The University now has four dormitories or halls of residence for women.
Two of them were completed in 1916; the Martha Cook Building on South
University Avenue, given by the Cook family of Hillsdale, in memory of
their mother, and the Newberry Hall of Residence on State Street, a
memorial to Helen Handy Newberry, the wife of John S. Newberry, '47,
given by her children. The Martha Cook Building is probably the most
sumptuous and complete college dormitory in America and cost something
over $500,000. It is an unusually beautiful example of Tudor Gothic,
always a favorite style for college buildings. Simple in its main lines
it reveals an extraordinary perfection in detail as well as comfort in
its appointments and a richness in decoration which cannot but have its
happy influence on the one hundred and seventeen fortunate women who
live there. Less elaborate but equally attractive as a home for the
seventy-five girls it is built to accommodate is the Newberry Building,
which, though smaller and simpler in its architecture, embodies every
essential found in the larger building. It is of hollow tile and stucco
and cost about $100,000. Similar in general plan and appointments,
though built of brick, is the adjacent Betsy Barbour Dormitory, which
was completed in 1920, the gift of Ex-Regent Levi L. Barbour, '63,
'65_l_, of Detroit. It stands on the site of the old ward school
building on State Street, used for many years by the University as a
recitation building, and soon to be razed now the new dormitory, just to
the rear, is completed. Alumnae House, the fourth girls' residence hall,
was, as the name implies, furnished by the alumnae of the University. It
was made over from a quaint old dwelling on Washtenaw Avenue at a cost
of about $18,000, and accommodates sixteen self-supporting students.
A final group of buildings, very necessary in an institution so large as
the University, is composed of the heating and lighting plant, the
nearby laundry in the one-time ravine at the east of the old "Cat-hole,"
and the University shops and storehouse a little distance south. The old
power house near the Engineering Building was abandoned in 1914 when the
new plant, situated on a lower level than the Campus and reached by a
spur from the railroad, was ready for service. It cost approximately a
third of a million dollars, and furnishes heat, compressed air,
electrical energy, and hot water to the Campus and adjacent buildings
through a series of tunnels nearly ten feet high which extend as far as
the Union, half a mile across the Campus.
Aside from the smaller and the more temporary buildings and the many
dwelling houses on property recently acquired, the buildings of the
University number about forty. This does not include the buildings
occupied by the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A., or the Psychopathic Hospital,
the titles to which do not rest with the Board of Regents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account