So yesterday was September 7, and my alma mater Texas Tech was on the road and lost a game to Washington State University. It was Tech's second game of the season and that makes them 1 and 1 overall. They have a tough schedule and an unusual one given the shakeup in the Big 12. In addition to the usual suspects over the last several years, they have Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State on their schedule. Only time will tell how the season will go. But the game and the date had me thinking. I remembered that I had been on campus on September 7, 1996. It stands out to me because that was the semester I began my doctoral studies and despite the fact that the Red Raiders played their second game of the season that Saturday, neither of them had been on campus. We lost our first game that year on the road at Kansas State. The second game had been at a neutral stadium. We beat Oklahoma State that morning at Texas Stadium, the then home to the Dallas Cowboys, 31 to 3. I didn't have cable at the time, but I listened to the game on the radio. That afternoon, I went to a friend's house and watched my other alma mater Tennessee beat UCLA at home. I had to run by campus to pick something up and walked across campus to the Jones Stadium and took some photos along the way. 

To say that it doesn't look the same these days is an understatement. It doesn't have the exact same name either. Although commonly called "Jones Stadium" in those days, it opened as the Clifford B. and Audrey Jones Stadium. Jones was on the then-named Texas Technological College board when it opened in 1923. He would became chair of the board in 1927. Twelve years later, he was chosen as Tech's third president. It was during his tenure in that role that the Texas Tech Foundation was established. He didn't stay president for long, especially given the time most presidents stayed in office during that era. He stepped down in 1944 due to health concerns. He was named President Emeritus and stayed active in his support for Tech. He and Audrey gave $100,000 (about $1.6 million in 2024 value) to aid in the construction of the stadium. 

The stadium opened in 1947 and the first game there took place on November 29th. The Red Raiders won that game, beating the Hardin-Simmons Cowboys 14 to 6. The official dedication took place at half time during the game. The stadium had a capacity of 27,000 when it opened. It has been enlarged numerous time Back then, Tech's athletic teams were known as the Matadors, not the Red Raiders. They had that name from 1925 to 1936. The football team donned new red uniforms on a road trip to Los Angeles on October 26, 1934 where they beat heavily favored Loyola Marymount. A local sports reporter in LA referred to them as a "red raiding team" and the description stuck. 

Below is a view looking northwest inside Jones Stadium that day twenty-eight years ago. Jones has been enlarged a lot since then. In fact, it really doesn't look the same at all from the outside. It has also seen its named changed. A licensing agreement with SBC Communications (Southwestern Bell Corporation) saw it renamed Jones SBC Stadium in 2000. AT&T bought out SBC so in 2006 it was renamed again to Jones AT&T Stadium. It still carries that moniker. I don't know for certain what Jones' capacity was in 1996. It was somewhere around 53,000. I know this because I remember thinking it was just about half or so of Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee at the time. 

Below are some photos I took along the way to Jones Stadium. Back then, not all statistical software was available on desktop computers. Personal computers of that era were just beginning to be able to cope with the size and processing demands of such things, so anything of substance was still frequently ran on a main frame. My major professor had ran some analyses the previous day and asked me to swing by and pick up the results. The main frame was in the Computer Science Building and I was on my way to pick up the print outs from her stats run. The first photo below is looking southward across Memorial Circle toward the Administration Building. The second and third photos are of the Mechanical Engineering Building, taken on opposite sides of a quad known as the Engineering Key. It sits on the northern edge of the Key. The arches are really cool and I love the look of them. Arches like that are seen all across campus. The fourth photo is the since razed English and Philosophy Building. When I was on campus in the late 90's, the people I knew who were interested in campus architecture did not like the English and Philosophy Building. Well, that's not quite correct. They didn't like it where it was. The Engineering Key, as you can see from these photos, pretty much carries the Spanish architecture them in a traditional sense. English-Philosophy carried the blonde brick theme, but that was it. Otherwise, it was a mid-century piece that had nothing much in common with that part of campus. I understood that complaint, but it was not the only mid-century on campus, and it was not at all the least attractive. There were and are a number of mid-rise buildings on campus that have nothing in common with the Spanish theme except they too are clad in the same brick. Several of those buildings are simply plain; a couple of them are, in my opinion, rather ugly. They would be acceptable and not terrible on another campus, but given the beauty of the Spanish-styled structures on Tech's campus they really stand out and not in a good way. None the less, I always liked the building. Photos five and six are the Electrical Engineering Building. I love the archways on that building as well. You can just see the Computer Science Building in the background of the first photo. I don't remember why I did not take a photo of that building. It may have been that since I was going inside of it I didn't think to take a photo. It is also a modern style building and not too attractive so I may have deliberately chosen not to take a photo of it.

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. 
​
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). 
​
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. 

My family and I were passing through Bowling Green, Kentucky in the final days of long road trip. I had tried to keep myself on something of a work-like schedule in terms of when I went to bed and rose in the morning, and despite a long time on the road and in various hotels I was still getting up pretty early and before my sons who were very much enjoying their summer vacation. When we stopped in Bowling Green, we grabbed a room at a place near the Western Kentucky University campus, so I knew I would be getting up to take a walk around campus while my family slept. Despite my early rise and arrival on campus by 6am, it was hot and humid. In fact, it was a scorcher of a day. But the skies were clear, the sun was out, and the birds were singing. Thus, it was a perfect morning for a stroll on campus.
​
I started my walk around campus at the Eva and Jim Martens Alumni Center, seen in the set below. The building was constructed to become the first purpose-built home for the alumni association which had previously been in the former president’s home. Flooding in the area delayed the project and it opened a few months behind schedule in April 2013. Formally dedicated on April 12th, the building was designed by RossTarrant Architects of Lexington and comes in 30,421 square feet. It cost $8.6 million, or just over $12 million today, to construct. The Martens have given to WKU for many years. Jim is an alumnus (Class of 1972) and he and Eva own a real estate investment firm. The building opened with a different name, the Augenstein Alumni Center. It was named for WKU alumnus (Class of 1981) Dale Augenstein, a restaurateur who has been active in the alumni association. Mr. Augenstein donated $1 million to support the construction of the building. It carried his name from 2013 until 2022. I am not sure why his name was removed. If you know, please leave a comment. RossTarrant also did the design work for Ogden College Hall (see below), Music Hall (see below), and the most recent renovation and addition to the Downing Student Union (see below) on campus.

