Category: Buildings

Fraternity Lodges

Post author By information_management
Post date November 10, 2008

An article in the Wofford College Journal in the fall of 1955 describes the new fraternity lodges, which were scheduled to open in the spring of 1956. Here's the article and some of the drawings, entitled "Horseshoe of Fortune"

A much hoped for but little expected dream is at last becoming a reality! Fraternity men and rushees alike entered the just completed rush season with a new enthusiasm springing in large part from the tangible evidence of the realization of a hopeful vision long nurtured in the minds of Green badge bearers.

The dream in question is a satisfactory answer to Wofford's fraternity lodging problem. The evidence is the hum of building activity going on behind the science halls and the library. Preliminary clearing and surveying activity has been completed on what will be a horseshoe of seven lodges. Two different floor plans (above) will be used, and there will be four different fronts. Both lodges on the ends will have the [first] front and the left floor plan. The remaining five lodges will have the right floor plan. These lodges will have one of the other front designs.

There will be no driveway built, the lodges being readily accessible from Memorial Drive, Wofford Drive, Greene Hall, and auditorium parking lot. A cement walk will encircle the inside of the horseshoe, however. All lodges will face into the horseshoe. Completion of the project is expected by April, and the lodges will be ready for occupancy at that time. The assignment of houses to the individual fraternities will be determined by drawing lots.

Photos of two of the four designs and the two floorplans.

Buildings Students

Snyder Hall memories

Post author By information_management
Post date October 24, 2008

For much of the 20th century, Wofford students lived in one of three dormitories: Carlisle Hall, Hugh S. Black Hall, and Snyder Hall. While Black Hall was the oldest, and Carlisle was the first one built specifically as a college dormitory, Snyder played a special role in the lives of college and fitting school students.

After a fire damaged the upper floors of alumni hall (as the Hugh S. Black Building was initially known) the college decided to build a second building for the Fitting School. This building contained both classrooms and dormitory rooms and was simply known as the fitting school dormitory. (The Fitting School was the college’s preparatory school, designed to prepare students for admission to Wofford’s freshman class.) From 1901 to 1905, the building housed sleeping rooms for students and instructors as well as classrooms. A large dining room on the first floor served its residents, and an assembly hall on the second floor, just above the dining hall, served as the meeting place for the campus YMCA. In 1905, another classroom building opened, and the dormitory became simply a dormitory. The assembly hall was converted into sleeping space as were the classrooms.

When the Fitting School closed in 1924, the building’s name was changed to Snyder Hall, in honor of the college’s president. It was used as a college dormitory until 1943, when the Army took over the campus for use as a college training detachment center. With the return of the student body after the war, the dining hall was converted to another use and students took their meals in Carlisle Hall. About 80 students lived in Snyder Hall.

Even in the late 1940s, Snyder Hall had become inadequate. A capital campaign to replace several outdated facilities fizzled, and Snyder Hall remained in use until the 1960s. Renovations in 1957 added a few more years to Snyder’s life.

One student in the late 1960s published “A Snyder Hall Resident’s Prayer” in the OG&B. It read as follows:

Dear God, it scares me to see how this College can ignore a place as filthy as this, but yet feel it is doing well to preserve its unique atmosphere. Help the maintenance department to realize that soap and water goes further than plywood and tacks. Oh God, grant me tolerance and forgive my futile complaints. Amen.

Snyder had reached the end of its usefulness as a dorm, and without any other purpose, the college decided to demolish the building in 1969.

Photos: Snyder Hall at various stages, alumni with some faculty and President Paul Hardin standing in front of Snyder Hall as it was being demolished, 1969.

Buildings

Wofford’s White House

Post author By information_management
Post date October 16, 2008

I know, it’s sort of a cliche to call the college president’s home the “White House.” But at Wofford, it’s not an inaccurate description, though it does lack something in specificity. Several of the houses on the campus, including the president’s house, are white.

Many people on campus are surprised when they learn that the house where Dr. Dunlap lives is not the original president’s house, nor was it one of the houses built for faculty when the college opened in 1854. Wofford’s first two presidents lived in the first President’s House, which was located at the east end of the row of original homes, just to the east of the present Health Center the Hugh R. Black House. The President’s House was larger than the other original homes, with three stories instead of two. Ostensibly the home was designed for entertaining in a way that the other two homes were not. Its dining room measured 20 by 40 feet, and ran the entire length of the southern side of the house. Its fifteen rooms were full of distinguished guests at Commencements and other important occasions.

