After completing his studies in economics, he went to Marquette University where he completed a second bachelor’s degree in engineering. He worked for a few years before starting Rauenhorst Construction. It was a humble start, but the company would grow to be a juggernaut. Indeed, every building on St. Thomas’ Minneapolis campus was a work of Opus. The company changes its name to Opus in 1982. 

The Boston, MA based firm Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott served as consulting architects on the structure. The building has 152,000 square feet of space and is a one-stop shop for the law school. It houses all classrooms, faculty and administrative offices, student space, and the law library. Unfortunately, as it was Saturday, all of the buildings were closed so I was unable to take any photos of the inside. Total costs for the building came in at about $31 million (which is just over $55 million in today’s value). The School of Law Building sits on Harmon Place between 11th and 12th streets. The fountain and courtyard you see here sit to the east of the building. The university's sign sits on the corner of 11th and LaSalle Avenue beside a parking lot east of the courtyard. The fourth photo in this set is the building as viewed from the north side of 11th Street. The last photo is the building's corner stone on Harmon Place.

Directly across 11th Street from the School of Law Building is Schulze Hall, home to the ​eponymously named Schulze School of Entrepreneurship. The name is in honor of Richard and Sandra Schulze who donated $50 million to the university in 2000. Richard founded the retail giant Best Buy. A native of St. Paul, he began the company in 1966 with a single location and the name Sound of Music. Over time, the company grew, but when the chain hit nine stores a tragedy of sorts struck. A tornado basically levelled one of the locations. You may be wondering why I would describe a tornado destroying a building and its contents as a "tragedy of sorts". Afterwards, Schulze held a "tornado sale" at one of the other locations and it was so successful that he changed both the format and the name of his stores. From that point forward, the locations would all be much larger and carry the Best Buy name. Thus, for Schulze, the tragedy led to good fortune. Indeed, over time he would become a billionaire. In addition to donating to St. Thomas to create the School of Entrepreneurship, the Schulze has given $40 million to the University of Minnesota to support diabetes research, $49 million to the Mayo Clinic for a cancer research center, and millions more to other charities and causes across Minnesota. The building cost $22 million to construct, which equates to about $36.6 million in today’s value. It has 86,000 square feet of space across its four floors. Schulze's groundbreaking occurred on June 10, 2004 and it opened just over a year later in September 2005. A formal formally dedication was held on October 20, 2005. Several of the buildings on campus are known for their interior artwork, including what is described as some impressive frescos. I believe Schulze is one such building, but again I was their on a Saturday morning and was not able to enter any of the buildings to see.

​The first photo of this set is a view of the building from the south near the university's sign seen in the first set above, from across 11th Street. As you can see, the building has some gothic references although are not truly Gothic or Neo-Gothic in style. You can see an enclosed pedestrian bridge which crosses 11th Street connecting it with the School of Law Building. The building on the right in the first photo is Terrence Murphy Hall, home to the Opus College of Business. The second and third photos are closeups of the 11th Street side of the building. The fourth photo is a view of the building's west side on Harmon Place. The building is directly connected to Terrence Murphy as you can see in the fourth photo. This was taken looking north across a courtyard, called the called Terrence Murphy Courtyard. Inside the courtyard is the statue you see in the sixth photo. 

The statue is a piece called “The Entrepreneur” by artist Dean Kermit Allison. It is a fitting adornment by a business school building. According to Allison, the statue depicts the attempts by a self-made man to make something of himself. Note how the figure is literally chiseling himself out of the stone base, reflecting an entrepreneur’s work to create something. The hand holding the chisel has scars from errant hits from the hammer, denoting the mistakes he has made in the process. Yet he toils on to make something for himself. Interestingly, an earlier casting of the statue stands on the campus of another university. If you ever find yourself in Fayette, Iowa, take a stroll over to Upper Iowa University (UIU) and their Andres Center for Business & Education. There you will find the same statue standing on a large base of what I believe is granite. The piece was installed at UIU in 1988 and is dedicated to Theodore “Ted” Johnson. Johnson, who passed away in 2005, was a member of the UIU Board and a long-time supporter of the university. Monsignor Terrence Murphy was a long serving president of the university. I will detail him more below, but you can see a photo of him standing in the courtyard in 2000 here.​

The set below is of Terrence Murphy Hall. The building was the first to be constructed on the Minneapolis campus, and as such initially carried the name “Minneapolis Campus Building”. The building, which has some 150,000 square feet of space, opened in 1992. You can see of photos of the building under construction in 1992 here and here. Renamed in 2000 in honor of Monsignor Terrence Murphy, St. Thomas’ president from 1966 to 1991.  That is an extraordinarily long time to be a college president, even back then and even considering that the university is a private entity. I imagine people liked him, and undoubtedly respected him for his tenure in that role to be so long. For the most part, president's tended to stay in such roles longer in the past than they do today, but twenty-five years is a very long time. The building is the home to the Opus College of Business. I am fairly certain the name is in honor of Opus Architects and Engineers/the Opus Group and Gerry Rauenhorst. The building on the left in all of these photos is Schulze Hall.

Finally, the set below is of Opus Hall, home to the School of Education. It too is the work of Opus Architects and Engineers. There at least three other Opus Halls at colleges in the U.S. of which I am aware. The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC has a dorm that carries the name, as do residence halls at Creighton University in Nebraska and Saint Mary’s College in Indiana. Opus comes from the Latin Opus Dei, or the Work of God. A number of Catholic K-12 schools across the country have buildings which carry the Opus name as well. The building sits on the north side of 10th Street and is connected to the other buildings on campus via an elevated pedestrian walkway which connects with Terrence Murphy Hall. The first two photos are views of the south side of the building as you approach it along Harmon Place. The third photo shows more of the south façade along 10th Street. The last photo is the pedestrian bridge connection to Terrence Murphy Hall. An official groundbreaking ceremony was held on October 8, 1997. You can see photos of it under construction here and here. It was dedicated on September 23, 1999.

​Since the buildings were closed my time on the campus was short. As noted above, I would have loved the opportunity to see the frescos and the various things inside the buildings, but that was not in the cards for me on this visit. Despite its downtown location, there is still a campus feel as you walk around the place which is pretty remarkable given the limited number of buildings and the urban landscape. One thing did surprise me – I did not see a single university lamppost sign. Given their common appearance and the downtown location, I thought for sure there would be some around to demark the campus. None the less, it is a nice campus and I imagine it hums with activity when students are around. 

I had been on a road trip with my family, and we stopped in Dayton, Ohio, to take our sons to see the National Museum of the Air Force Museum. If you have not been to the Air Force Museum, I highly recommend a trip. It is massive! It is the largest collection of military aircraft in the world. Although it does not have civil aircraft, its collection is, I believe, larger than that of both locations of the National Air and Space Museum combined. Regardless, it is an awesome museum with much more on display than aircraft. There are loads of exhibits and you could spend a couple of days there if you took the time to read every display. Plus, it’s free. At dinner afterwards, I thought I might get up early and run over to Wright State University and look around. But, after a very long day at the museum and about a week on the road we were all exhausted and turned in early. As I drifted off, I figured we would sleep in and then be on our way and that a visit to Wright State would have to wait for another day. As fate would have it, I woke up at 5:30am fully rested and refreshed. While the family slept, I grabbed breakfast and headed over to campus just as the sun came up.

This was only my second time on campus and quite honestly, I did not remember a great deal about it from my first visit. I had interviewed for and been offered a job there when I was a doctoral student in early 2000. That was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The people were nice, but it just wasn’t the right place for me. I had not been back to the campus since. Indeed, aside from transiting through the Cleveland and Cincinnati airports, I had not really been to Ohio in decades. It had been hot (for the area) the day before but given the early hour it was a perfect morning for a long walk around the campus. 

As colleges and universities go, Wright State is a young institution. Most colleges and universities in the U.S. experienced significant gains in enrollment immediately after World War II. Veterans poured into higher education thanks to the GI Bill and schools had massive enrollments. These new college graduates helped fuel a massive economic boom beginning in the 1950’s. Manufacturing in the U.S. grew, new technologies fueled the economy, and the Baby Boom generation was swelling the population. Ohio played an important role in the economy. Manufacturing and high-tech industries could be found across the state. Dayton was part of this growth and benefited from the presence of the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Although the state benefitted from numerous public colleges and universities there remained a need and an interest in a new institution. Dayton is in an interesting location for such a school. It is within a rather short drive of two major population centers in the state – Cincinnati to the southwest and Columbus to the northeast. Both of these cities are blessed with large public universities in the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State. Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio to the northwest of Cincinnati, is also close. An outsider might think that trying to establish a new independent college, let alone a new university so close to these existing institutions would be foolhardy. If nothing else, it would seem to be an idea that these existing universities would oppose. After all, who wants additional competition so close? I am sure there were elements who held this view. Undoubtedly there was concern in administrative offices across the state. There were likely state representatives and senators who were vocally opposed to creating another public school, let alone one so close to existing universities. Yet, support for Wright State’s creation was, as such things go, easy. Public support in Dayton was strong, civic leaders in the city and the region worked together to get the institution going. And despite the competition that a new university would create, the leaders of both Ohio State and Miami University lent their support to help create what would become Wright State University. Their support was so strong and genuine that two buildings on Wright’s campus bear the names of presidents of these universities. As someone in higher education this is remarkable! It's hard to imagine the case where such a thing could happen. Such was the support Wright State enjoyed. 