One of the things I really liked about the building was the nod to history you see in the first photo. As noted in the second photo, the two stones inlayed in the building's entryway are historic to the campus. I love when places incorporate pieces like this. The MCV campus at the Virginia Commonwealth University where I worked for many years has a long history of reusing elements like this. It is a great way to pay homage to the past. The center also uses several of the WKU identity branding elements in a good way. The water feature has the stylized WKU built in on the building's side as seen in the third photo, the university's graphic which incorporates the Cherry Hall cupola (see below) is embedded in the handrails in front, and the university seal is etched into the building itself as seen in the fifth photo. Despite having three different elements like this, it is not over the top. Each is relatively small and subtle. The seventh photo is a view from across the street and Augenstein Alumni Plaza. The plaza is named for Dale Augenstein. The plaque you see in the eighth photo notes that it recognizes donors who gave during a campaign ending in 2012. I am not sure when the plaza opened, but it was obviously after that date.

​The statue you see in the seventh and ninth photo is the WKU mascot, Big Red. Big Red dates back to 1979. The athletics programs at WKU are known as the Hilltoppers, owing to the geography of the region and to the fact that the original portion of campus sits upon a hill overlooking the adjacent area. Despite the fact that the teams had been known as the Hilltoppers for decades, the university was without a mascot. A number of things had been tried out as a potential mascot, but nothing took hold. In the fall of 1979, a group of administrators and athletics officials decided to come up with something. The group was not successful at coming up with something, and at that point they engaged the support of WKU senior Ralph Carey. Carey was from Cincinnati and had worked at the Kings Island amusement park where costumed characters strolled the grounds and entertained park goers. Readers who are old enough may recall a Brady Bunch episode where the family travels to the park for Mr. Brady’s work and Greg ends up donning such an outfit. Carey went in that direction and made a sketch of what would become Big Red. The team liked it and it became the choice for the new mascot on September 21, 1979/ The only name they thought fit was Big Red. The cost of the first costume was $900 (just under $4k today), which was jointly funded by the university, the athletics department, and the alumni association. The Hannah Barbera company in Los Angeles built the suit, and it debuted on December 8, 1979 in the first home basketball game of the season. The Hilltoppers beat Florida A&M that day 87 to 60 in front of a crowd 10,300.

The set below gives two views of Van Meter Hall as well as an indication as to why the university athletics teams are known as the Hilltoppers. ​The current Van Meter is the second structure to carry the name. It opened in 1911, the work of architect Brinton B. Davis. As originally constructed, Van Meter had an enormous auditorium capable of seating 2,000 people. For decades, it was the site of the required daily chapel for WKU students. I was not able to get into the building and cannot confirm it still has this space. The building cost $147,000 to construct, which is roughly $5 million in today’s value. The name is taken from Captain Charles J. Vanmeter, a Bowling Green native who donated funds for the creation of the original Van Meter Hall. Vanmeter’s father owned a store in town in which he worked in his earlier years. He went into business with his brother and a man whose last name was Leiter with a riverboat. The business flourished, eventually being named the Bowling Green Navigation Company. 

The set below begins with photos of Gordon Wilson Hall. The building opened as the WKU library in 1927 and would remain the home of the university’s collection until 1965. It was designed by architect Brinton B. Davis who designed Van Meter Hall. It cost $200,000 to construct (which is about $3.5 million in today’s money). The stone for the building’s façade was quarried in Warren County Kentucky. It didn’t get its current name until the library moved out and it was transitioned to its current state as an academic building. It is named in honor of Alexander Gordon Wilson. Wilson began teaching at WKU in 1912 after teaching in public schools for a number of years. He had arrived on campus in 1908 as a student, although he would complete his education at Indiana University while on the WKU faculty. Indeed, he had been on faculty for about seven years when he completed his baccalaureate degree from IU in 1919. He also completed his master’s degree (Class of 1924) and doctorate (Class of 1930) there. He advanced through the faculty ranks during this time and became chair of the Department of English in 1928, some two years prior to completing his doctorate. He would remain chair until 1959. One of his sons, Gordon Wilson Jr. also joined the WKU faculty and was also a department chair, in this case of the Department of Chemistry. One of the most touching things about life in higher education I have read was a quote of his appearing in Lowell H. Harrison’s book “Western Kentucky University”. About his life, Wilson remarked “When I try to separate my life from that of the college I have great difficulty, for both of them have run along together so long that they seem to be one instead of two” (p.25). WKU would rename the building in honor of Wilson on May 13, 1969. He passed away on April 12, 1970. 

The first four photos are of the front façade from a number of different angles. I love the classic look of the building and it looked remarkable in the early morning sun. I couldn't decide which of the many photos I took to use, so you get four of them. In the first two you can also see the university's entryway sign sign. I like the fact that it is not too big so as to not take away from the impressive view of the building. The fifth photo is the backside of the building. The statue you see in the sixth photo is called Trust. It shows two dancers in action, with the female figure being held in a position which requires faith in her partner to ensure her safety. It is the work of Arvada, Colorado based artist Kendra Fleischman. Another of her pieces is seen below. Trust was installed in June 2008. As you can see from the last photo, the site was the home of Fort Albert Sidney Johnston during the Civil War.

The next set of photos all center around Cherry Hall. Before getting into the building, a little history is in order. As is so often the case, the history of WKU is that of a meandering river, with various streams coming together to form the current flow. As an institution, WKU refers to 1906 as the date of its founding, but constituent elements of the current university go back much further. The oldest component of the current institution was the Glasgow Normal and Business College. Founded in 1876 in the eponymous town, it was one of several small schools of this type cropping up in the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the late 1800’s. It moved to Bowling Green in 1884 and changed its name to the Southern Normal School and Business College. Meanwhile, in Bowling Green yet another institution was being formed. In 1877, Ogden College was created thanks to the bequest of Robert W. Ogden who provided his entire estate to form a school for the free education of the young men of Warrant County. The campus of Ogden , some seven acres, is today contained within the campus of WKU. In 1890, another private college was formed called Potter College. Potter would eventually close, and as such it was not a direct progenitor to WKU. However, years later the institution would close and in 1909 WKU bought the former college’s property and buildings. I will come back to that point in a moment. But first, I will go back to the history of the Southern Normal School and Business College by way of an introduction to Henry Cherry. 

Born on November 16, 1864, Cherry grew up in on a farm near Bowling Green. He was the seventh of nine sons. After writing that, I just have to say God bless his mother. I imagine she would have loved to have had a daughter in that mix. Cherry received a limited education in his early years, the family farm and the necessity to help his family limited his time in school when even then when the school year was shorter than today. He and one of his brothers sold potatoes and axe handles from an ox cart and thanks to these efforts he was able to enroll in the private Southern Normal School. He saved money by renting a room off campus and by cooking his own food. His older brother Thomas “T.C. Cherry” also attended the school, and they subsequently became teachers. In 1892, they purchased the school. Cherry would run the school as its chief administrator. As was the case at many institutions in those days, particularly normal schools, the institution offered both collegiate and high school-level training. The school would continue on its own for the next fourteen years and along the way the Cherry brothers sold off the business component of the school when Southern was acquired by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The business unit would continue as another private institution for decades to come alternately being called the Bowling Green Business University and Bowling Green College of Commerce. More on that below. 