The house had a series of occupants in its fifty-year history. The first and second presidents, William Wightman and Albert Shipp, were the only presidents to occupy the home. When James H. Carlisle became president in 1875, he chose to remain in the house he had occupied on campus since 1875, Ever modest, Carlisle thought his house was perfectly suitable and didn’t want to live in anything fancier. Instead, the new faculty member, William Wallace Duncan, who was doubling as the college’s chief fund-raiser, moved into the home. When he was elected bishop, he built an equally nice home near campus, and his successor as financial agent, A. Coke Smith, moved into the home. Especially under Shipp, Duncan, and Smith, the home was noted for the high-quality entertaining that took place there.

The house’s location proved to be its undoing. Five years after the college opened, the railroad came to Spartanburg. When additional rail lines came to the city, the tracks wound up bordering the campus, and the constant vibrations from passing trains gradually caused the foundation to settle. Various attempts were made by President Shipp and Bishop Duncan to shore up the house. It remained a home for faculty, and Professors Craighead, Thomas, and Easter lived there. Its final occupant was Professor A. G. Rembert, who moved away when the CC&O railroad purchased the land for their right-of-way.

President Henry Nelson Snyder remained in his faculty home when he was elected president, but when he retired, no house existed for incoming president Walter K. Greene. One of the newer homes, built in 1911 by chemistry professor Coleman B. Waller, was purchased and renovated for the new president. This home has been the President’s Home for six presidents.

Photos: The original president’s home; the current president’s home before its most recent renovation.

Buildings Sports

Andrews Field House – a gym for the ages

Post author By information_management
Post date September 16, 2008

Andrews Field House is place of many memories, and is another of those buildings on the campus that has found many uses in its nearly 80-year lifespan. From the

50-year era when it was the Terriers’ varsity gymnasium, there are memories of
cold nights, noisy crowds, and Little Four Tournaments, coaches like Joel
Robertson ’41 and Gene Alexander; and Hall-of-Fame players like Slim Mooneyham
’33; Daddy Neal ’53; George Lyons ’65; and Doug Lowe ’75.

Even
after the varsity team moved to the Benjamin Johnson Arena, students still have
Andrews Field House memories of playing the faculty in Friday afternoon pick-up
basketball and involuntary visits to the campus safety office. It became a home (literally) for numerous assistant coaches and sports interns, though most of them recognized it was sub-standard at best. Some coaches thought it was great living in a building with racquetball and basketball courts, while others didn’t especially enjoy the old-gym smell that permeated everything.

Originally
consisting of just the varsity basketball arena, the field house as we know it
today was constructed in three stages. In 1929, Spartanburg businessman Isaac Andrews gave $20,000 to the
college for the construction of a gymnasium. Andrews, born in Belfast, Ireland in 1876, emigrated to the United
States at age 4. He moved to Spartanburg
not long after the beginning of the twentieth century, and was involved in
several area businesses.

The
total cost of the field house was $65,000. Designed for all indoor sports,
Andrews Field House served as the home of the basketball team until 1981. With a seating capacity of 2,500, the large
gym also served as the setting for the college’s seventy-fifth anniversary
celebration in 1929.

As part
of the college’s post-World War II facilities improvements, Isaac Andrews made
a second pledge to expand the field house. The additions included offices for the athletics staff, shower and
locker room facilities, and an auxiliary basketball court. The new court, on the campus drive side of
the building, later became handball courts.

In the
early 1960s, additional gifts from Mrs. Isaac Andrews and Mrs. A. J. R. Helmus
helped to renovate the interior of the gym and the entrances to the
building. In the mid-1960s, other gifts
allowed the college to add new locker rooms onto the Snyder Field side of the
building, which were used primarily for football teams until the opening of the
Richardson Building in the mid-1990s.