There was talk getting a new public college in the area for some time and with good reason. The rise of the Baby Boom generation was being felt everywhere, and particularly so in Dayton. The metro area had a population of about 295,000 in 1940, but that swelled to 400,000 by 1960 and 540,000 by 1968. Growth was everywhere, and the people of Dayton wanted some of that for their hometown. Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes was very much an infrastructure man and during his time in office worked to increase the state’s transportation networks, parks and recreation facilities, and colleges. He wanted a public college to be within thirty miles of every Ohioan. Regular readers of this blog may recall in my post on Jackson State Community College, that during the same time frame, the state of Tennessee made the pledge to locate a public college within fifty miles of its citizenry. 

Although support for a new institution was received from most quarters, several people played crucial roles in its creation. Stanley Charles Allyn was the CEO of the Dayton-based giant National Cash Register, or NCR. If you are unfamiliar with the name or the acronym by which it was known for decades, it was far more than a cash register business. It was a high tech firm creating and using the latest cutting edge technology. He was keen on seeing a better and larger educated workforce in the area. He was the founder and first chair of the Area Progress Council, a group involved in a number of initiatives with the creation of new university chief among them. He led the charge along with other local leaders including Robert Oelman, David Rike, and Frederick White. Buildings are named after these individuals and with good reason. The Council estimated the need to raise $6 million for the creation of the university and together they and the companies they represented gave $3 million. Dr. Novice Fawcett was the president of Ohio State at the time and he came out in vocal support of a new institution. Dr. John Millett was president of Miami University in nearby Oxford, OH, and he too supported its creation. He was subsequently the first Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents and used his position there to help the institution get approved and become operational. Buildings carry the Fawcett and Millett names as well and rightfully so. In April 1962, a new fundraising group was created called the Combined University Building Fund. By June of that year over 10,000 people had contributed to the fund to the tune of $3 million. The university had the funds it needed to go forward. The federal government donated lands beside the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as did the state. Additional acreage was purchased. The state gave permission for the school to begin construction and operation as the Dayton Campus of Miami University and Ohio State University. At the time, the campus was too far away from any municipality to be connected to water and sewer services, so Wright-Patterson stepped in and connected the campus to its grid until a public connection could be made.

The university opened with great fanfare on September 8, 1964. Although still in its embryonic phase, 3,203 students were enrolled that fall. Given that the university was brand new and had use of only one purpose built structure, people flocked to enroll. They were greeted by fifty-five faculty. Among them was C. Dewitt Hardy who joined the university in 1963 and aided in its development and launch. The first faculty member to be hire, Hardy would stay at Wright until his retirement in 1976. In 1965, a level of independence was achieved from Miami and Ohio State when the legislature gave the institution its own Advisory Committee, a precursor to a formal board of regents. The state determined that full independence would be granted when the institution's enrollment hit 5,000 but not before July 1, 1967. Wright State would hit that number quickly and on October 1, 1967 became a fully independent institution. Today, Wright State has over 10,200 students on the campus in Dayton and in excess of another 1,200 on off-site campuses. Its endowment is pushing $100 million and they over 1,100 teaching faculty. Through good times and bad, the university has grown into a comprehensive research university.
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This post will follow the route I took around campus and begins with the Wright State sign signaling the main entrance to campus at Colonel Glenn Highway and University Boulevard. You may not be able to tell it in this photo, but it is a very large tower.

I began my visit at the ​Student Union. As you can tell see from the first photo, the sun was just coming up when arrived on campus. The photos in this set were taken as began and then ended my visit, so you have a combination of daybreak and early morning photos. The Student Union opened in 1969. It was initially called the University Center. The former is by far the common name for student centers, but I prefer the latter simply because that was the name we used during my time as a student at the University of Tennessee. Like Wright State, Tennessee now refers to its student center as a student union. Part of the current Student Union is the former James A. Rhodes Physical Education Building completed in 1973. The Physical Education Building was designed by the Columbus, Ohio-based firm Brubaker and Brand and is to the southeast of the original portion of building. It was combined with the University Center via an addition added in 1994. Today, the union has 308,000 square feet of space.
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The union was not open when I first got to campus, but by the time I had finished my tour and was making my way to my car the first people were showing up for work. They were prepping for orientation for new students. The tour guides and other personnel were just showing up as I finished up my tour. 

There’s something about student unions that I like. Whether it’s the middle of the day and the place is packed with people, or its early or late and the place is empty, there is a vitality to unions. They can be brand new or old, yet they all have common elements and frequently common smells. Libraries always have that old book smell. You know the one. It is a combination of the smells of the materials slowly decaying, mold, and other things causing the scent. You can read some interesting things about old smells here and here. Student unions frequently have the lingering smell of food. As I was leaving the building, I could smell coffee brewing. That and the smell of breakfast foods come to mind in the morning, and of course other foods at lunch and in the evening. Popcorn is another frequent, but less common smell. Even when it is not close to a mealtime, the combined odors of food linger in unions and give them a familiar scent. That smell is not universal, but close enough to say that you are more than likely to experience it. Unions are also a great place to gain an understanding of the culture of a college or university. Do students use the place for informal meetings? Do they spend time reading, sleeping, or lounging in the building? Over the last quarter century I have found that the more students you see in the union doing things other than eating is associated with a greater sense of community and, in many cases, a higher academic profile. In my post on the University of North Carolina, I noted that at better institutions, students not only use the library more often during the day, but they also cram into the library in the afternoons and evenings in large numbers. Use of the union is not necessarily correlated with academic performance to the same degree, but it is a sign of engagement. The coffee shops and restaurants in any given student union will be busy during peak times like breakfast and lunch. But when you see students hanging out in lounges and engaging with one another for long periods time outside those times, you can generally assume that they have the collective feeling that they are part of that school. You can also assume that compared with most schools where the union is only used as a place to grab a bite or buy a book, schools with busy unions have students with better entrance and performance metrics. At least, that is the impression I have had for several decades now. I’m sure it is not universal, but time has shown me that it is a fairly consistent association. It was far too early for the Wright State Union to have many people around in any case, let alone in the summer when fewer people are on campus anyway. But it did have the common smell and more than sufficient seating and other spaces to allow students to engage with one another at times other than when eating.

The photos below, taken when the sun was just coming up, are of the south side of the building. The southside of the building looks nothing like the original portion. Whereas the original portion’s exterior is concrete, the newer portion as well as the former physical education building now subsumed within the union are both clad in the familiar red brick seen in most of the other buildings on campus. The first four photos are of the newer portion. The graphic on the side of the building in the second photo was installed in 2020
 
The original portion of the union, seen here in photos five and six, sits on the northwest corner of the current combined complex. If you look at aerial photos, you can see that the union is a bit of a distance away from the original four buildings constructed on campus (see below). The university was blessed with a lot of space from the beginning, and the placement of the union in what was then a fair distance away from the principal parts of campus shows the administration was already thinking in terms of overall campus planning with an eye to what would be in between in the future. The roofline reminds me of Rust Hall at the now defunct Memphis College of Art. It was expanded by a 28,000 square foot addition in the early 1970’s designed by the architecture firm Sullivan, Lecklider, Jay, and Mitchell. The addition came with a $1 million price tag (about $7.8 million today).

The set below is both the ​Krishan & Vicky Joshi Research Center and the Fritz and Dolores Russ Engineering Center. The Joshi Center is the part of the structure clad in glass that is on the left of the first three photos below. The building is connected to the Russ Center which sits on the right (to the east) in these first three photos. Joshi has some 48,000 square feet of space across its four floors. It is named in honor of former Wright State professor Krishan Joshi and his wife. Joshi taught mathematics at the university. The Joshi’s have been significant donors to the university. Joshi founded the tech research firm UES, which has since been bought by the firm BlueHalo. The Joshi’s donated $10 million to aid in the construction of the building that bears their name.

The Russ Center opened in 1992. Fritz Russ was a member of the Wright State Board, the Ohio University Board, and the Ohio University Foundation Board. In 1994, Ohio University renamed its engineering school the Russ College of Engineering and Technology. The National Academy of Engineering awards the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize, a $500,000 award for advancements in a critical engineering area, every two years. The Russ Nature Preserve in Green County, Ohio, was part of their land, the 90 acres being given for the creation of the park after Dolores’ passing in 2008. Fritz and Delores founded Systems Research Laboratories.