Cherry was a major advocate for education at all levels and wanted to see improvements in both the K-12 and higher education sectors in Kentucky. Indeed, he would eventually serve two terms as president of the Kentucky Education Association. Part of this was his lobbying to create additional normal schools within the state. He sought to have the state over the training of teachers. Over time, the push to create more public normal schools took hold, and Cherry offered to sell the state the Southern Normal School and all of its buildings and properties which was then located in a different spot on College Street in Bowling Green. The state agreed and in 1906 acquired the Southern Normal School and subsequently renamed it Western Kentucky State Normal School. Classes would begin in January 1907 with the new name in Southern’s existing facilities. Cherry would become the new school’s first president. Two years later, it would purchase the former Potter College and relocate to what had previously been called Vinegar Hill. An aside here. The site was known as Vinegar Hill prior to Potter College’s creation thanks to a lady who made moonshine there in a clandestine still. She sold the stuff around town calling it vinegar to avoid the illegal aspects of her business. It would later take on the more acceptable College Heights name. 

Cherry would remain WKU’s president thirty-one years, dying while in office in 1937. Along the way, the institution changed names a few times. First, thanks to moving from offering two-year degrees to full-on baccalaureate degrees the name became Western Kentucky State Normal School and Teachers College in 1922. In 1927, WKU merged with the Ogden College, which sat adjacent to the campus. In 1930, the name changed to Western Kentucky State Teachers College and the next year it began offering graduate study and the conferring of master’s degrees. In 1948, the name changed to western Kentucky State College. Long after Cherry had passed, the university would reacquire the part of the former Southern Normal School Cherry had sold. In 1963, WKU acquired the Bowling Green College of Commerce. By 1966, the institution had grown to offer many graduate degrees across numerous fields and hence the name was changed once again to its current Western Kentucky University.

Cherry is rightfully seen as the force behind the creation of the university. His impact was like no other, and he had his hands on the creation of much of what is the university today. The institution grew under his guidance and although not without setbacks it was generally a very prolific three decades under his leadership. It is only natural that at least one building on campus would bear his name.

The building was desperately needed. It was meant to be a replacement for a building constructed in 1888 called Recitation Hall. That former building was in heavy use, and even the attic was used for classroom space. It was so crowded during the day, the hallways were virtually impassable. In addition to being overworked, the old building was outdated having only two restrooms and no modern amenities. By 1933, it was in disrepair and considered a fire hazard. President Cherry sought funds for a new building from the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Depression era federal agency that funneled money to projects like this for the purpose of stimulating the economy. The university's first application was denied, leaving Cherry furious, particularly since other colleges in the state received PWA funding. He would not be deterred, and enlisted the support of the governor and Kentucky's federal representatives. By the close of 1935, funding had been secured. The cornerstone was laid in a ceremony on October 27, 1936 which was broadcast on radio. It would be completed in 1937 and would welcome classes for the first time on September 22, 1937. Cherry would not live to see it open. He passed away on August 1, 1937. Fittingly, the building would carry his name in tribute from the day it opened.

The first two photos are the front façade of the building. The third is a close up of one of the two bas-reliefs on that side of the building. The next five photos are close ups of the state of Cherry in front of the structure. The statue is the work of Chicago-based artist Lorado Taft. Taft was a prolific sculptor and his works can be found all around the U.S. Pertinent to this blog, readers may know his work at other colleges and universities. His statue of George Washington stands near the Odegaard Undergraduate Library at the University of Washington, and two of his pieces, the Fountain of Creation and Alma Mater both stand on the campus of the University of Illinois. The piece was, as such pieces frequently are, initially developed as a clay model in 1934. Charry did not want it cast in bronze or erected until after his passing. Both men passed away before its installation. Indeed, Taft passed away in 1936 before the clay model was used to cast the bronze piece seen here.

There is a time capsule enclosed in the base of the statue. What is interesting about it is that we know exactly what went in the capsule because the people at WKU decided not merely to keep a list, but to keep a set of duplicates in the Kentucky Museum. Among the items included are a 1924 WKU yearbook, various newspapers, photos, commencement programs, and university documents including the contract for the statue’s creation. The collection in the Kentucky Museum has all of these items in a copy of the copper box in which the documents are stored in the statue.

The last photo is the rear ​façade of the building.

Next are three views of College High Hall. ​The building, which was designed by the Nevin-Wischmeyer & Morgan architectural firm, was completed in 1925 at a cost of $243,678 (just under $4.5 million in today’s dollars). As the name suggests, it was the home of WKU’s training school. It served in that role from 1925 until 1969. It then underwent a renovation costing about $676,000 in 1972 (that would be about $5 million today). It was then named Science and Technology Hall. It underwent its most recent renovation in 2009 and was rededicated College High Hall in 2010.

The next set of photos are a number of buildings that are located on the former site of Ogden College. As noted above, Ogden was acquired by WKU in 1923. To this day, the sciences at WKU are housed in the Ogden College of Science & Engineering, and the buildings in this set all contain units which are a part of that college. 

The first four photos show different views of the Hardin Planetarium. Hardin was built as part of the Kelly Thompson Hall complex (see below) and was completed in 1967. It was formally dedicated on October 13, 1967. It is named in honor of Hardin Cherry Thompson, son of then WKU President Kelly Thompson (see below) and student at WKU who died during his senior year in 1963. He had been struggling with brain cancer and passed away on October 5, 1963, at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (then Vanderbilt Hospital) in Nashville. The planetarium can seat 200 people.

The fifth photo is a historic marker for the former Ogden College. The sixth photo is a relatively new Ogden College Hall. A groundbreaking ceremony for the building was held on April 5, 2016. It was completed in late 2017 and formally dedicated in early 2018. Designed by the architecture firm RossTarrant Architects of Lexington, Kentucky, the building has 82,500 square feet of space. It has dozens of wet labs, offices, and a 300-seat auditorium. It cost $40 million to construct. The building sits on the former site of one of the wings of Kelly Thompson Hall. It is a LEED® Certified Gold building. It was the first WELL V2 Gold educational laboratory in the U.S.

