Peter Hayes, chair of the history department and specialist on 20th century German history, deserves a cozy oak-paneled office where he can prepare his lectures and work on his two books in comfort and serenity.
Instead, he is crammed into an office on the first floor of 1800 Sherman Ave., the temporary headquarters of Northwestern University’s history department, while construction workers complete the comprehensive renovation of Harris Hall. With 32 boxes of Professor Hayes’ personal library obscuring his floor-to-ceiling view of the outside world, it is easy to see why he cannot wait to return to one of the most beautiful buildings on campus.
But Harris Hall, with its rich and sometimes comical history, holds relevance beyond the history department. Though Northwestern students have been conditioned to accept the association of a 40-foot forklift with the building, within the confines of the edifice, Northwestern has begun a complete restructuring of a building that has played an integral role in the University’s affairs for over 95 years.
In 1913, Norman Wait Harris, the founder of Harris Bank and an ardent philanthropist, decided that he could do without an extra $150,000. Mr. Harris, philanthropist that he was, only attached three provisions to his donation: that his building house the departments of history, political science and economics; that construction must be approved by himself and the Executive Committee of the Trustees; and that Northwestern create a new department of political science with as large a budget as the history and economics departments. Mr. Harris’ son, Norman D. Harris, was a political science professor at Northwestern at the time, thereby greatly benefiting from the creation of a new department in his field. Clearly, Mr. Harris’ motivations were to facilitate higher learning.
The limestone neo-classical structure was designed by Charles Coolidge, the architect responsible for the Chicago Public Library and the Art Institute of Chicago, and was deemed by the Syllabus in 1915 as probably “one of the most attractive buildings on the campus.” Unfortunately, construction expenses for Harris’ monolith ran more than $22,000 over the estimated gift of $150,000 that Harris provided for the construction. According to University President Franklyn B. Snyder’s report in 1947 on the status of Harris Hall, Mr. Harris conveniently covered this excess in expenditures by authorizing “using for construction part of the fund intended as an endowment for scholarships.”
The basement of Harris Hall also witnessed its fair share of debauchery. Besides acting as the “ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, and difficult of access” prison in which the Daily Northwestern was forced to operate from, history professor Carl Petry recounts stories from an earlier time, when “professors used to hold Happy Hours in the basement, with several in-the-know students in attendance.” Undoubtedly, modern students would fully support a professor-sponsored relaxation of the alcohol policy in the new basement of Harris Hall.
Harris Hall also featured a large social room, 108, which displayed what donor John C. Shaffer claimed were oil paintings by Rembrandt, Reynolds and a dozen other painters. According to Snyder, when students discovered that all of the paintings were replications, they stopped frequenting the room, and “when Mr. Shaffer sent two men and a truck to the building, and unknown to the University, removed everything he had previously given [the University], ‘108’ lost its charm.”
But such shenanigans were exceptions to the daily experience in Harris Hall. Students revered the building for its atmosphere of intellectual enlightenment and flocked to its lecture hall in Room 107 to hear numerous guest speakers lecture on diverse topics ranging from archaeological expeditions to the benefits of Keynesian economics.
The center for intellectual life in Harris Hall presided in room 107, a large lecture hall that hosted numerous guest speakers.
“As an undergraduate I listened to Alfred Appel lecture on James Joyce, Nathaniel West, Ernest Hemingway, Vladmir Nabokov and the modernist significance of the great jazz artists of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s,” recalls Robert Sandberg (Weinberg ’72).
After hearing a lecture from Professor Stuart Struever, Sandberg “was so impressed… I changed my major to anthropology.”
Although Harris Hall’s outer majesty has been preserved throughout the years, the building never experienced the comprehensive renovation it so desperately needed — until now. The limestone walls needed to be replaced or refurbished. New heating, ventilation, electrical, plumbing, alarm and air conditioning systems had to be installed. The open staircase in Harris, a violation of the fire code, needed to be enclosed so as to prevent a potential fire from spreading up the stairs.
Instead of bringing portions of Harris Hall up to modern standards, Northwestern’s administration and history department essentially developed a new building within the walls of the old Harris Hall. Classrooms, seminar rooms and offices were built and updated. New faculty and student lounges were installed and entrances were expanded. A new plaza was created on the west end of the building, above the entirely new Center for Historical Studies constructed in the basement.
The Alumnae of Northwestern University alone dropped $50,000 for the marble flooring of the Center for Historical Studies, while the University funded the rest of the multimillion dollar project.
The history department, Hayes says, “wanted a building that feels very cozy, and looks good. We wanted a building that looked traditional. We wanted it to be a building that reflected the era in which it was built.” When asked why the administration didn’t tear down the hall to build a new home for the history department, Hayes responded with his own theory.
“Northwestern University now competes for students in a higher league than ever before,” he says. “[We are now] competing with the Ivies, Stanford, and Duke, with their own beautiful historical looking buildings.”
Northwestern, on the other hand, has architecturally “cannibalized itself” by tearing down beautiful old buildings to make way for buildings like Tech and our monstrosity of a library.
“We don’t have too many historically representative places on campus,” Hayes says.
Since construction began in Feb. 2009, the history department has been relegated to its temporary headquarters at 1800 Sherman. Although the construction was expected to last 18 months, delays hampered construction. Classes are not expected to resume at Harris Hall until winter quarter. Working from this home away from home has had a detrimental effect on the history department, and Professor Hayes attributes the department’s decline in enrollment after the first year of moving out to students’ “tendency to forget us a bit” because the department is “not being so visible on campus.”
“When we have lectures, [we are] further away from campus, so people don’t tend to walk over from the Rock,” Hayes says.
The prospect of leaving his temporary fluorescent-flooded office for the striking offices of Harris Hall seems to cheer Professor Hayes. By winter quarter, though, students should once more gather in the reception area of room 108, a room that has seen 95 years go by. Thanks to the recent renovation, it should see many more years more to come.