Photos four and five are the backside of the two structures, this time with Russ on the left and Joshi on the right. The last photo is a little bunny that was enjoying his breakfast behind the buildings. I think he was surprised a human was out and about that early. Although I regularly see squirrels and pigeons, this is only the second rabbit I have seen on a college campus, the other being about a year earlier at Montana State University. 

​The set below is principally photos of the Neuroscience Engineering Collaboration Building. The building has 94,000 square feet of space and cost $37.5 million to construct. With the massive inflation we have experienced in the last few years, that would be $51.3 million today. You cannot tell it from these photos, but the building is L-shaped. Neuroscience is located in one wing and engineering in the other. Groundbreaking for the building took place in 2012 and it was completed in 2016. The building was designed by architecture firm Perkins+Will. If you are familiar with collegiate architecture, you likely have heard of the firm. Perkins+Will is a big firm, and they have designed dozens of buildings for colleges and universities around the world. Although it is not clad in the red brick which predominates campus, it still fits in. It is a lovely looking building despite its mismatch to most other Wright State buildings. 

The first two photos are the view of the buildings west side as viewed from Alumni Grove. Behind the Neuroscience Building on the right of the first photo, you can just make out part of the Frederick White Hall, the principal home to the Boonshoft School of Medicine. White takes its name from Frederick White, a high-level of General Motor's Dayton Operations. White was the business officer for the university when in the planning and development stage. His work was comprehensive. He oversaw the acquisition and purchase of land for the university, worked with local officials on zoning issues, the installation of electric power, water, and sewer services, and worked on campus planning. For a time, his Wright State office was in the home of a local family, the Warner's, whose land was purchased for the campus. The building has over 84,000 square feet of space. The last photo of this set is also of White Hall. The third and fourth photos are the southeast side of the building.

The Boonshoft School of Medicine is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, there were already schools of medicine at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State, both which are relatively close to Dayton. Just about ninety-nine miles separate UC and OSU as the crow flies. It is interesting to me that the state would place a third public medical school in such close proximity to their two existing schools. Additionally, the College of Medicine at Cincinnati is the oldest (public) school in the state. True, both metro Cincinnati and Columbus today have populations in excess of two million and had a comparable amount fifty years ago. Yet, I would have thought that a state government would choose to expand the existing schools. Part of the reason had to do with the availability of federal funding. This is the second thing that makes it interesting to me. The timing of the creation of Boonshoft is really incredible. 

The Veterans Administration Medical School Assistance and Health Manpower Training Act (Public Law 92-541), commonly referred to as the Teague-Cranston Act, passed in 1972 and called for the creation of an additional five schools of medicine across the U.S. The Act supported all manner of things health related. But the creation of the new medical schools was meant to increase the number of physicians, particularly in underserved areas, to partner with the VA Medical System, and to support veterans in obtaining medical and health-related educations. Wright State was chosen to be the home of one of these schools and the Ohio General Assembly approved its creation in 1973. It was a great opportunity. The federal government would pay for the bulk of the creation of new schools of medicine over the course of several years with the proviso that state governments continue to fully fund the schools at the end of federal funding The others included Marshall University in Huntington, WV, Texas A&M University, East Tennessee State University, and the University of South Carolina. What is remarkable is that Wright State opened in 1963 and only became an independent college in 1967. Getting funding to start a medical school within a decade of coming online and a mere five years after becoming an independent, free-standing institution is remarkable. What is perhaps more remarkable is that the administration at Wright State began a feasibility study for a medical school in 1970, a mere three years after they had obtained independent status. They were thinking big, obviously, and it paid off. Part of the requirements to receive the funding from the Act was to establish and maintain a working relationship with a VA Medical Center, something Wright State did with the nearby Dayton VAMC, a relationship it maintains to this day.

While Hall is actually a combination of structures which have been combined. The building opened with the name “Frederick A. White Center for Ambulatory Care”. The original portion of the building was designed by the firm Richard Levin and Associates. In 2005, the Boonshoft’s family donated $28.5 million to the school of medicine to expand the building, fund scholarships, and support numerous other activities. The school was officially renamed the Boonshoft School of Medicine that year in recognition of what was then the largest single donation made to the university.

​The first three photos below are of the Alumni Tower at Alumni Grove. The tower is, in a way, one of the original structures on campus. I use the phrase "in a way" on purpose here as a means to tease out its history a bit. What you see is not the totality of the original tower, nor is it in the location the original tower stood. It is, however, of very similar design and made with many but not all of the same bricks. The original tower stood at the entrance of campus near where the tower in the first photo of this post now stands. That tower came as a bonus. Allyn Hall, the first building constructed on campus (see below), came in underbudget. Some of those funds were used to build the tower. I don’t know if they didn’t want it to have a bell or a clock, one or both of which are typical for such towers on college campuses, or simply did not have sufficient funds to install such items at the time. Whatever the reason, it was not built with such things and it was known as the “Bell-less Tower.” The tower originally had “Wright State” written on a different centerpiece in rather nondescript text. That centerpiece, as best I can tell from older photos available online, was a solid cube, whereas today the new Alumni Tower has four unconnected blocks. The original tower was much taller than the one you see here. For some reason, it was decided that it did not give the look some in the administration would like. It was subsequently demolished. I take it that many in the university community were not happy with the destruction of something from the founding of the university. The complaints were loud enough and lasted long enough that eventually the current tower was erected. The plaque in the fourth photo tells some of the story and the rest I pieced together from news reports from the era. The marker on the stone in the last photo of this set denotes that the area is the Alumni Grove.

The first five photos of the next set are of the ​Health Sciences Building. The building opened in 1986 after beginning construction in, I believe, 1984. As would be the case with the yet to be built University Hall (see below), Health Sciences was meant to be an interim name for the building. The Wright State Board was using the name as a placeholder for an eventual name of an important figure on campus, a member of the alumni, or donor. Initially during the planning period, it was also referred to as the Lab and Animal Resources Building. 

In the first photo you see the east façade of the building with the Neuroscience Engineering Collaboration Building in the background. The art piece you see in that photo is in front of the Matthew O. Diggs, III Laboratory building (see below). It is "Double Helix" a piece by artist Jon Hudson of nearby Yellow Springs, Ohio. The piece is made of stainless steel and measures eight feet wide, eight feet tall, and twenty-five feet in length. It is a great looking piece, and as the sun was rising during my early morning visit it began to have some incredible reflections that made it quite beautiful. The second and third photos are views as you approach the building from the southeast. The fourth is the back of the building as seen from Alumni Grove. Finally, the fifth and sixth are of the entrance on the east side.

​The last four photos of this set are of the Medical Sciences Building. My findings on the history of the building were limited. I understand that it was built in two phases. I believe Phase I opened in 1976, although I am not quite sure of this as the dates I found online were contradictory. Phase II of the building began with a groundbreaking ceremony on March 30, 1979. The 30,000 square foot addition was designed by Cincinnati-based architectural firm Baxter, Hoddell, Donnelly, and Preston. Part of the addition included a 150-seat lecture hall. Its construction cost $3 million (about $13 million in 2024 value). The first photo is the entrance on the north east side of the building, near the amphitheater in front of the Biological Sciences I and II building (see below). The remaining photos are of the building's west and south sides.

The set below are photos of the ​Biological Sciences I and Biological Sciences II buildings. These two buildings are, more or less, two wings of the same building. Had construction taken place on a slightly different schedule, I don’t think they would carry the numeric designations as they do currently. Biological Sciences I was started earlier and opened prior to Biological Sciences II. But the two structure’s construction overlapped. As Biological Sciences I was finishing up in late 1974 and early 1975, work was underway on Biological Sciences II. Construction on Biological Sciences I began in 1973, and by November of that year site excavation was complete and the foundation was begun. The building was completed in August 1975. ​Biological Sciences II was completed in the fall of 1975, with the various faculty and departments moving in during late November that year. In the first photo of this set, you have the entrance to the building on the west side of the complex. In this view, Biological Sciences I is on the left and Biological Sciences II is on the right. The second the third photos are of the entrance on the east side. In the third photo, you can once again see the Double Helix art piece in front the Diggs Lab. On the northwest side of the complex is a large amphitheater with a below grade connection to the buildings, as can be seen in the last two photos of this set. In the background behind the amphitheater in the first photo is the Brehm Laboratory. I was not able to find out much about Brehm, but I believe it opened in 1973.