The seventh and eighth photos are of Kelly Thompson Hall. What you see here is part of a complex of two buildings constructed during the 1960’s. The original portion of the building was completed in 1960. This was razed in 2015 to make way for Ogden College Hall. The bit you see here was completed in 1967 and was originally known as the Central Wing of the complex. It was dedicated on October 14, 1967. It sits on the site of the old Ogden College Building. The building takes its name from WKU’s third president. Thompson first went to WKU as a student. In the fall of 1928, he matriculated on a football scholarship. A shoulder injury before the season even started meant the scholarship would be revoked and he anticipated dropping out of school. Coach E.A. Diddle (see below) found Thompson sitting on the stairs of a now razed building looking sad and asked him what was going. Thompson replied he was about to leave the school since he could not afford it. Diddle took him into downtown and personally signed a note for a loan of $25 so Thompson could stay in school. He worked for WKU in outreach to help pay back the loan and continue his studies. He excelled at this work, and over time became ingrained in the hierarchy of the school despite being an undergraduate. President Cherry became a mentor and a friend over the course of his studies. His work slowed his education, but he graduated from WKU with both his bachelor’s (Class of 1935) and master’s (Class of 1953). He would stay at WKU with a couple of exceptions for his entire career, working his way through the administrative ranks. His ascension to the presidency was not without some issue. He did not have a doctorate, and many believed that such a degree was a requirement for the position (he did have an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Morris Harvey College, now the University of Charleston in West Virginia). He was also Catholic, and some felt that this was not acceptable in a public college in 1950’s Kentucky. None the less, he took the reigns of the university and saw it well into the Baby Boom generation and the massive increase in the size of the university during a heady period in WKU’s history.

The ninth and tenth photos do not show what I wanted to photo very well. Behind the Hardin Planetarium is a feature in the ground that is made in the shape of Kentucky. You will have to enlarge both photos and view them together to get the idea. Thanks to my having only my phone with which to take photos and the fact it is in such a position that getting the correct perspective meant that you only get these poor views.

Finally, this set concludes with ​Snell Hall. ​This is not the first building to carry the Snell Hall moniker. The original Snell Hall opened in 1924 and would eventually be razed in October 2005. Both buildings take their name from Perry Snell, an alumnus of Ogden College who gave funds to construct the original building. I really like the fact that although the original building was scrapped the name remains. Colleges frequently get rid of names with buildings, opting to rename structures in honor of donors of the new building. It is natural to honor someone who donates large amounts of money, but the original names were given out of respect and honor of either donations or dedication to the place. It seems to me that someone worth recognizing is worth remembering.

The next set are of two buildings in the same area as those in the last set but for which I was unable to find out information. The first photo is the Engineering and Biological Sciences Building. I was not actually able to find out anything about this building.  The second photo is the ​​Environmental Sciences and Technology Building. Construction on the 102,000 square foot building was completed in 1976. It was designed by architect Frank Cain. The art piece you see in the third photo stands next to the building and, as noted in the fourth photo, is the work of WKU students. The last photo in this set shows a duo of greenhouses which stand behind the building.

The next two photos are of the E.A. Diddle Memorial Park. ​The park is named for Edgar Allen Diddle, long serving WKU men’s basketball coach for whom the WKU arena is also named (see below). Diddle came to WKU in 1922 as athletic director and the coach of several sports. He shed the other roles over time but led the basketball program until 1964. His overall record at WKU was 759 wins and 302 losses, a 72%-win rate. During his time as head coach, the Hilltoppers went to three NCAA tournaments, eight NIT tournaments, and ten Ohio Valley Conference championships. He passed away on January 2, 1970.

The set below is of a type of building I did not expect to find on the campus - a log cabin type building. In fact, there are two such structures on the WKU campus. This one is ​Faculty House, and it sits directly behind Cherry Hall. ​When I saw the Faculty House, I assumed it was much older than it is. It opened in 1921, and although that means the building is 103 years old, I had assumed it dated back to the 19th Century. The Senior Classes of 1920 and 1921 raised the funds for the construction of the building. The logs were harvested on campus and was built largely by the students and faculty members Billy Craig, L.Y. Lancaster, George Page, and H.M. Yarbrough. It cost about $6,000 to build, which is only $94.5k today. When it opened, it was called Cedar House. It was first used as a social center but only for two years before being tasked with being a library in 1923. In 1928, it was converted for use as the student center on campus and served in that role until 1959. It was renovated that year and was renamed Faculty House. It has had a variety of uses since, but as you can see is currently in a state of renovation.

The last photo in this set has something in it I have never seen before. If you enlarge the photo, you will just be able to make out an albino squirrel. Before the day was out, I would see two more on the other side of campus. I imagine the recessive trait has become more common as the families of squirrels living in the area intermingle.

The next set contains photos of the various sights you will encounter on the crest of the hill behind Gordon Wilson Hall and Cherry Hall. As you can see, there are various paths, adornments, and features in this area which add to the feel of the area. I will spend time on only one of these elements. The last three photos feature a monopteros. The neoclassical structure is reminiscent of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina and I imagine that is on purpose. A water tower once stood in this general vicinity.

The set below gives two views of the front of Potter Hall. ​Potter opened as a dorm for women in 1921 and stayed in that role with a few years serving male students until 1994 when it was converted into office space. Rumor has it that the building is haunted by a student who died by suicide in the basement in 1979. Her ghost would apparently communicate via a Ouija board to students living in the building when it was a dorm, and still roams the halls after its conversion to administrative space. The building was designed by the D.X. Murphy and Company, and Brashear and Cohill architecture firms. It cost $233,407 (about $3.7 million in today’s value) to build. It is named in honor of J. Whit Potter, a member of the WKU Board for sixteen years.

The next set are photos taken as I walked from the traditional core of campus to the Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center. The first and photo has the second of Arvada, Colorado-based artist Kendra Fleischman's art pieces on campus. The bronze casting is call Origin and it was installed in June 2008. I really like how they painted the crosswalk to include the WKU logo in it in front of this piece! The third and fourth photos are of a statue by Illinois-based artist Jim Budish called Chauncey Too. The piece was installed in October 2007.

When I saw first saw the William "Gander" Terry Colonnade, seen in the fifth photo, and the amphitheater beyond (photos seven and eight), I thought they were constructed as part of the building beyond. However, this is not the case. The area, once a limestone quarry, is the site of the university's former football stadium. The colonnade was one the entrance to the stadium. It was designed by architect Brinton Davis, the creator of many of the structures on campus. It was built in 1927 and formally dedicated on October 8, 1927. It cost $50,000 to construct, or about $906k in today's money. The seats in the amphitheater are the original football stadium seating. As you can see in the sixth photo, Terry was a WKU football player and coach. The colonnade was named in his honor on July 23, 2003.

