Press enter after choosing selection

Campus Tranformation

Campus Tranformation image
Parent Issue
Day
31
Month
December
Year
1949
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Campus Transformation

Old University Hall, shown in the top picture as it looked in the days when it was the University’s sole center for cultural entertainment, has been much maligned, and has escaped demolition only because of financial obstacles in the way of the campus building program. Completed in 1873 as an ornate link between Mason Hall and South Wing (both now more than a century old), it was in its palmy days the scene of the first May Festival, the first student “opera,” and addresses by such notables as Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, and William Jennings Bryan. It was in 1913, with the completion of Hill Auditorium, that University Hall ceased to be the center for cultural events. And the crowning indignity came in 1924 when Agell Hall, shown in the bottom picture, sprang up and obscured the poor old building completely. “U-Hall,” as portrayed above, still boasts the 112,000-pound “self-supporting” dome that was the pride and joy of its architects and the bane of the campus populace. Rumors that the beam-and-masonry dome might collapse caused so much public apprehension that the building was ordered decapitated, and the present, smaller dome, all of metal, was substituted. Administration offices, once in “U-Hall,” now are in the brand new Administration Building.