Amphitheaters are interesting things to me. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, numerous colleges and universities built them. They look nice and I like them. However, I rarely see them being used. When they are being used, it is simply as an outdoor seating area, not as a place for a lecture, presentation, or show of some sort. Perhaps that is because of the locations I frequent. In the southeast where I live, summers can be brutally hot. Since the Fall semester starts in August for most places, that means it is frequently far too hot and humid for anyone to want to be in an outdoor amphitheater. Of course, it does cool off and compared to other parts of the country, it is quite pleasant late into the semester. I don’t know if it’s the weather or not, but I have only seen an amphitheater being used for anything other than a place to sit on only one occasion in the last thirty years and that was at the University of Mississippi where it was being used by people leading a campus tour for prospective students and their families. I don’t know how much use the one at Wright State gets. If you are an employee or alumnus, leave a comment about it if you would.

The set below is of the Mathematical and Microbiological Sciences Building. I believe its original name was the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Building, but I cannot swear to that fact. I have seen some internal documents from that era using this alternate name, but it may have been a working title. Or, conversely, it was the name and when engineering moved out that part was dropped. If you know for certain, please leave a comment. Regardless, the building was opened in 1984 or 1986 (various documents on Wright's website list one or the other date).

The sculpture you see in these photos is the work of David Black, a Columbus, OH, based artist. The piece was completed in 1998 and its official name is "Turning Points". The students came up with their own name for it "BART" which is an acronym for Big Artsy Red Thing. It stands seventeen feet high and is made of aluminum beams on top of granite pillars. His work also appears on the campuses of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, the Cincinnati State Community College, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio State University in nearby Columbus, and Youngstown State University. ​

The four original buildings constructed on campus are featured in the following set. These buildings make up Founder's Quadrangle with each building being named after one of four men who were instrumental in the creation of Wright State. In addition to being the original structures on campus, the Founder's Quadrangle was the site of the first commencement and many other firsts on campus. 

The first photo is of Allyn Hall. Allyn was the first building constructed on the campus. As such, it was the site of just about everything Wright had to offer in those early days. All of the offices and classrooms, the library, and the bookstore called Allyn home. There was no cafeteria, which was seen as nonessential given the commuter nature of the school at that point, but there was a room dedicated as a lounge with vending machines. Note that I wrote that Allyn was the home of most everything. A farmhouse which stood on the grounds when they were acquired for the university continued to soldier on and serve the nascent school. Biology had a lab in the old house and chemistry used the kitchen as a wet lab. Workers were still completing the final touches on the building during the first few weeks of the Fall 1964 semester. A professor once recalled that a worker was on a ladder in his class installing ceiling tiles. When the professor asked a question, the worker was the only one who raised his hand, so he was called on and correctly answered the query. The building is named for Stanley Charles Allyn, former president of NCR who, as noted above, was one of the driving forces which created the university.

The second photo was taken looking westward across the Founders Quadrangle with Allyn at the apex of the picture. In this photo, Oelman Hall (see below) is on the left and Millett Hall (see below) is on the right. The white structure in front of Allen in this photo and again in close ups in the third, fourth, and fifth photos is a dining facility now called The Hanger. In the early years, commencement would be held in this area. You cannot quite see it in this photo but Allyn and Millett are attached behind The Hanger. This was not always the case and photos from the 1960's clearly show that to be the case. I am uncertain as to when this addition was made. Groundbreaking for Allyn took place on May 31, 1963, at 3:00 p.m. Raymond Roesch, SM, the then-president of the University of Dayton was in attendance and gave a prayer.

The sixth through ninth photos of this set are of Oelman Hall, the second building constructed on campus. A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the building on March 31, 1965 and it was completed in 1966. It is named in honor of Robert S. Oelman, the former president of NCR. He was, as noted above, one of a core group of individuals who were largely responsible for the creation of the university. The building was designed with the name working name “Science and Engineering Building”. 

One of the features of the campus I would have liked to have seen and photographed was left out thanks to my early morning visit. As is the case with other institutions located in regions with particularly cold or hot weather, Wright State has connections between many of its buildings via a vast array of tunnels. My wife is an alumnae of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and she has many stories about avoiding the harsh winters by traversing campus in their tunnel system. Although Wright’s Ohio location is not nearly as cold or prone to as much snow as Buffalo, it has a large number of tunnels. In fact, currently the campus has nearly two miles of tunnels connecting twenty of the twenty-two buildings on the core part of campus. In 1966, the construction of Oelman Hall called for the creation of a tunnel for the purpose of connecting it to Allyn’s electrical system. It was not meant to be a passageway for the average Wright State citizen. None the less, students, faculty, and staff alike began to use the tunnel as a means of avoiding the winter weather. It took a while for the administration to formalize it, but discussions about having the tunnel system as a pedestrian mall began as new buildings came online. By the early 1970’s the tunnel system was formally operational, although again it was basically in use since 1966. Today, it is a bustling place in wintertime. It is also fully accessible. That is one of the things Wright State is known for – disability accessibility. Wright State has long been active in supporting students with disabilities and has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in this regard. It is one of a handful of colleges and universities in the U.S. to fully accessible and the administration is always on the lookout for ways to increase access and support people with disabilities. Anyway, the tunnel system is heavily used, and you can find maps online not merely for the tunnels but as a guide as to how to use them for exercise with various routes outlined with precise walking distances.

Photos ten through thirteen in this set are of Millett Hall, the third building constructed on campus.  A groundbreaking ceremony for the structure was held on July 2, 1965; it was completed in 1966. The building is named in honor of Dr. John D. Millett, who was the president of Miami University at the time and who later went on to become the first Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents. He did his undergraduate work at DePauw University (Class of 1933) in his native Indiana. He later attended Columbia University from which he would earn his Ph.D. (Class of 1938). He began teaching at Columbia a year later. His time there was interrupted by World War II, during which time he served on the staff of General Brehon Somervell who commanded the Army Service Forces in Washington, DC. After the war he returned to Columbia. He served as the 16th president of Miami University from 1953 until 1964, a time of unprecedented growth. During his time there, enrollment doubled and, like many colleges and universities coping with such increases driven by the Baby Boom generation, oversaw a massive expansion of the university’s physical plant. Millett would be both a classroom building and a new, bigger home for the library which until that point was located in Allyn Hall. 

​​This set closes with four photos of Fawcett Hall. The fourth building constructed in the Founder’s Quadrangle, it is named in honor of Novice G. Fawcett, the president of Ohio State University at the time of the university's establishment. Completed in 1967, it was designed by the firm Lorenz, Williams, Williams, Lively, and Likely. Fawcett was fully supportive of a new institution in Dayton, a fact that is again surprising given that he was president of an institution less than one hundred miles away. Ohio State was and is the big dog in public higher education in the state, and his support proved immensely valuable in Wright State's creation. Enough time had passed for buildings to start to be open since I first arrived on campus, and I was able to visit the lobby inside the building as seen in the last three photos.

The first two photos of the next set is of the Tom Hanks Center for Motion Pictures. I imagine just about everyone in the world knows Tom Hanks. Just how many know about the Tom Hanks Center for Motion Pictures is another matter. I had not heard of it and did not it was located at Wright State. If you had asked me where it was prior to my visit, I would have guessed either the University of Southern California, thanks to their world-renowned film school, or UCLA. I might also have guessed Chabot College or the California State University, Sacramento, both of which he attended. I may have guessed any number of other schools in California, or even the University of Illinois where his brother is a long-serving faculty member. But I would not have guessed Wright State. Of course, I would have been wrong on all counts, and my not knowing about the center says something about me and not Wright State.

Hanks’ association with the university goes back quite a way. He came to the university in 1978 to perform in a Shakespeare production and has been a supporter of the university ever since.
It is the home of the Center for Motion Pictures which was previously housed in the Creative Arts Center. It has 14,500 square feet of space. Hanks came to campus for the dedication of the space in on April 19, 2006. You can watch a video of the dedication here. Hanks was co-chair of the “Rise. Shine.” fundraising campaign which brought in a whopping $150 million to the university. He had previously produced videos for the university and raise funds for motion pictures program.

The building you see behind the Hanks Center and in the remaining photos of this set are of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library. The building opened in 1974 and was for many years simply referred to as the library. The building was renamed in honor of Dayton-native Paul Laurence Dunbar, a noted poet, in 1992. Dunbar began his writing at age six. He was a classmate of Orville Wright. Dunbar is the work of architect Don Hisaka. His most noted work was perhaps the Bartholomew County Jail in Columbus, Indiana. None the less, he designed dozens of notable homes and buildings. Among his work for colleges and universities would be the Mulford Health Science Library at the University of Toledo. Opened in 1973, it too is a Brutalist concrete structure. Hisaka designed the former University Center at Cleveland State University, which was razed in 2008. It was also a large concrete structure, and the combination of concrete and glass in the atrium led students to call it the Birdcage for both its appearance and its tendency to amplify noise. Hisaka died in 2013, aged 85.

The next set is four views of the ​Creative Arts Center, a massive structure on the east side of campus. The building opened in 1973 and looks very much like a structure of that era. It was expanded in 1990. The architectural firm Tweddell, Wheeler, Strickland, and Beumer of Cincinnati designed the original part of the building. It is a massive structure made with a façade of concrete and red brick. I was not able to go inside the building as it was too early for it to be open, but inside there is a four-story atrium that is apparently quite nice. The first three photos are the portion of the building nearest the library. The last photo is the south façade which faces White Hall.