The last four photos in this set show the front side of the ​Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center. Construction on the Wilson Center began in 1970, and it was completed in 1973. A formal dedication ceremony was held on October 13. 1973. The building is fairly representative of structures from that era in its use of bare concrete for the exterior. It is a large structure coming in at 174,000 square feet. Construction of the building, which was designed by the Ryan Associated Architects firm, cost about $4 million (that would be worth about $32.5 million in today’s value). You can view four of the original blueprints completed by Ryan Associated Architects in 1969 for the building here. In addition to the Wilson Fine Arts Center, the firm also designed the L.T. Smith Stadium (see below), the Hugh Poland Hall dorm (see below), and the campus master plan of 1973. The firm also completed a master plan for the campus of the University of Louisville in 1974. The building was damaged by two fires, one in 1978 and another in 1984. The first was accidental, but the second was set by an arsonist. Wilson was a WKU alumnus Class of 1931) who stayed on at the university as a faculty member until 1958. He was the first chair of the Department of Art. The fountain has been there from the beginning, but it looked quite a bit different in the past. It was redesigned as part of WKU's 2006 Centennial celebration. It is actually a piece of art that contains an element that will not reveal itself until 2106. The fountain is called Time and Place - Compass and Clock and it is the work of Kim Chalmers. Chalmers was head of the WKU Department of Art at the time, and he designed the piece to reflect the university in the past, the present, and in the future. It will be difficult to see, but there brushed aluminum dots throughout the piece. These dots will correspond with the alignment of the stars over the campus in 2106 when the university celebrates its bicentennial. I didn't know that during my visit, but loved the idea when I read about it later. I will not be around then, but it is really cool to think that the piece will mirror the stars' placement then. If they maintain it, it will be neat for future generations to refer to it as "once having matched" the placement of the stars.

The set below gives you views of two libraries on campus. The first five are of the Commons at Helm Library. Based on the outward appearance of this building, you might get the idea that it is relatively new. Looks can be deceiving and in this case very much so. The Commons opened in 1931, and it did not open as a library or study space. Indeed, it was a gym. You read that correctly. It was the Health and Physical Education Building when it opened and it was the home of the Hilltoppers basketball team until the Diddle Arena (see below) opened in 1963. It was then that the space was renovated and renamed the Margie Helm Library. Even then, it does not look like a building from 1963, at least to me. That is because the space recently underwent a significant renovation completed in 2022. The work completely changed the look of the building. The 1960’s era renovation blocked off the interior of what was the old playing court and divided the structure into three floors of space in a traditional layout. The renovation reopened the space, returned skylights that had been removed in the 1960’s, and added the glass façade you see in these photos. The design work was headed by the Luckett and Farley architectural firm in collaboration with the Gensler architect group. Both firms have designed many academic structures at colleges and universities all over the country as well as overseas. Gensler completed the most recent WKU campus master plan. Their combined work resulted in the Commons receiving the 2022 AIA Merit Awards for Excellence in Architectural Design. The total cost of the renovation came in at about $35 million. It was closed, so I am not able to show you what the inside looks like and that is a pity because it seems quite impressive. You can learn more about the project and see renderings of the inside here. 

As you can see in the sixth photo, the Commons is attached to another building. That building is the Raymond Cravens Library. Cravens opened in 1970 as the home to both the graduate library and the offices of the graduate school. The nine-story structure was designed by architect Frank Cain, who also worked on the Diddle Arena and the Environmental Sciences and Technology Building. There was once a swimming pool on this site. The building has 104,723 square feet of space and originally cost $2.4 million to construct (which is about $20.6 million in 2024 value). Its eponymous namesake was a two-time alumnus (Classes of 1952 and 1955) and long serving faculty member and administrator. After completing his doctoral studies at the University of Kentucky, Cravens returned to WKU to be on faculty in the Department of History where he taught classes in political science. He was named Vice President for Academic Affairs in 1959 and Dean of Public Service and International Programs in 1977. He retired from WKU in 1991. Interestingly, the building was named in his honor prior to completion and long before he left the university. Typically, places do not name buildings in honor of living employees despite the fact that they routinely name things for living donors. The last three photos of this set show the building from different angles. The tree you see growing between sections of the raised walkway has been there from the beginning. There was talk of cutting it down, but Cain simply designed the walkway around it.

The first photo in the next set is ​Music Hall. It is a LEED® Silver certified building. You can see photos of the interior of the building here. It was designed by the architecture firm RossTarrant. It was completed in January, 2012 and was formally dedicated that May. The remaining photos in this set are of Finley C. Grise Hall, home to the WKU Gordon Ford College of Business. Grise joined the faculty in 1913. He would become a dean in 1927 and continue in that role for thirty-two years. He would stay at the university until his retirement in 1959. Construction on the building began in late 1964 and would be completed in 1966. It was dedicated in his honor on October 14, 1967. It cost $1,778,000 to construct, which is roughly $17.8 million in 2024 dollars. The last photo is a statue in the trees near Grise. The name of the piece is Woman Walking, the work of Kansas City-based artist Tom Corbin. It was installed in 2006.

The set below begins with ten photos taken along the Centennial Mall. As one might expect, the mall is named for WKU's centennial which was celebrated in 2006. The information I will provide on many of these buildings is a bit muddled for a couple of reasons. First, the collection of buildings go back to the 1950's and at the time they were constructed they were connected. So, what appears to wings of the same building were from the beginning considered different structures with unique names. Second, over time, these buildings were renovated and as that took place names changed. Information available in the various sources I read in preparation for this post had varying information that was due likely both to the fact that the names changed over time and that people frequently use the common names for things and not the official name. I imagine some of the information I provide below is inaccurate for one or both of these reasons. As best as I can tell, these structures were four independent buildings carrying the names of their relative position on the quad: North Hall, East Hall, South Hall, and West Hall. All were designed to be dorms. At some point, the names were combined such as they are here as is the case with Southwest Hall. I believe Southwest is the current official name for what historical documents called South Hall and West Hall. Again, these are assumptions on my part.

None the less, I will present the information on these buildings as best as I understand it beginning East Hall/North Hall/Northeast Hall/Munday Hall which is seen in the first two photos below. East, along with North Hall, was completed in 1955 and 1957 respectively. It cost $1,350,000 to complete the combined structures, or about $15.1 million in today's dollars. At some point, it was renamed Munday in honor of Margaret Munday, the first African American student to take classes at WKU. Ms. Munday had previously attended Kentucky State University, but transferred to WKU for the Fall semester of 1956. She officially desegregated WKU on September 15, 1956. She was a music major and a member of the university's chorus. After graduating in 1960, she went on to teach in public schools in the state until her retirement in 1995. When it opened, East housed 222 people in 109 rooms. North was a bit smaller, having only three floors compared to East's four. It could accommodate 200 residents.
​
The next five photos are of the currently named Southwest Hall, which I assume is what historical documents called South Hall and West Hall. If I understand it correctly, the South portion opened in 1960 and the West portion in 1961. Both are four story structures which could accommodate 208 residents, although West was constructed with a small dining facility. The globe is the work of artist Roger Loyson of Bemidji, Minnesota. Called With International Reach, the piece was installed in 2008 and reflects WKU's commitment to have impact across the globe. The piece actually sits at the correct angle as the earth sits in the heavens. As you can see from the sixth photo, the area where the piece sits is dedicated to former Dean of Students Charles A. Keown.

