Trespassing at UMD’s Old Main in 1992

UMDOldMain2

One summer night in 1992, when I was 19 years old, I came home from doing something forgettable and found three of my friends waiting for me. They said I should grab a flashlight and come with them on an adventure.

“Where are we going?” I asked, wondering if I should even bother asking. “You’ll see,” was the answer, just as I anticipated.

“Are we going to be arrested tonight?” was my next question. It was more of a joke than a sincere concern. The response, “We can’t guarantee you won’t,” lead me to believe we were indeed about to do something illegal, but the tone suggested there was either a low likelihood of getting caught or if we did the consequences would fall below the level of felony charges.

We drove all the way across town, to an old building on East Fifth Street, hidden in a residential area. It was the Old Main building, the centerpiece of the Duluth Normal School campus before it expanded to become the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The building consisted of classrooms, administrative offices, a library and an auditorium. It was designed by Duluth architects Emmet Palmer, Lucien Hall and William Hunt and opened in 1901. UMD stopped using it in 1985.

I was well aware of UMD and its campus, but I didn’t know about Old Main and the other slightly-off-campus buildings. Old Main was dark and boarded up, but the other buildings were dimly lit and still in use by the college as office and research space.

Jeff, the leader of this expedition, took us to the side of the building and pointed at an open window on the second floor.

“That’s where we get in,” he said. “All we have to do is climb up this fire escape and shinny along that ledge.”

If we had to break something to get in, I would have backed out of this adventure, but since trespassing seemed to be less of a crime than breaking and entering, I didn’t hesitate.

Bob, on the other hand, was afraid of heights, and no amount of peer pressure was going to convince him to shinny along the second-floor ledge of anything. He would stay outside and be our lookout, even though he had no way of communicating with us once we were inside.

The ledge was easy to navigate, but it was still nerve-wracking because falling would mean serious injury or possibly death.

The windows on the upper floors weren’t boarded, so most of the rooms were dimly lit by the streetlights outside. We mostly kept our flashlight off to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, but when we came to darker rooms, we used it.

In one hallway, a previous trespasser had spray painted the word “die” on the wall, but it wasn’t too scary, because it looked like “pie.”

DiePie

Barrett felt weird about the building, like he’d been inside it before. We later learned Old Main had the same design as Irving Elementary School, which he attended a decade prior to this mission.

There were a lot of pigeons in the building, and when we entered one room we flushed a couple of them, which was the most frightening moment of the tour.

Eventually, we found the way into the attic, but there was something about it that scared us off. It might have been the amount of pigeon dung, it might have been that gaining access was tricky, or it might have been the notion that attics are extra spooky. It was probably all three.

We left the building with no injuries and no police attention.

A few days later, we decided to go back in broad daylight. It wasn’t much riskier than sneaking in at night, since there was a streetlight by our access point. Once inside, it was actually less likely we’d be spotted than at night. We wouldn’t need a flashlight at all and could get a good look at everything.

In daylight, we had the nerve to go up into the attic, which was very large and proved to be the highlight of the Old Main experience. We found a box of enrollment cards up there from the early 1900s. Had we found that at night, ghosts would have attacked us for sure.

Jeff discovered the building’s intercom system was still wired up, and he figured we could bring in a boombox and splice into it. He was right.

We came back with a mix tape of creepy sound effects and music by Skinny Puppy and Lard. Our trial run being a success, we decided to have a Halloween party at Jeff and Bob’s apartment, then bring girls to Old Main at midnight so we could scare the crap out of them with the boombox and cassette we planted.

We found a new entry point, through a boarded window on the ground floor, so it was easy to convince the girls to come in with us. Jeff sneaked away from the group to activate the sound system, as planned. Unfortunately, the music ended up making it obvious that we were trying to scare the girls, which made the whole experience entirely not scary for anyone.

Halloween 1992 was the last time we were in Old Main. A developer announced plans to convert the building into apartments shortly after, but on February 23, 1993, a fire gutted it. A different group of kids had gained entry, and one set fire to a seat in the auditorium.

The remains of Old Main were mostly demolished and removed, with some of the bricks sold as a fundraiser, but the red sandstone arches were left standing. Below is Barrett, sitting mournfully at the arches in the summer of 1993.

OldMain

55 Comments

Chad

about 13 years ago

Cool story!  It looks like the arches are still there.



Google Maps



Gerald

about 13 years ago

This was a cool story. Are the arches still there?

Bret

about 13 years ago

The arches are still there.