The set below is of the ​Matthew O. Diggs, III Laboratory, a relatively new addition to campus. Diggs opened on November 8, 2007 and is a LEED® Gold Certified building. It comes in at 45,000 square feet. Diggs was designed by BHDP Architecture which has offices in Cincinnati and Columbus, as well as Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina. The firm has designed numerous collegiate buildings at such institutions as Bowling Green University, Bucknell University, Cedarville University, Lycoming College, Ohio State University, the University of Cincinnati, and many others. It is a research building supporting both the Boonshoft School of Medicine and the College of Science and Mathematics. Matthew O. Diggs, Jr., and his wife Nancy donated funds to help support the construction of the facility. It is named in honor of their son who passed away in 2000. Mr. Diggs was on the Wright State board. Once again you can see the Double Helix art piece in the third and fourth photos. The first four photos show the main entrance and front of the building which is the south façade of the structure. The last four photos are of the southeast side of the building. 

The first five photos of the set below are of Rike Hall. The Rike name was once well known in Dayton, and I suppose it still is. The Rike Department Store was a fixture of downtown for decades. Rike Hall is named for David L. Rike, grandson of the founder of the store. Rike was leading the company during what I would imagine was one of the true golden eras of downtown department store shopping. Malls were already on the rise by the 1960's and within twenty years or so their presence had become so present that many stores abandoned downtown locations across the country. The Rike store in downtown Dayton was a midrise building with seven above grade floors that had some 650,000 square feet of space. It was known for its Christmas window displays. Rike's would become part of the Federated Department Stores chain in 1961. David Rike was dedicated to the Dayton community and he and his family donated to many causes including Wright State. Indeed, a building at the University of Dayton also carries the Rike name. He was a member of the Wright State Board from 1969 to 1973.

The building was designed by the architectural firm John Ruetschle and Associates. Ruetschle was born in Dayton in 1937. The firm began its life as the Hart firm, founded by Erskine Hart in Dayton. His son Jim joined the firm in the 1950’s and its name changed to Hart and Hart. Ruetschle joined the firm in 1957 as a draftsman. Erskine’s other son Dave joined the firm at some point, but after both had retired and passed away in the 1970’s, Ruetschle acquired the business and renamed named it John Ruetschle and Associates. He would retire in 2002 and passed away in 2019, but the firm continues on. He designed many buildings in the region, including schools, churches, businesses, and homes. The building was completed in 1981. The first three photos show the south side of the building and the fourth and fifth show the north side. It is home to the Raj Soin College of Business. The sixth through ninth photos show the interior of the building. Mr. Soin is a successful businessman and philanthropist who served on  board of both Bradley University and Wright State. He has donated significant funds to the Indu and Raj Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek, OH, and the Soin Pediatric Trauma and Emergency Center at Dayton Children’s Hospital.
​
To the southwest of Rike is University Hall, seen in photos ten through twelve. Construction on University began in mid-1997. The building cost $15.3 million (nearly $30 million in today’s value) to construct and opened in 1999. Several names were considered for the building, including Wright Brothers Hall, which was a serious contender. In the end, the generic name that is still in use was chosen. The idea at the time was that the moniker would remain in place until someone donated enough funds for naming rights. The L-shaped building is simple yet quite attractive to me with its brick cladding and limestone trim. 

The set concludes with five photos of the Student Success Center, which sits next door to University Hall. 
The building comes in 67,000 square feet of space. In addition to housing student support services of various kinds, the building has classrooms, and a 220-seat lecture hall. It opened in 2015, a design of the Annette Miller Architects firm of Dayton. The firm has designed buildings at other colleges including Miami University, Ohio State University, and the University of Cincinnati. Construction costs came in at $17 million (about $23 million in 2024 value). In the last photo you can see a water tower in the distance behind the Student Success Center replete with the Wright State logo.

The first two photos in the next set are of ​Hamilton Hall. Hamilton was the first dorm constructed on the campus. Opening in 1970, Hamilton can accommodate 300 residents. You might think that the first dorm on any particular campus might carry the name of someone important to the university. I made that assumption when I saw the Hamilton name in this case. Not only is Hamilton not named for someone associated with Wright State, it is not named for a person at all. It is named for a river. If you are familiar with Dayton, you likely know that several rivers flow through the city and region. The Stillwater River merges with the Miami River just north of downtown. The Mad River joins in right at downtown. Wolf Creek merges with Miami River just south of where the Mad River comes in. So where exactly is the Hamilton? Underground, as it happens. The Hamilton River is a prehistoric river that flows through the substrata in the area. Just why it was chosen as the name is something I could not find out when researching for this post.

The university has many other dormitories, obviously. However, they are a bit of a walk from the heart of the campus. I was about to walk over to take a look at them and then thought better of it. It's one thing to take photos of a dorm in the middle of the day when they are surrounded by other, non-residential buildings. It is quite another to take photos of them very early in the morning when no one is about and when they are set off to themselves. Even though it was the summer, and thus likely that many of the dorms were closed, I didn't like the idea of walking around taking photos and so I skipped those. Since Hamilton is in the heart of campus and sits directly adjacent to the student union and several academic buildings, I figured it was okay if I took two snapshots of it.

Hamilton was designed by the firm Yount, Sullivan, and Lecklider. The plaza area you see here was once a parking lot, but was transitioned to its current appearance in the late 1990’s. When the building opened, it was known simply as the Wright State Residence Hall. It stayed that way for seven years. In 1976, university officials and students alike began the process of selecting a name for the structure. Several names were considered including Golding in honor of the university’s first president Brage Golding. Frederick White, the first Wright State faculty member and the namesake of the medical school building, suggested Hamilton. The ancient riverbed still exists and is still full of water. The name was formally adopted by the board in their May 1977 meeting.

​The seal you see in the third photo was a gift of the ’67 Society. The ’67 Society is a student group named for the year Wright State became an independent institution. It engages in activities to promote the university, its values, and traditions. It was the brainchild of students Holley Mapel (Class of 2019) and Markayla Clayton (Class of 2020). Installed in September 2020, the seal measures forty-eight inches in diameter and weighs 300 pounds. 

As is the usual case, I will close with Wright State's version of the campus lamppost sign. Wright State not only has such a sign, it has multiple versions all over campus. You can see the university’s mascot on the first lamppost sign. Although Wright State has been known as the Raiders since 1971, the mascot has not always been the same. The first mascot was a Viking with a red beard known as Rowdy Raider. The university would drop the Viking in 1997 in favor of a brown wolf. A decade later, it would change to a gray wolf in 2007 and so it remains.

There was really no one around during my visit thanks to the early hour, but I could imagine the place being crowded with students in the few short weeks after my visit when the fall term arrived. I imagine it buzzes with activity. Perhaps some day I can return and see it in action. Although I had taken my time exploring the campus, I returned to my car to find that it was still rather early. Realizing my family was likely just getting up, I decided to take the short drive over to the University of Dayton to look around. It will be the subject of my next post.

As I noted in my previous posts on Washington University St. Louis and Fontbonne University last month, I had been in St. Louis and had some time to look around those respective campuses. As fate would have it, things fell into place which gave me the opportunity to visit another campus. I was driving back to my home in the Memphis area and needed to stop to fill up on gas. The need coincided with me being near Cape Girardeau, MO which happens to be the home of Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO). I have to admit that it was only in the last few years that I learned anything about the school. Back in 2018 I was flipping through a book on college campuses in a used bookstore in Nashville in which there was one photo of Academic Hall. As you will see in this post, Academic Hall is quite the structure. It was a relatively small black and white photo but the building was intriguing. There was nothing else in the book about the school or the building save for a note that some institutions have buildings with domes. It was an interesting tome and so the book went home with me. I wondered about the institution having no real knowledge of it prior to seeing the photo. Sometime later when driving to St. Louis with my family I realized it was on the way but never had a chance to visit. My need for gas on my return trip from St. Louis on this occasion and the fact that I was ahead of schedule thanks to less than normal traffic gave me the opportunity to swing by campus for a quick but enjoyable visit.

SEMO dates to 1873 and like many other schools I have covered began as a Normal School, that is a teacher training college. The Missouri legislature voted to create an additional normal school in March of that year and then Governor Silas Woods signed the legislation creating a “Third District Normal School” in the southeast portion of the state. A board of regents was selected, and Lucius H. Cheney  was hired as the yet to be named school’s first principal. They then turned to site selection. As was often the case, cities and towns around the area began vying to be the location of the new institution. Cape Girardeau was one of those, and despite initial interest was slow to move on preparations. When states created new institutions, they expected the host community to pony up funds to help with its creation. Typically, the highest bidder would be the host not unlike the way the Olympics are sited today, although then and now politics also play a role. None the less, over the course of the next couple of months community leaders got themselves in order and provided a $54,865 bid (worth just over $1.4 million in today’s value). This eclipsed the next bid, a $50,608 offer from Iron County. The board was a bit split but voted 4 to 3 to locate the new college in Cape Girardeau. It would be named the Southeast Missouri State Normal School.

