Last week’s question – what building was this, got several correct guesses. Or more likely, most of you simply remembered exactly what it was.
Alumni from the end of World War II through the early 1980s would have called it the ROTC Building. Older alumni would have called it the Fitting School’s Recitation Hall. Both would be correct.
Originally constructed in 1905-06 for Wofford’s Fitting School (a preparatory school operated by the college to ensure a qualified freshman class), the building opened in 1906 as a classroom building. In part, it replaced space lost in the Fitting School’s original building when the top two floors were destroyed by a fire in 1901. (That building survived, and minus its original top floors, continues to serve as Wofford’s offices of Admission and Financial Aid.) The Fitting School had experienced significant growth in the early 20th century, and needed to expand its housing and classroom space. The Recitation Hall was strictly for classrooms, which allowed classroom space in the other two buildings to become residential space. (The other building later served a generation of college students as a dorm – Snyder Hall.)
When the Fitting School closed, the college’s YMCA chapter took over the building, and when they evolved into the Student Christian Association, they used the building until World War II. Many of the campus’s annual religious week services as well as weeknight events were held there. Finally, the college’s ROTC detachment took over the building in 1943 and used it until it was demolished in 1985 to make way for the Papadopoulos Building complex. By then, the building had no doubt seen better days.