Claire

about 13 years ago

Cool story. I always thought Old Main was mysterious.

woodtick

about 13 years ago

I worked in one of the labs there in 1985 and also crashed on lab tables at night while in town during a break from a field camp.  Had no car just a backpack and a guitar.  And permission.

The building was shared by UMD and the U.S. Forest Service in the early-mid 1980s.

edgeways

about 13 years ago

Cool. I have similar stories about the old high school over in Ashland, circa the same time frame. It pretty much had a single roof ridge that we had to clamber across late one night to get to the fire escape on the other side. Then there where top of the ore dock trips.

brian

about 13 years ago

Dear Police Chief Gordon Ramsay,
I know you check PDD from time to time.
I also know where Paul and Barrett can be found most days.
Give me a holler if you want to ... you know ... talk.

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago

Washburn Hall -- 2305 E. Fifth St. -- was recently sold to Modern Vision Media of Las Vegas.



That's Torrance Hall to the left, Washburn Hall to the right.

heysme

about 13 years ago

It's unfortunate that another group of kids had more of a destructive motive and ruined it for many. Let the loss be our lesson. Thanks for sharing -- I always wondered if it was haunted.

brian

about 13 years ago

The fact that they left the arches is really cool. We take the dog over there to run a lot. There's also a little creek -- Oregon Creek I think, that runs underneath the building to the West of the ruins. You can go down in there and actually walk under the building.

I read in the DNT several months ago that the building to the East was bought by an internet advertising company. At the time they weren't sure how the building would be used.

Hot Shot

about 13 years ago

My girlfriend lived in a garden apartment in Torrance Hall, the apartment building now on that property. The ruins and creek are super neat and it's cool to know those buildings are still used.

Bad Cat!

about 13 years ago

I'd love to do stuff like that, but it seems like all of the really cool old buildings are already gone (Old Main, Lincoln Hotel, etc.). If anyone feels like grabbing a flashlight and having some fun, let me know! 

Beret

about 13 years ago

Wow. I remember doing this exact same thing in the fall of 1992. I mean, the *exact* same thing (minus the coming back during daylight hours and minus the mix tape of scary tunes). My friend Matt lived somewhere behind Old Main and I remember the ledge, not being able to see much, feeling like I was going to fall through the floor, and the birds. Really freaky stuff.

Beret

about 13 years ago

I was also 19 at the time.

Barrett Chase

about 13 years ago

Some thoughts:

- Beret, you might have been in the group that inspired us to go inside. Originally, we saw some people moving along the ledge and entering the building, and someone said, "we should do that."

- This is just nitpicking, but it was the phone lines that we spliced into, not the intercom system. We brought in speakers and wired them up to phone jacks in various rooms, then put the boombox in the basement and hooked it into the main phone system.

- In the basement, there was a huge walk-in freezer, which was the only clean place in the building. There was a sleeping bag in it, and someone was obviously living there.

- I believe they caught the people responsible for the fire. We were all pretty pissed off that someone had to go and ruin everything. 

- We had all kinds of plans to split into groups, one of which would bring in a new, nervous-type person, and the other of which would hide, waiting to scare the crap out of the noob. It never happened, though, because no neverous-type person would ever face the ledge to get in in the first place.

- Eventually we also found an unlocked fire door on the second or third floor, which made risking our lives on the ledge seem pretty stupid.

Tatiebird

about 13 years ago

I also went in that year with some pals. We were young, like 12 or 13. We forced our way in through a ground level window that was boarded up behind some trees and got in through the basement. We also used the ledge once. The police showed up at our house because we were tools and tagged our names on chalk boards on the 2nd floor.

Such a thrill!! I grew up a block away so that building was so intriguing, and asking to be explored by all the kids in the area. The attic was neat, tho covered in too much pigeon poo. 

Too bad those clowns burned it down. They were on acid I guess, and trying to start a fire to keep warm. Still, it's a shame.

Barrett Chase

about 13 years ago

Let's keep track of those of us that explored Old Main to see how many of us eventually die of mesothelioma.

Barrett Chase

about 13 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Old Main was going to be converted into an apartment building, wasn't it planned to be the artist co-op that eventually moved into Washington?

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago

There was a plan to turn Old Main into a community college at one point, and also a senior-citizen apartment complex. I don't remember an artist co-op ever being pitched, but I suppose that could have happened.

After the fire, UMD donated the Old Main land to the city, leaving the city to pick up the bill for repairing and cleaning the bricks and arches, which I think was something like $50,000.

A few years ago, UMD had a master plan that involved moving the Old Main arches to its current main campus. I'm not sure what happened with that.