Things moved quickly thereafter. Before a site had been selected, the college opened in the Lorimier School, the city’s first public school which had just opened in 1872. German immigrant Joseph Lansmon donated a hilltop site and sold the college an additional ten acres that would eventually become the campus. The first building was designed by St. Louis-based architect J.B. Clarke, a grand Victorian style red brick building. It was completed in 1874. Although on its way, the road would be rocky in some ways during the initial years. Before the building opened, construction worker Lemuel Randol was killed in a lightning strike at the site. Cheney was killed while conducting geological research in the Cumberland Gap in Tennessee in 1876 after only three years on the job. Alfred Kirk was selected as his replacement but remained in the position for less than nine months. Things would begin to settle, however, and in 1877 Charles H. Dutcher became the third principal and would stay for four years. The college had its first commencement that year and Emma W. Cowden was the first to complete a four-year course of study. In 1880, Richard C. Norton was chosen as Dutcher’s replacement and was given the new title of President. He would remain for about thirteen years.

As the college grew and expanded its mission, it had several name changes. In 1881 the name would change to Missouri State Normal School – Third District. In 1919 it would revert, in a sense, back to a name more in line with the first: Southeast Missouri State Teachers College. It would keep that moniker until 1946 when in recognition of the varied courses of study available it was changed to Southeast Missouri State College September 21. Finally, it would receive its current name in 1973. Today, SEMO has an enrollment of just under 10,000 students. The campus comes in at about 328 acres and is on rolling land. A main hill upon which Academic Hall and several other buildings stand is referred to by students as Cardiac Hill! I will begin my post at that hill where I parked and began my visit.

All of the photos in this set are of ​Academic Hall. Academic Hall is the iconic building on campus and my first stop during my visit. It is a replacement for the original Third District Normal School building, which was devastated by a massive fire on April 7, 1902. I have seen photos of that former building, and it too was impressive. Academic seems massive when you are standing at the base of the hill or across the street in the plaza in front of the library. It is big, but the perspective makes it seem even bigger. It is a lovely looking building and the way the sun and blue sky looked the day of my visit had me wishing I had more than the camera in phone to capture images of it. Hence the relatively large number of views in this set. The building was designed by architect Jerome B. Legg, who had previously designed Carnahan Hall (see below). Construction began in the fall of 1903 and it opened in 1906. The building underwent an extensive renovation and modernization between 1970 and 1975 at a cost of over $1 million, which is about $7.5 million today.

The first seven photos are of the front of the building looking up Cardiac Hill. It almost looks like a state capital building to me. I took a lot of photos from that vantage point and couldn't narrow my choices down beyond these seven. You can make out a young man in a cap and gown being photographed in front of the building. There were a few others on campus doing the same when I arrived. The spring commencement had taken place that morning. The eighth and ninth photos are the dedication plaques for the building which are just inside the front doors.

The tenth photo was taken just inside the front doors of the building. There is a great photo of the members of the 1950 Varsity Club standing on these steps here. I am always impressed by how grown-up college students, and even high school students, looked in the past. The young men in that photo seem incredibly mature when compared to students of today or even my generation and it’s not merely the clothes they are wearing or the fact that the photos are typically in black and white. As you can see, the space looks basically the same in the 1950 photo as it does in my 2024 picture thanks to a restoration of that floor. Indeed, as you can see in this photo from 1909, little has changed at least in terms of what we can see. Well, that may not be quite correct. Many things may have changed in the past, but again, this area was renovated back to its original appearance. The building once held a pool, although it has long since been removed. You can view a photo of it being installed from around 1931 here.

SEMO celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2023, hence the 150 you see in the thirteenth photo. The stone with the plaque you see in the fourteenth photo is on the front lawn to the right of the main entrance as you view them in the earlier photos. The fifteenth and sixteenth photos are of the rear of the building and a memorial to SEMO veterans installed in September 2000. To the east of the building is a large green space with a small stage. The stage is quite small, but the area is lovely.

The dome is copper and has been refinished at least twice that I know of, and likely more than that. In 1972, renovations to the building and regilding of the dome were began to the tune of $1 million, which is a little more than $7.5 million in today’s value.

​A two-year renovation of Academic Hall was completed in the fall of 2013. That’s when the second floor was restored to its historic look. The dome also received some fresh copper, making it at least the second time that has been done. The dome is incorporated into the university’s official logo.

Directly across Normal Avenue from Academic Hall is the Kent Library, the subject of the next set of photos. What you see in these pictures is not the original façade of the building. Th library was built in 1939 as part of the efforts of the Public Works Administration (PWA). At the time, it was a neoclassical structure clad in limestone and with grand art-style windows. The windows were not cheap. The original reading room’s windows alone cost $2,250, which in 2024 value is over $50,000!  The heart of the original building is still there. A major renovation and expansion took place between 1965 and 1968. The old building is subsumed within the new.

The original library cost just over $177,00 to build, which is only about $3.9 million in today’s dollars. At a meeting of the board in 1938, then SEMO President Walter Parker proposed naming the new building in honor of long-serving librarian Sadie T. Kent. The proposal carried in a unanimous vote. There was just one catch – the PWA did not allow buildings to be named for a living person. Since Kent was both alive and still working at SEMO the board had to rescind the vote. The name would have to wait but not until her passing. By the time World War II was underway, the PWA no longer existed and its rule on the naming of building constructed with their funds no longer applied. Thus, SEMO named the library in her honor upon Ms. Kent’s retirement in 1943. So dedicated to naming the library for Kent the university left a space in the stone entryway of the building blank for the future inscription of her name. This was done in 1943, and you can see a photo of her standing beneath the name here.
 
Sadie Kent came to SEMO in 1905 as an instructor of hygiene and geography. She would take over as the head librarian in 1910. She had the reputation of being particular when it came to the rules of the library. Apparently, she tolerated little in the way of shenanigans and was quick to shush anyone who made a sound. By the time I was an undergraduate in the late 1980’s, the volume of noise in collegiate libraries had already increased. No one policed people to keep them quiet. At least not paid staff. The noise level continued to rise for years, and by the mid-2000’s many college libraries were quite loud. Thanks to materials moving online, fewer people began using the library and today they tend to be about as quiet as they were in the 1980’s. Regardless, I imagine Ms. Kent would be stunned at the volume of noise, the ability to eat and drink, and the various other common behaviors in libraries today.

You can view a great photo of SEMO President Walter Parker speaking at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the library on November 8, 1938 here. You can see the original building under construction here and here. You can see a nice photos from 1939 here, 1945 here and here, 1950 here, and 1960 here. My favorite photo from the original library is a view from inside the building looking at Academic Hall. Seen here, the photo from September 1947 has Academic Hall framed perfectly through the entryway and its windows. I have to say, I prefer the look of the original structure. Even though modernist structures from the era of the current façade have grown on me over the years, the original look was much statelier than the present despite being much smaller. Kent dedicated the library when she placed a copy of the Holy Bible in the new building’s reading room on November 7, 1939. There is a great piece on Ms. Kent you can read here.

There are also some good photos of the expansion underway in 1966/67 here, here, here, here, and here. The cost of rebuilding the library was about $3.16 million, which is equivalent to roughly $30.7 million today. The library was rededicated in a ceremony in November 1968.

The first two photos are the main entrance side to the building taken from across Normal Avenue on the Academic Hall side. I like the fact that the inscription on the building notes both the date of the newer, enlarged building and the original contained within. The fountain in front of the library is formally named the Kala M. Stroup Fountain on the Plaza. Stroup was SEMO’s 14th president from 1990 to 1995. Stroup gave $35,000 for its construction. It was formally opened on October 6, 1999. 

The fourth photo was taken just inside the front door with the circulation desk on the left. In front of the circulation desk is the mural you see in the fifth photo. The mural is the work of Jake K. Wells. Wells, a SEMO alumnus and then chair of the Department of Art. The idea for a mural in this location came from Dr. F.E. Snider, who was the lead librarian at SEMO at the time. Wells took his time developing the piece which illustrates the four phases of southeast Missouri’s evolution up to the late 1960’s. From idea to completion of the piece took three years. The result speaks for itself. The sculpture you see in the sixth photo is a piece called "Revolution" by artist Tyson Schoolfield. I was not able to find out anything about Schoolfield. The library had a small exhibit about the university with the cool things you see in the last three photos.