The next three photos are of a building across the street from Centennial Mall and a relatively new addition to campus, the Honors College and International Center (HCIC) Building. As the name suggests, it is home to the international programs and the Mahurin Honors College. Designed by RossTarrant Architects, the building was completed in 2015 and officially dedicated on October 27, 2015. It cost just over $22 million to construct. It has a variety of classrooms, study spaces, offices, lounges, meeting space, and a coffee shop. 

The tenth photo is of Colonial Court. It doesn't look like a court in this photo because you can only see one building. A number of smaller structures were constructed in the area in 1936 (some sources say 1934) by none other than President Cherry. The bungalows were to be leased out and provide him with a source of income during his retirement and he was going to live in one. He called the development Colonial Court. Of course, he passed away in office and never had the chance to take part in the plan. The university acquired the various houses in 2009 after which they renovated and modernized them for use by visiting scholars, particularly those from abroad. The larger building you see in the photo houses the university's Confucius center hence the gate and bell you see in the eleventh photo.

Next door to Colonial Court is the ​Adams-Whitaker Student Publications Center. David B. Whitaker became the director of WKU's publications from 1970. He stayed at WKU until his retirement in 1984. Robert "Bob" Adams, also known as "Mr. A" worked at WKU as a faculty member in communications and was the director of WKU's publications following David Whitaker. He was also an alumnus of the university (Class of 1965). A groundbreaking for the building occurred in November 2006 and it was dedicated the following fall. It cost $1.7 million, or about $2.6 million today, to construct.

The set below begins with three photos of ​Jody Richards Hall. The building is the work of the Louisville-based architecture firm Arrasmith, Judd, and Rapp. The groundbreaking for the building occurred on April 6, 2001 and it was completed in the spring of 2003. The process was fraught with troubles and delays. It was to have started construction in 2000 and completed within two years. It was finally completed in 2003 and officially dedicated on October 22, 2004. The working name of the structure was the Journalism and Technology Building, but by the time construction began this had changed to the Mass Media and Technology Center or Mass Media and Technology Hall. It would not get its current name for over a decade. On April 28, 2017, the WKY board voted to name the building in honor of Richards and an official ceremony was held on May 4, 2017. Richards was a Kentucky native who was an English instructor at WKU. He was a member of the Commonwealth of Kentucky's House of Representatives from 1976 to 2018. The first photo is the front of the building and photos two and three are of the north side of the building.

Photos four through seven give you a number of views of the Academic Complex building. Construction on the building began in 1967. It was formally dedicated on October 10, 1970. It was designed by architects Ben Johnson and Frederick St. Clair of Owensboro, Kentucky. The building comes in at 118,728 square feet and cost $2.7 million (about $25.5 million today) to complete. The sculpture you see in the fifth photo is called Opening of My Soul, the work of Colorado-based artist David Norrie. The piece, made of steel, was completed in 2005 and installed on the WKU campus in 2007.

The last two photos are of Gary A. Ransdell Hall. The building, another of architects RossTarrant works on campus, is the home to the WKU College of Education and Behavioral Sciences. Work on the building began in 2008 and it was completed in December 2010. It was dedicated the following spring. The structure comes in 120,000 square feet and cost $35 million to complete (just over $51 million in 2024). It was initially called the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Building. It received its current name in January 2011. Ransdell is the former president of WKU, serving as the institution's ninth president for twenty years from 1997 until 2017. He was also a two-time alumnus (Classes of 1973 and 1974). He went to Indiana University to complete an EdD. 

The first photo below is the Health Services Building. Just about all colleges and universities have one of these. You tend not to think about them that much unless you live on campus in which case it is the place where you get your primary care. I was not able to find out anything about the building, but it seems relatively new.

The last two photos in this set are of a new building that will soon grace the campus. ​As you can see from these photos, the new building is going to be the home of the College of Business. The building was designed the Gensler architectural firm which also did the Commons at Helm Library detailed above. It is going to be a large structure, with some 113,000 square feet of space. Costs could rise, of course, but it is anticipated that it will cost about $100 million to complete. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 14, 2023 and they hope to open the building in the fall of 2025. It sits where a former dorm, Tate Page Hall, once stood.

The following photos are of some of the dorms on campus. The first photo below is of ​Regents Hall, one of the residence halls on campus. It opened in 2021 and can accommodate 375 residents. It was designed by the architectural firm Sewell and Sewell of Bowling Green. It is actually two connected buildings. Together, they have some 231,554 square feet of space. 

The second photo has Regents Hall on the left and the Raymond B. Preston Health and Activities Center on the right. The building in the center of this photo is Hugh Poland Hall. It is a residence hall built to cope with the massive influx of students during the 1960’s. The nine-story building was designed by the Louisville-based architectural firm A.B. Ryan Partnerships. There are some 79,461 square feet of space in the building which can accommodate 440 students. Opening in 1968, it cost $1,486,238 to build (about $14 million in 2024). Poland was a WKU alumnus (Class of 1934) who went on to a successful career in Major League Baseball. He played with the San Francisco Giants, the Cincinnati Reds, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Boston Braves during his career. He finished his career as the manager for the Giants. He served on the WKU board from 1957 until 1969.

The third photo has captures three dorms. On the left is Regents Hall and on the right is Hugh Poland. The large tower you see in the middle of this photo is the Pearce-Ford Tower. It is a massive structure. Standing ten stories and coming in at a whopping 180,400 square feet, the building opened in 1970. As originally designed, it could accommodate 920 residents. It is the work of Ryan Associated Architects and cost $4.3 million to construct (that’s about $40 million in today’s value). The Pearce portion of the name is in honor of William Pearce. He was president of Ogden College from 1913 to 1920. He left that position to become the director of WKU’s extension program. He stayed with WKU until his retirement in 1959. He was also the father-in-law to WKU president Kelly Thompson. The other part of the name comes from Marion Conner Ford, a faculty member and department chair at WKU from 1913 until 1940.

The sculpture in the fourth photo is by artist Kevin Robb of Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Called Tango, the piece was installed in 2008. The building behind it and the last two photos of this set is the Raymond B. Preston Health and Activities Center. Construction on the building began in 1990 and was completed in 1992. It was formally dedicated on August 23, 1992. Designed by architect Rick Coltharp, the 112,000 square foot building cost $12 million to construct (nearly $29 million today). It takes its name from Raymond Bart Preston, a WKU alumnus (Class of 1940). He founded the chemical distribution company PB&S Chemical. He donated funds to help construct the facility. 