With the
opening of the Campus Life Building and the Benjamin Johnson Arena in 1981, the
Andrews Field House arena became an auxiliary gym and intramural facility. Little work beyond routine maintenance was done for almost twenty years after that, though its locker rooms, offices and
classrooms have remained in use for various purposes and for storage. The college band used one of the classrooms on the end of the building nearest the baseball stadium. Later the brick building received a new white exterior veneer so that it would match the nearby Campus Life Building and Richardson Physical Activities
Building.

A gift in the early 2000s allowed the college to renovate Andrews again, this time for new meeting
and office spaces for student groups, particularly the sororities. A new multipurpose,
formal assembly room called the Anna Todd Wofford room was created in the space once known as the “little
gym,” and it has proved to be a popular meeting space.

The old
arena, scene of so many Terrier basketball triumphs, continues to serve as
an intramural gymnasium, and was even the site of January Smackdown in 2008, an Interim that brought real, honest-to-goodness wrestling to a wildly enthusiastic campus audience.

Buildings Faculty Photographs

Photos from the Snyder Papers

Post author By information_management
Post date June 17, 2008

Below are a few photographs that I found as we began putting the final touches on the Snyder Papers.

We’ve completed the major weeding of some 20 file cabinet drawers of presidential records, and today, we looked through a few smaller boxes of materials, mostly donated in the 1950s by Mrs. Snyder, that were already on the shelf in the archives. Most of the materials are what I classify as personal materials – articles by Snyder, some of his personal correspondence, biographical materials, and even his Phi Beta Kappa key from Vanderbilt University. We’ll put the biographical materials, the articles, and some of his personal correspondence in order and wrap this project up shortly. In the meantime, here are some of the photos of both Snyder, his house, and of him with other people.

The first photo is a small snapshot taken in 1916, when he would have been 51 years old. The second simply reads “age 38, which would have put the photo around 1903.

The third image appears to have been taken in Andrews Fieldhouse, which means it had to have been taken after 1929. Perhaps it’s at the college’s 75th anniversary celebration.

The fourth image comes from Commencement in 1939. Snyder is in the left foreground. Behind him is Wofford alumnus and United States Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith. The photo shows that faculty members were wearing academic regalia by the 1930s.

The final two photographs are campus scenes. One is of Dr. Snyder’s campus home, now called Snyder House. The other is a winter scene, probably from the 1920s or 1930s.

Click on an image to bring up a larger version. In the next week or so, we’ll post a new guide to the Snyder Papers, and perhaps copies of an address or two.

Buildings Photographs

Alumni Hall

Post author By information_management
Post date April 15, 2008

I’m not sure any building on campus has had as many names as
the Hugh S. Black Building.

We still have a handful of nineteenth century buildings on
the campus – Main Building and the four homes that made up the original
campus. But I’m not sure that many
people on campus realize that the building that houses Admission and Financial
Aid offices is another structure dating from the nineteenth century.

Times seemed good in Spartanburg during the 1880s. With railroads and textiles, the city was
experiencing its first taste of prosperity since before the Civil War. Wofford had never officially provided housing
for students, preferring instead to let them board with families in the village
or with professors on campus. The
home-like atmosphere, trustees and professors felt, would be better for the
students. But by the 1880s, with
enrollment hovering in the upper 70s, and with students living in unused rooms
in Main Building, the trustees decided to build three cottages to be used as
dormitories.

When the alumni got wind of the plan, in a spell of
generosity, they asked to be allowed to raise the money for a single dormitory
for the students. They pledged to raise $10,000,
and they organized local alumni chapters throughout the state to raise the
funds. The trustees accepted the alumni
association’s offer, though it took some time for the alumni to actually raise
the funds.

And so, with Masonic rites and with much of Spartanburg’s
leadership looking on, the college laid the cornerstone of Alumni Hall on
Friday, October 19, 1888. Edgar L.
Archer, of the class of 1871, who had made substantial contributions to the
construction of the building, led the opening prayer, and the featured address
was a biographical sketch of Benjamin Wofford, presented by John Bomar
Cleveland of the class of 1869, another significant donor and later a trustee
of the college. President Carlisle also
spoke.

When the building opened it was, as one observer described,
“commodious and well appointed, and furnished with all modern conveniences, and
is a pleasant home for many students.” The building, as originally built and as the photo shows, was four
stories tall.