Barrett Chase

about 13 years ago

Probably what happened was, when Washington was revamped, someone said to me, "Old Main would have been an awesome place for this."

Jamie Ness

about 13 years ago

I climbed in the second story window there, I think with the same group as Beret, around 1992 or '93 and walked around in the dark with the pigeons and the junk in there, very spooky!  It was like the opening minutes of a Scooby-Doo episode.

Shane

about 13 years ago

My roommate woke me up and we went up and watched the fire.  I have photos someplace. My being awakened from a sound sleep and excitement of watching a raging full on building fire caused me to not be thinking too clearly while I snapped away all of the film in my bag.  The exposures were not the best and a few of the shots were out of focus. I recall watching the flames roll out of the windows of the old gym area as that area burned.

The company/guy who later converted Torrance Hall into apartments was supposed to start the project on Old Main a few weeks after the fire happened. WDIO interviewed him about the loss of the project. I was still attending UMD and working on the staff of the Statesman at the time of the fire and I don't remember hearing any talk about an artist co-op. 

 I do recall getting the odd feeling that the neighborhood was not super thrilled about the Old Main apartment idea and the number of people that would be inhabiting the building and seemed to be secretly happy about the building being gone. Of course there is no proof of anything, just the odd feeling

This was actually the second time it burned. During the final days of the original construction a file broke out and consumed most of the building, which was rebuilt.

The arches being moved to the upper campus. UMD was just starting construction of the Solon Campus center. A student reporter for the Statesman made a comment about using the arches for the entrance of the new Campus Center.  A reporter from WDSE and a vice-chancellor heard the comment and started talking about it. Interesting that it made it into a master plan.  I thought the idea was cool too, but realized that it would probably never happen as the arches were a bit beat up and made of sandstone, which, would not have matched with the tan limestone that UMD was trying to incorporate into all of the newer architecture at the time.

Dave P

about 13 years ago

As a UMD student, I lived in Torrance Hall for two years in the very early eighties. At that time, the university was using Torrance as an off-campus co-ed dorm. I remember it as a cool, off-beat community of upperclassmen (no freshmen allowed). 

One of the perks was exclusive use of the gymnasium in the basement of the "Old Main" building. Many a game of Saturday morning pick-up basketball happened there. 

As an avid rock climber, I spent hours contemplating the amazing systems of ledges, columns, and arches that made up the facade of the building. There were innumerable "buildering" possibilities. I never did climb it (the building was still in use at that time), although we made a number of ascents of Torrance Hall itself, belayed through the upper-storey windows. We also did a few nighttime ascents and rappels of the dizzying brick smokestack (much higher than the building itself) that sat next to Old Main. It was a relatively easy affair for rock climbers to get past the initial blank section in order to access a system of iron rungs mortared into the bricks. What did give us pause was the final, soot-stained, section at the top: the rumor at the time was that the furnace exhausted by this chimney was where the UMD med school cremated their cadavers after they were through with them!

Beret

about 13 years ago

Yeah Jamie, you were there. And Matt. Probably Chris. Good times.

Shane

about 13 years ago

Fire, not file in my 4th paragraph. I cannot type worth a darn.

woodtick

about 13 years ago

I too lived in Torrance Hall in '84.  It was full of freshmen then.  Sans moi.

One story I remember hearing is as there was the creek flowing under the Research lab Building (building furthest west of the four structures), there was supposedly also a tunnel of some sort.  And in this tunnel - or where it lead - were cadavers!  Makes sense as just down the hall in the basement of the RLB was the office of the Borealipithicus, that being world renowned researcher etc. Dr. Art Aufderheide.  His office may still be there.  The cadavers could have been stored there for his upper level med classes dealing with Physical Anthropology and/or Pathology.  Or not.

Bob

about 13 years ago

I attended UMD in late 80s/early 90s, and I was envious of my friends who lived in Torrance Hall during Freshman Year. The rooms were cool, and it was off campus, so everyone had a little more freedom.

jake

about 13 years ago

I heard the cause of the fire was faulty boom box splicing.  Just sayin'.

mnbeerdrinker

about 13 years ago

Bad Cat mentioned the Lincoln Hotel.  The Twin Cities based "Action Squad" group of urban explorers did some exploring there in 2002.  Check out www.actionsquad.org/lincoln.html.  There are some good pictures.  They also infiltrated St. Scholastica, even though it wasn't abandoned.

I remember playing basketball in the basement gym at Old Main, probably in the late '70s, for some reason.  It may have had to do with a Holy Rosary Church youth group I belonged to at the time.