The next set is of Guthrie Tower and the statue of Robert "Bobby" H. Guthrie which sits adjacent to where the new Business Building is being constructed. The tower stands 125.5 feet and is a memorial to those veterans who have served in combat. Meant to be a place of contemplation and thanks to those who served in combat, the tower, statue, and plaza were made possible by a $1.8 million gift from Lowell Guthrie, Bobby' younger brother. Bobby joined the service in 1947 at age seventeen and was sent to Korea during the war. He was killed in action in 1952. The cupola at the top of the tower harkens back to the Cherry Hall cupola. In addition to have four clock faces, the tower has a forty-seven bell carillon. The bells were made by the Paccard Bell Foundary in Lac D-Annecy, France. The company has been in business for more than 300 years. The bells collectively weight around 25,000 points, the largest one has a 59-inch diameter and weighs 4,630 pounds. The bells can be played manually or by computer. One of the bells has Bobby Guthrie’s name etched on it, and the rest have the names of his buddies from the service. I love the images etched into the granite. It is a great memorial. The statue Sergeant First Class Guthrie was created by Russ Faxon, an artist based in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. The tower and all of its elements was dedicated on May 6, 2002.

The set below provides a number of views of the exterior and interior of the Downing Student Union. Originally opened in 1970, the Downing Union takes its name from WKU’s fourth president, Dero G. Downing. Downing was a two-time WKU alumnus (Classes of 1943 and 1947). He served in the Navy during World War II and returned to Bowling Green after the war to teach at the university’s training high school. He was named director of the school in 1956. He took his first role with the university proper in 1959 when he was named registrar. He moved up to be Director of Admissions in 1962, then Dean of Business Affairs, and then Vice President for Administrative Affairs in 1965. He was named president of the university in 1969 and held the position until he retired in 1979. 

The building was originally designed by Owensboro, Kentucky based architects Ben Johnson and Frederick St. Clair. It was formally dedicated on October 10, 1970. It came in at 172,000 in its original configuration and cost $4.1 million to build, which is roughly $35.2 million in today’s value. Some sources indicate that it carried the Downing name from the beginning, but this seems unlikely to me. The idea that a sitting president of a public university would have a building named after him doesn’t seem like something a state would allow. I am not familiar with the laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky enough to say now, let alone back in 1970, but it seems suspect. I could be wrong, and if you know please leave a comment. It has been enlarged and renovated several times during its lifetime, including an addition in 2005 which brought the total square footage up to 193,547. The Student Success and Disabilities Services areas you see in the twelfth photo is located in the newer part of the building.

The first photo shows the university's seal on the front of the building. The second photo is a view looking away from the union across the Centennial Mall. The art piece you can just make out near the end of the mall is itself called Centennial. The piece is the work of Santa Fe, New Mexico-based artist Gino Miles. It was unveiled in a ceremony on November 18, 2006 during the centennial celebrations. It is made of steel. The third, fourth, and fifth photos show the front of the building as well as a sculpture of The Red Towel. Students and supporters of WKU wave red towels at all of the games. It is a tradition started by former basketball coach E.A. Diddle. The towel graces the uniforms of many of the athletic teams including the helmet of the WKU football team. The plaque you see in the sixth photo can be found just inside the main entrance of the building and the dedication plaque in the seventh photo hangs on the other side of the entryway. Photos eight through eleven are various interior shots where you will find, among other things, a statue of Big Red on top of a Red Towel. The newer part of the building, seen in the next three photos, holds various student services and a large lecture hall. They have even gone so far as to make doorhandles that are in the shape of the Red Towel. The last photo is an exterior shot of the rear of the building.

Across from the Downing Union is the building you see in the first photo below. Minton Hall is one of the residence halls on campus and it was designed by architects Frank Cain & Ben Johnson. Completed in 1963, the eleven-story structure was designed to accommodate up to 410 residents. It was built during the boom in higher education thanks to all of the Baby Boom generation students heading to college. Indeed, it was the tenth major building constructed at WKU during a seven-year period. It would not be the last. It cost $1.3 million to build, or about $13.6 million in today’s dollars. It was designed with the working title “Men’s Dormitory #5”. It did not receive its current name until 2002, and I am not sure what it was called in the interim. It takes its name in honor of John Minton who had numerous administrative roles over the course of nearly thirty years at the university. Among them, he was Dean of the Graduate School, Administrative Vice President, and Interim President. It was dedicated for him on October 25, 2002.

The next two photos are the front and back of Bates Runner Hall. It was completed in 1958 and was a dorm for women. Capable of housing 180 women, the building is the work of architects Robert & Johnson of Owensboro, Kentucky. It cost roughly $580k (about $6.3 million today) to construct. It opened with the name Regents Hall. It was renamed in 1969 in honor of Georgia Bates and Etta Runner. Bates worked at the university from 1956 until her retirement in 1980. Among her various roles, she the third Secretary of the WKY Board of Regents. Runner had received her teaching certificate from the university in 1916 and taught in public schools for a time. Among her roles at the university, she too was Secretary of the Board.

The next photo is the university’s Central Heat Plant. I took the photo simply because I like the way they wrote on the smokestack in brick. Factories of all kinds once did this and even as a kid I like that. It’s been added onto over the years, but the original portion opened in 1927. It is the work of architect Brinton Davis.

The fifth photo shows Gilbert Hall, another Baby Boomer era dorm. It was completed in 1964 and was the twelfth substantial building completed since 1956. Designed by Louisville, Kentucky based architecture firm Arrasmith and Wilk, it was originally called Terrace Hall. It was designed to accommodate 200 women and came complete with a sandwich shop on the first floor capable of seating 200 people. It cost $800,000, or about $8.2 million today, to construct. Its current name is honor of James T. Gilbert, a local physician who served on the WKU Board from 1963 until 1971. It was renamed in his honor in 1969. 

Next door to Gilbert is Hilltopper Hall which is the subject of the last photo of this set. When I saw it, I was a bit confused. As you can see, it is fenced off and appears to be in a state of construction. Yet, it looks like it has been completed for a time as well. As it happens, it is both. The building is another dorm and can accommodate 400 residents. It was completed in 2018 and in addition to residential spaces, has study rooms, game rooms, and a dining facility. It opened with great fanfare and high hopes. It was designed by architect Nick Sewell of the firm Sewell & Sewell Architect of Bowling Green and gas some 114,366 square feet of space. So why is fenced off? Well, in October 2023 the university found that the brick work and stone veneer on the south side of the building had issues. The veneer was starting to slip away from the building proper. Other issues with the brickwork were found, but students continued to live in the building. Subsequent evaluations prompted the university to close the dorm with little notice in January of this year. The university said the closure was done in caution not because of an imminent threat of collapse. A report by an engineering firm that indicated the veneer breaking was the result of the building having too much sway. All buildings sway in the wind, and the taller the structure the more it sways. In engineering terms, this is called drift. There are limits to how much a building can drift based on its construction and engineering. In the case of Hilltopper Hall, the drift was past allowable limits. Parts of the building exceed the legal allowance for drift by 600- to 900%, and the drift near the ends of the building exceeds the legal allowance by 1,300%. That drift put more pressure on the façade than the veneer could support, hence its detachment. The underlying issue was found to be the steel structure frame of the building. The construction had issues as well. There are plans to repair the structure, but I could not find out when and how that might be undertaken and completed. You can read the engineering reports here and here.