The next set is the University Center. It became the student union in 1975, taking over those duties which to that point had been housed in Memorial Hall (see below). It is a modernist structure and as such matches the Kent Library next door. It has the accoutrements you typically see in student centers such as food options, sitting areas, student group offices, and more. You can a photo of the building when site construction began here. There was talk of either adding on to the existing student union in Memorial Hall or building an entirely new one for some time. Basic initial planning began in the late 1960’s, but truly began to take shape in 1969. Cost of construction of the UC came in at about $4 million, or some about $31 million in today’s money. The expense would be covered by student fees. The building was completed in July 1975.

The first photo is the front of the building taken from across Normal Avenue. It has both an inscription on its exterior wall and a plaque just inside the first set of doors. I have to say that I love the font used on the signage. It reminds me of my youth when those kinds of fonts were used extensively but which have now largely gone by the wayside. The last four photos are of the inside which was completely empty during my visit. I walked around the entire building and did not see a soul.

The first three photos of the next set are of Memorial Hall. It sits just to the rear and to the west of Academic Hall. Memorial Hall was originally the student union. It had a cafeteria large enough to seat 160 people, recreation facilities, and a store. A large ballroom on the first floor could also be used to seat 400 for formal events and meals. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new structure was held on August 20, 1947. The name is honor of all SEMO alumni having served in the military. You can see a photo of Memorial Hall under construction in 1949 here. 

The last photo of this set is the Foreign Languages Building, which sits behind (to the north) of Memorial hall. The Foreign Languages Building was originally called the Training School. Many normal schools operated their own schools, a natural outgrowth of their mission to train teachers. Many colleges and universities which began life as normal schools have long stopped having a school on campus. Many remain, however, and in the case of my current employer (the University of Memphis) have expanded. When I arrived on campus in 2016, the UofM had an elementary school on campus. It remains and has been joined by a middle school and high school. Like Carnahan Hall and Academic Hall, the building was designed by architect Jerome B. Legg. Construction began in 1902 and was completed by 1903. If it reminds you of Carnahan that is because the two buildings are identical save for the two towers added to Foreign Languages for effect. You can see a great photo of the building from 1903 around the time it opened here. It’s really cool to me that the sidewalk leading to the building is wood in that photo!

After the school vacated the space, it was known for a time as the Agriculture Building. It was subsequently named the Art and Home Economics building. This photo from 1969 shows the building with the Art and Home Economics name. I am not sure of the dates when these name changes occurred. The cost to construct the building was $19,032, which is only about $335,000 in today’s value. That is quite a bargain! Interestingly, the current SEMO website and various maps and documents refer to it as the Foreign Languages Building “which is also called the Art Building”.

Just to the east of the Kent Library is the Dearmont Complex, a mid-century dorm, seen in the first two photos of the set below. Construction on Dearmont began in 1957 and the building opened in 1958 and was for many years called the Dearmont Quadrangle. You cannot tell it from these photos, but it is complex of four buildings or wings of a single building with its own interior courtyard. When it opened, and for many years thereafter, it was a residence hall for women only, but today it is coed. It stands on the site of a former dormitory, Albert Hall, which was razed to allow its construction. It once had its own cafeteria but that has long since closed, although the kitchen is used as a training lab for the hospitality program. It takes its name from SEMO’s 7th President Washington S. Dearmont.
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The third photo is the Harold O. Grauel Building. Grauel was on faculty at SEMO from 1928 until 1971. He chaired the English department for over a decade and principally ran the journalism program. He passed away on November 15, 1995, aged 94. Can you imagine the changes he saw both at SEMO and in higher education in general during his time as a faculty member? I would have loved to have been able to pick his brain on things higher ed. The building opened in 1966 with as the Language Arts Building.

​The set concludes with two views of the university's entrance sign on the east side along Normal Avenue.

The next set begins with two photos of Rosemary Berkel Crisp Hall, the current and longtime home to nursing. Designed by the St. Louis-based architectural firm Study & Farrar, the building was completed in 1923. Roughly 450 tons of stone was used in the building’s construction. It opened as the new training school, taking over these duties when the school moved out of the current Foreign Languages Building. It housed the university school and the university high school until the latter subsequently moved to the Mark F. Scully Building after it opened. After the school moved out, the building was known as the Old Campus School building. The high school would close in 1986, and I am pretty sure the other university schools at SEMO did the same year. Regardless, there has not been a campus school at SEMO in a long time. A significant renovation was begun in 1987 and after its conclusion in 1988 it was renamed in honor of Ms. Crisp. Crisp was on the board of the SEMO Foundation for many years and was a well-known advocate for women’s health. You can see a photo of the building under construction on August 31, 1922 here. By November 30th of that year, the building was really taking shape as can be seen here. I love the old cars in that photo!

The next two photos are of the main entrances to A.J.S. Carnahan Hall. I was taken with the fact that it had two front entrances on opposite ends of the building. I was going to walk to a place where I could capture the entire front of the building in one photo, but there was a young lady being photographed in her cap and gown in the area and I didn't want to interfere with the photoshoot. I figured I would come back for it, but forgot to do so. As noted above, Carnahan was designed by architect Jerome B. Legg who would later design Academic Hall. Carnahan is the oldest building on campus, having opened in 1902 some 122 years prior to my visit. It opened as the Science Building and was later re-named the Social Science Building. You can see a photo of it when it housed social sciences from around 1975 here. Although I am unsure as to when that change occurred. An extensive renovation began in 1994 and was completed in 1998. It was then that it received its current name which is in honor Albert (A.J.S.) Carnahan, former member of Congress and U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone. Carnahan was an alumnus of SEMO (Class of 1926). Carnahan began his career as a teacher then school administrator before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. His son Mel was governor of Missouri for two terms from 1993 until 2000. Mel was posthumously elected to the U.S. Senate. His wife Jean filled his seat. He was governor when the building reopened. You can see a photo of him along with then-SEMO President Dale F. Nitzschke, SEMO Board of Regents President Don Dickerson, and Missouri Commissioner Kala Stroup cutting the ribbon at the dedication ceremony on October 14, 1998 here. The building was officially dedicated as A.J.S. Carnahan Hall in 2004.

Next up is the Serena Building, seen in the last three photos of this set.. As you can see, the building houses KRCU, the Southeast Missouri Public Radio affiliate. Construction on the original portion of the building – the center, obviously – began in 1905 and was completed in 1907. Its basement was the site of the heating and electrical generation plants for the campus for many years. This view is the south façade. On the right is an addition completed in 1962 and on the left is an addition from 1983. They were meant to be modern structures and not meant to match the original portion of the building, which they clearly do not. However, despite the intervening twenty-one years in their construction, the two additions match each other. Serena is named for Joseph Serena, the 8th president of the university. You can see the building without the additions in this photo from 1932. It was originally called the Manual Training Hall. Later it would be renamed the Industrial Arts Building. It would receive its current name in 1975 which is in honor of the eighth president of SEMO, Dr. Joseph A. Serena. The last photo was taken a bit further away because I wanted to get the bus stop in the photo. I liked this bus stop as it keeps the same stone cladding as many of the buildings on campus. Its substantial as well, although not fully enclosed.

The next set of photos are of Brandt Hall. It opened in 1956 as Brandt Music Hall. When it was being planned and initially under construction it was going to be used for the sciences. A decision was made early in construction to make it the music building. The stairs you see to the right of the building lead up to Academic Hall atop Cardiac Hill. Today, the building houses Criminal Justice, Social Work, and Sociology. Parts of the building look a little rough and although the spiral staircase is an interesting design feature, I imagine traversing it in rain and snow is tricky. The areas at the bottom with the curved windows in the arches were originally open spaces to the ground. I am uncertain as to when they were enclosed and the space incorporated into the building. The name is honor of J. Clyde Brandt, a long-serving professor of music. You can see a photo of the building from 1969 in this original configuration here.

The next are two views of a what appears to be either a gym or a physical plant building. I cannot say for certain as the campus map has no name for it despite the fact that two other physical plant structures are identified on their map. I took the photos at first thinking it was a gym thanks in part to the various banners adorning it. I really can't say anything about it. If you are familiar with the structure, please leave a comment.

Next, we have Cheney Hall which was originally a men’s dorm. Cheney was designed by the Jamieson and Spearl architectural firm. Like the library, Cheney was constructed with the support of funds provided by the Public Works Association (PWA). Work on the sire began on October 18, 1938. That month, the Board of Regents voted to call the new dorm Cheney in honor of SEMO’s first president, Lucious H. Cheney. The setting of the cornerstone ceremony was conducted by local Masons. You can see a great photo of the ceremony with the Masons in their traditional attire here. Other photos of Cheney under construction can be found here, and here. A photo from around 1940 seen here shows the building’s original cafeteria.
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The women moving into Cheney in the Fall of 1966 had some freedom they would not have enjoyed at the start of the previous academic year. The university altered its rules and for the first time women were allowed to wear pants and shorts, at least those deemed long enough, both on campus and in town so long as they did so after 4pm. There was one exception – no such attire could be worn in the Kent Library! What a difference time makes! Before the end of the Spring 2024 semester, I passed a woman coming out of a classroom on my campus at the University of Memphis wearing tiny shorts and a translucent halter top. No one paid her any mind. Back in ’66 someone might have called the campus police.