In 1895, Alumni Hall became the home of the Wofford Fitting
School, which had been in operation since 1887 in the buildings of the old
Spartanburg Female College, in what became the Spartan Mill village. Alumni Hall remained part of the fitting
school complex until it was discontinued in 1924.

As is the case with buildings at so many colleges, fire
played a role in Alumni Hall’s history. On the night of January 18, 1901, a fire nearly destroyed the
building. It was, as The Journal
reported, a severe loss to the college. In
the aftermath of the fire, the Journal reported, “the kindness of the people of
all parts of the city to the students of the Fitting School was very gratifying
to the college authorities. Telephone
messages came thick and fast to offer temporary homes to the young men, and
they were soon provided for.” President
Carlisle was reportedly unsure as to what action to take, but the trustees
quickly decided both to rebuild the hall and to build a larger facility for the
Fitting School’s classrooms. The new
building, constructed next door to the re-named Archer Hall, provided extra
recitation rooms for the students in the Fitting School. Archer Hall was rebuilt, but without its
third and fourth floors, and took its new name from the largest original donor
to the building.

With the closure of the Fitting School, Archer Hall reverted
to the college. The building was used as
a dormitory until the 1950s, though in the late 1940s, it was used as meeting
space for fraternities. In the early
1950s, the building was re-conditioned for use as a dormitory to meet
enrollment growth. With gifts from
Spartanburg’s Black family, the building received its third name: the Hugh S.
Black Dormitory. By 1959, it had become
the home of various campus offices, and at that point, it became the Hugh S.
Black Building.

In the early 1980s, the neighboring Snyder Hall was
demolished, and in 1986, the Black Building was connected to the
newly-constructed Neofytos Papadopoulos Building.

Pictures: Alumni Hall-the Hugh S. Black Building-at
different points in its long life.

Alumni Buildings Photographs

Carlisle Hall memories

Post author By information_management
Post date January 18, 2008

Opened in 1912, the James H. Carlisle Memorial Hall was the college’s first large residence hall. Before Carlisle Hall, most students had to find places to live off campus. Fir the college’s first sixty years, students either lived in the village or they boarded with the professors who lived on campus (Imagine that – living with your professor!). Some students lived in unused rooms in Main Building, and some lived in Alumni Hall – the building that now houses the Admission and Financial Aid offices. Carlisle Hall was paid for by donations from Spartanburg citizens and cost about $55,000.

The following story from The Journal tells of the opening of the residence hall:

Every student in College is pleased with the new dormitory. Only Freshmen and Sophomores are accommodated, but the boys from the two upper classes were anxious to get rooms in it. Every convenience is furnished – electric lights, steam heat, bath rooms – everything is handy and comfortable. One hundred and fifty-five boys room in the building and one hundred and eighty take meals in the dining hall. There is no faculty restriction whatever over the boys. Each student is placed on his honor as a man to act as such. The dormitory students elected a president, Mr. G. H. Hodges, the only Senior in the building. He is assisted by an executive committee and nine monitors.
The duty of each monitor is to report to the president any misconduct that happens on the floor assigned to him. The matter is then looked into by the president and the executive committee and turned over to the Faculty. So far this system of student government has been carried out with much better success than the Faculty management could ever attain. The boys are brought into closer touch with each other. They know and are known, which is one of the finest things of a dormitory life.

Mr. D. L. Betts, a graduate of 1910 who has been teaching in the Carlisle Fitting School since he finished college, superintends everything in connection with the dormitory. Mr. Betts is characterized by a business ability that will mean success in the affairs of the Carlisle Hall.

Carlisle Hall remained in use as a residence until the late 1960s. After the last students moved out, it served as a home for various campus offices. In its early years, the Wofford Theatre Workshop was housed there.

The college demolished Carlisle Hall in May 1981. A newspaper account of the building’s demolition included reminiscences from several alumni, including ninety-two year old George H. Hodges ‘13, a retired Methodist minister living in Spartanburg, the senior in 1912 who had been the first president of the dormitory.

Photos (click on each for a larger image in a pop-up window) George H. Hodges ’13 as a senior; Carlisle Hall in the early 1950s; students with a banner on the roof of the residence hall’s portico, the cornerstone being removed in 1981.