The next set takes us to the intercollegiate athletics side of things. The first four photos give you some exterior views of the Houchens Industries L.T. Smith Football Stadium. The stadium was completed in July 1968, and formally dedicated on October 26, 1968. It was designed by Ryan Associated Architects of Louisville, who designed so many buildings on the WKU campus during that period. The first part of the stadium was north/east stands which is what you see on the right in the forth photo below.  It opened with seating for 19,250. The Hilltoppers won their first outing in the new stadium, beating Butler University 35 to 0 on September 21, 1968. The current official capacity is 22,113 but five games have exceeded that limit. The largest crowd to date was a game against Indiana on September 25, 2021. Some 25,171 crowded the stadium that day to watch the Hilltoppers take on Indiana. WKU lost that game 33 to 31. 

The fifth and sixth photos are of the front of the E.A. Diddle Arena. ​Construction of the arena, which was developed with the working name “Academic-Athletic Building No. 1”  began on November 15, 1961. It was completed in late 1963 and was formally dedicated on December 7th that year. It cost $2.5 million, or roughly $26.3 million today, to complete. It was designed by architects Frank Cain and Ben Johnson. As originally configured, it held the basketball arena, a swimming pool, an auxiliary gym, locker rooms, and a variety of classrooms. They lost their first game in the arena to Vanderbilt 82 to 60. When it opened it could seat 8,500, but modifications over the years have seen the capacity fluctuate widely. It reached a peak capacity of 13,508 in the 1970’s. After a significant renovation in 2002 which saw the addition of more modern amenities, the capacity dropped to 7,381. Slight modifications since has it decreased to a current capacity of 7,326.

The statue of Coach Diddle seen in the seventh photo is also the work of Bell Buckle, Tennessee-based artist Russ Faxon. It was installed in 2005.

The first photo of the next set is Florence Schneider Hall, home of the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science. The building opened in 1929 as a dormitory for women and carried the name West Hall based on its location on campus. It was designed by Brinton Davis and cost $160,000 (about $2.9 million today). At some point, the name changed to Whitestone Hall, but I don’t know when that was or the significance of the name. Its current namesake came to WKU in 1910 and stayed until her retirement in 1953. She worked first as a stenographer (from 1910 to 1917), then as a bookkeeper (from 1917 to 1920), registrar (from 1920 until 1924) and finally as bursar. She was the university's bursar from 1924 until 1956. I was unable to find out when it took her name. If you know about the Whitestone name or when it received its current name, please leave a comment.

The second photo is the President's House, the historic home to WKU’s presidents which now serves as the president’s office. It was completed in 1931 and was also designed by Brinton Davis.

The next set is something you don't see too often on public college campuses, a chapel. My alma mater Texas Tech has one as does Montana State University. Despite my having covered two of them, you do not tend to see them at public institutions. This is the Chandler Memorial Chapel. ​It takes its name from David Chandler, a WKU alumnus (Class of 1982) who donated funds to help construct the building. A real estate developer, Chandler has been a philanthropist of note in Bowling Green and the general area. The building was completed in 2009 and I believe it officially opened in 2010. It was designed by the Everton Olgelsby Architects firm. The Nashville-based firm has designed buildings at Belmont University and Vanderbilt University. In addition to the chapel proper, the site has a memorial garden and a columbarium. It is interesting to think that you could have your remains inurned on a college campus. The 2,200 square foot facility can be rented out for weddings and other services.

Next is the Charles Hardcastle Kentucky Building which houses WKU’s Kentucky Museum. Construction on the building began in 1931 and it was ostensibly complete by 1936. I say ostensibly, because despite the fact that it entered use at that time, the interior would not be completed for another three years. It was designed to be a museum, but funding issues kept it incomplete during that time. The Great Depression was on-going, and the university decided to utilize the space for classrooms until such time as funds could be acquired to finish the space for its intended purpose. After some fundraising, architect James M. Ingram was hired to complete the interior (I assume to tone it down to fit a tight budget). As originally configured, it had some 45,000 square feet of space and came with a $300,000 price tag (about $5.7 million today). It was renovated and expanded in the late 1970’s and now comes in at about 80,000 square feet. It was initially called the Kentucky Building, with the Charles Hardcastle part being a later addition. Mr. Hardcastle, a WKU alumnus (Class of 1955) and his wife Carolyn donated funds to the university for several causes including the museum. 

After my initial visit to campus, I went back to the hotel where we were staying and checked in with the family. We had been travelling for some time and had been to more museums than we could count during our weeks-long trip None the less, she suggested we go to the Kentucky Museum and I am glad she did. It’s not terribly big, but it has a nice and varied collection of things. One of the things inside is the Lego Big Red seen in the third photo of this set. At one point in time, my sons would have been all over this thing and demanded a photo of them with it. I had to beg them to stand beside it to get photographed and they would only do it when the undergraduate docent in the room had turned her head to look in the other direction. It seems like yesterday that they were little, but now as teens being seen with something made of Legos while walking around with your mom and dad is apparently quite embarrassing, particularly to my oldest who thought the coed was cute.

The statue in front of Kentucky Hall is, of course, Abraham Lincoln. It is the work of Utah artist Gary Lee Price and it was installed in October 2008. The sculpture you see in the fourth photo stands outside the museum. The piece is called To the Point, and it is the work of Bowling Green-based artist Donnie Firkins. Firkins was a WKU alumnus (Class of 1975). The piece was completed in 1992. Firkins passed away on May 11, 2021.

Just outside of the museum is the log cabin you see in the last photo. It is part of the museum's collection and it is called the Felts Log House. ​The exact date of construction of the house is not known, but it is estimated that it was built around 1810. Archibald Felts built the house in Logan County, Kentucky for his family after their original home was burned down by Native Americans. His descendants continued to live in the structure until 1960! It was donated to WKU’s Kentucky Museum in 1979. The university spent about three years restoring the house back to its original configuration and condition.

Despite the extreme heat, I had a great visit to the campus. The people I ran into during my visit were quite nice. Bowling Green is just over an hour or so north of Nashville, and it is a pleasant town. I would recommend a stop there if you are in the area. I will close, as I so often do, with WKU's two versions of the campus lamppost sign.