Wofford’s Campus Life Building was designed in the late
1970s to serve as the hub of campus athletic, social, and cultural activity,
according to an article in the local paper.
At that time, basketball was in Andrews Field House and the Student
Affairs Office was in Burwell. The
canteen? In Wightman. The Theatre Workshop? Old Carlisle Hall. But in the late 1970s, the college was
looking to bring together all of these different activities and offices into
one building.
One of the main features of the new building was the arena,
designed with movable seating to accommodate 3,000 people. Though designed primarily for basketball,
college officials expected the arena to see use for other athletic and cultural
activities. Named for Benjamin Johnson, a
vice president and general counsel of Spartan Mills, a Wofford Trustee, and a
member of the class of 1930, the arena has been the site of various dances, dinners,
programs, and Commencement 2003 was held there when the weekend turned into a
total washout. The first basketball game
in the arena, on January 22, 1981, was between the Lady Terriers and Sacred
Heart, and after the building’s dedication following the women’s game, the men’s
basketball team played The Citadel. Beyond
the formal events, many a student will remember the days of arena registration
– when students ran from one table to another to beg professors to let them
into a closed class – which took place on the floor and concourses of the
arena.
While the building, which opened in the 1980-81 academic
year, initially was supposed to have meeting rooms, classrooms, racquetball
courts, facilities for commuting students, many of these did not make it into
the final building. Offices for student
affairs and athletics took up most of the top floor, the theatre, a movie-lecture
room, a television lounge, and a game room took up the main floor, and the
arena and lockers made up the lower level.
The Tony White Theater, which was dedicated on February 20, 1981, was a black
box style theater that provided much-needed space for the college’s growing
theatre program. The premiere production
in the new theater was Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by Professor James
R. Gross.
The Campus Life Center was the first new building completed
on the campus in over ten years, and it marked the first in a series of newer
buildings constructed during the Lesesne Administration. When I came to Wofford in 1990, the campus
life building hadn’t changed much since its opening. The game room had become the college bookstore, the TV room and lounge had been combined and turned into Zach's, the college canteen. Both of these facilities had moved from old Wightman Hall. But the building was already overcrowded, with coaches and student affairs staff members elbowing for space on the top floor. With the opening of the Richardson Building in 1995, more space opened up for student groups on the top floor.
In the early 2000s, the lobby was renovated into The Commons, with a coffee/smoothie bar, and a very tired, early 1980s look gave way to a sleek, modern, yet comfortable design, with TVs, computer workstations, and more art. Those of us who remember what the building looked like in the early 1990s hardly recognize the lobby as the same place – where it was merely a pass-through space on the way to the bookstore or to Zach's in those days, today it's truly a student-oriented gathering space.
Photos – the building from Snyder Field, a dinner (probably a senior dinner) in the arena, the South Carolina Methodist Annual Conference in session in the arena.