The set below begins with another of the bus stops which is like the one seen above. I really appreciate the fact that the university not only took the time and effort to build a covered stop (something frequently forgotten on college campuses), but also made them fit in with the architecture of the place. Kudos to whoever was involved in making that decision.

The second photo is a distant shot of the Robert A. Dempster Hall. It doesn’t look like much in this photo and that is my fault. As noted at the beginning of this post, I had already toured Washington University in St. Louis and Fontbonne University and in addition to being a little tired I didn’t have all that much time. I knew I was going to miss many things on campus, and rather than have nothing for Dempster took this quick snapshot from across the parking lot. Mr. Dempster was an attorney in nearby Sikeston, Missouri. If you have ever driven north on Interstate 55 to St. Louis, you are likely familiar with Sikeston. It is a crossroads where you can turn onto I-57, an alternate path north to Chicago, and is one of only a handful of town s in the area with multiple options for gasoline and food. It is also home to Lambert’s Café, a place which has been serving up homestyle food and the “Home of the Throwed Rolls” since 1976. Anyway, Mr. Dempster was a long-time donor to the university. In fact, it is not the first building to carry the Dempster name. In 1980, the university bought an existing building on Pacific Street and moved the then-named Department of Business into the facility. When the new building opened, that building would be renamed Pacific Hall, and the Department of English moved in. The now-named College of Business of Computing moved into the existing Dempster and, obviously, took the name with it. English has since moved to Grauel Hall and although Pacific Hall is still in use, I didn’t make my over to the building and am thus unsure as to what is inside. A photo of then SEMO president Kala Stoup and other dignitaries at the ground breaking for the building in 1995 can be seen here. You can view a photos of Dempster under construction here and here. The building opened in a ceremony held on July 1, 1996. Dempster was damaged by a fire on July 15, 2013 with repairs taking weeks to complete. Mr. Dempster gave $100,000 to the university and they named the apartment building for him on April 27, 1982.

​The third photo is a combo picture. The main structure you see on the left is Rhodes Hall. Behind it you can see Magill Hall, noted by the dark windows. Rhodes (also seen in the fourth photo) comes in at about 46,000 square feet across its three floors. Although not visible in these photos, it is connected to Magill Hall via a pedestrian walkway on the second floor. Mr. Rhodes and his wife gave considerable funds to support the construction of the building. He and his wife were farmers and business owners from Gideon, MO. A photo of Roger F. Rhodes along with his wife Ella Frances Rhodes standing beneath the sign seen in this photo taken at the time of the building’s opening in 1983 can be seen here. The fountain and the area around it are collectively called the Jeanine Larson Dobbins Plaza. As you can see from the fifth and sixth photos, she was the founder and director of the Missouri Statewide Early Literacy Intervention Program. Student designed and built the plaza. I love that fact and wish students could be engaged in such things more often.

Work on Magill Hall began in 1958 and was completed in 1960. Originally, the structure was going to be called the Science Building. But in May 1960, the SEMO board voted to name it after Dr. Arthur “Art” C. Magill. Magill was chair of the Science Department and long-time professor of chemistry. And by long-time, I mean twenty-eight years! Such long tenures were once common in higher ed, and still are to some extent, but are getting rare as time goes on. His path to SEMO was tragic. Born on October 12, 1881, Magill would begin his career as a teacher in his native Ray County, Missouri. All was fine until 1908 when a typhoid breakout changed his life. Typhoid is not something we think about in the U.S. these days. But for many years, the illness caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria was common and frequently fatal. The lack of refrigeration, clean water, and proper septic sanitation for waste helped the bacteria grow and in places with warmer climates was particularly an issue. When the fever came to Ray County it really hit home for Magill. His mother, two brothers, and three sisters all came down with the illness. His two brothers died and two of his sisters were left with twisted spines. Magill, who had been teaching for seven years and reached the position of principal of a school in Bonne Terre became a man with a mission. Over the years he was a one-man army in the fight against typhoid fever. He introduced chlorinated water to the southeast portion of the state, tested tens of thousands of water samples, and taught people how to purify their water. He did all of this at no charge. He moved to SEMO in 1909 and by 1924 was chair of his department. He developed the water cleaning system for Cape Girardeau along the way. He retired from the university in 1952 and entered politics. He had two terms in the Missouri state house and then went on to be on the Cape Girardeau County Court. A three-story addition was made to the building beginning in 2010. It opened on August 26, 2013.

The next set of photos are all of the Mark F. Scully Building. Construction on the building began in 1968 and it opened in 1970 with the name Education and Psychology Building. Total cost of construction came in at $2,546, 361, which is about $26.7 million in 2024 value. You can view a photo of Scully under construction here. It is named in honor of SEMO’s 10th President Mark F. Scully. President Scully was at the helm during the massive expansion period of higher education which occurred due to the Baby Boom generation and the fact that more people could afford to go to college. He began on May 1, 1956, and stepped down on June 30, 1975. When he arrived on campus, enrollment was around 1,500; nineteen years later it was around 8,000. To handle all of these new students, SEMO added twelve buildings including the UC, five academic buildings, and three dormitories. Some fifteen new majors were added as well. 

The first two photos show the west side of the building. The third is the south façade which faces a lovely green space. The area has a good bit of outdoors seating and a lovely stepped green area where I imagine students hang out when the weather is nice. It also has a covered seating area as seen in the fifth photo. The sixth photo is the building's dedication plaque and the sixth is a portrait of Dr. Scully inside the building.

The set below offers two views of the Parker Building. Named for Walter Winfield Parker, the ninth president of the university who served in the position from 1933 to 1956. He saw the university through the end of the Great Depression, World War II, and the was in Korea. It was under his helm that the university experienced the inrush of veterans after the war. In response, during his term five new buildings were constructed on campus. These were the Kent Library, Cheney Hall, Myers Hall (not seen in this post), Memorial Hall, and the Houck Field House (also not seen in this post). A native of Arkansas, Parker graduated from Hendrix College (Class of 1912) and then taught high school for a year before returning to Hendrix to teach for two years. He then left to earn his master’s degree from Columbia University (Class of 1915). He then joined the faculty of Central Missouri State Teacher’s College (now the University of Central Missouri). He moved up quickly, and in 1928 was named president of Northwestern State Teacher’s College (now Northwestern Oklahoma State University) in Ida, Oklahoma.

The building was formerly called Parker Hall on many official SEMO documents and before that Parker Athletic and Physical Education Complex, and some point Parker Hall Physical Education. I am uncertain as to when and why the name changes occurred. The basic name – Parker – was chosen by the board during their May 1960 meeting. When I was walking around the raised portion you see in this photo looked to me like it may have once contained a pool. As this 1974 photo shows, this was not the case. The building opened in 1960, but the surge of Baby Boom era students made an addition completed in 1969 necessary. The addition came with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but this removed in 2002. It was originally a facility for women only when it opened in 1960.

The next photo is a view of the Towers residence hall complex. There are four residence buildings connected by a central dining facility. Each is named after their general direction in the complex. The building on the left in this photo is North Tower, West Tower is in the center with a bit of East Tower visible beyond, and East Tower is on the right. You can see the cafeteria in the middle of the complex at its base. Like so many dorms, these were built to house the growing number of students in the 1960’s as the Baby Boomers matriculated. Construction on the complex began in 1966 and they were opened in 1968. Like so many dorms of this era, they are rather plain, tall boxes, the like of which can still be seen on hundreds of campuses across the country.

The last set of photos show some of the many different styles of lamppost signs seen across the SEMO campus. I often show these and note how they are the norm on campuses today. Increasingly, colleges and universities have different kinds of signs. Usually, there will be at least one main kind and sometimes another for sports or some special occasion. Increasingly, there are different kinds on campus at the same time. Here we see several kinds promoting SEMO including the one in the second photo denoting its ​sesquicentennial the year prior to my visit.

​If you want to learn more about the university, I highly recommend the book Normal to University: A Century of Service by Arthur H. Mattingly (Missouri Litho and Printing Company, 1979). It is obviously a little old, but it is an enjoyable read and gives lots of great information. You can still buy used copies of the book online, but I got my hands on a copy through my university’s interlibrary loan service (ILL). I use the ILL pretty frequently when writing posts and have found that many of the books I get are loaned from the University of Alabama. I don’t know if that is because we have an agreement with them, that they are close, or simply because they have a bigger collection of books on the history of higher education. Either way, I have been surprised at just how many books I have had from them. Kudos to the librarians and their collection in Tuscaloosa.