Shane

about 13 years ago

There was a tunnel connecting the lab school with the old main building.  I am not sure what was kept in the tunnel.  I did not extensively explore the lab school building until the summer after the old main fire. I do not recall seeing any sort of refrigeration apparatus or remnants of, that would be required to keep cadavers. Perhaps they were kept in the huge walk-in freezer in the old main building?

Dr. Aufderheide had an extensive collection of diseased body parts, organs and a few fetuses stored in jars of formaldehyde in a room in the basement. It was creepy to go in there in the evenings when the building was mostly empty.

Dr. Rapp's Archeometry department and the Large Lakes Observatory was in the upper floors when I was there. 
 
The lab school building was originally built to be an elementary school, where the normal school students would practice teaching.

Bret

about 13 years ago

Thanks for the Lincoln Hotel pics.  Back in 1983 or so, I road my motorcycle up from St. Paul in the fall without a hotel reservation (as a Duluthian now, I know better).  Anyway, after finding all the rooms booked we somehow saw the Lincoln Hotel advertised at $17.00 a night.  So, we went to check it out.  It seemed at that time it was not a real hotel anymore but permanent living space for elderly poor folk.  Since no one was at the counter and the few people in the lobby just stared at us, we walked upstairs to explore.  The bathrooms were down the hall from the rooms and full of mold. The rooms we saw were very small - barely fitting a single bed and a hotplate in the corner with sad people sitting in the corner (they left many doors open).  It was quite sad and this impression has stayed with me, so much so that even though I was 22 years old or so, I began saving for retirement.  Seriously.  Oh, and I rode back to St. Paul that night.

Tony D.

about 13 years ago

My bathroom fixtures--ceramic built-in soap dishes, towel bars, tp holder -- were salvaged from the Lincoln (and are now all mold-free, Bret!). John McCarthy at Architectural Antiques in Two Harbors salvaged the building, and still has a good many items. 

The Lincoln and Old Main will both be featured--along with well over 200 other buildings and landmarks -- in X-comm's forthcoming "Lost Duluth." Look for it in about a year. And feel free send me any ideas you may have for other subjects to include: tonyd @ x-communication.org (I don't want to tie up or hijack this post with another topic.)

Bad Cat!

about 13 years ago

The actual Old-Main burner was a childhood friend of my boyfriend. He ran into him at the mall not to long after the fire. They had the usual "What's up with you" chit-chat, and then the friend randomly started asking if he heard about the Old Main fire and kept talking about how cool it was. My boyfriend wasn't surprised when he got named as the arsonist.

hbh1

about 13 years ago

As far as I understand, the kid who was the arsonist also was briefly proprietor of the Urban Ground circa 1995-96. Based on the one conversation I had with him about it, he felt pretty guilty for what he'd done. It was obviously teenage stupidity.

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago

Here's a little something I didn't know about Old Main. Although it was designed using basically the same plans as Irving School in West Duluth, it actually looked less like Irving when it was built, and later looked more like Irving when two additions were constructed.

Here's the building prior to the 1909 addition but after Washburn Hall, which is in the background, opened in 1906:



And here's another pre-1909 shot:



Tony Dierckins, the guy who commented above about working on a book called Lost Duluth, tells me the original Old Main had just the central pavilion. The west addition was built in 1909 and the east addition in 1915, as seen in this photo:



Below is a shot of Irving School from about 1914 for comparison. I think Irving had east and west wings on it from the beginning, but I'm not sure. It was built from 1891 to 1893 and designed by the same architects that designed Old Main and its additions (Palmer, Hall and Hunt).



And now I think I'm all geeked out for the day.

Stuart Raymond

about 13 years ago

I knew one of the kids that set the place on fire. And was bitter enemies with another one. In fact I got in trouble around that time and had to do community service and who was with my crew? The bitter enemy. No, we didn't reconcile but I did ask him what happened. I guess they built a fire because it was cold and it got out of control. I guess their resitution was in the millions or something outrageous that they are all still probably paying today.

Steph

about 13 years ago

I wish people would continue to build buildings like this one. I love this style of architecture.

Tony Clifton

about 13 years ago

There was no taking of acid involved in the fatal burning of Old Main.

Jeff

about 13 years ago

Thanks Paul and Barrett, 

The things we got up to back then in "make your own fun Duluth," before we started hitting the bars, the wargly distorted sound system was quite fun and I think we left it there and had other plans before the silly fuckers burned the place down.

Teal

about 13 years ago

I absolutely remember this like it was yesterday. 

There used to be a really old tennis court down below Old Main...anyone remember that? We used to play there as a "last resort" when we couldn't find court time anywhere else.

Shane

about 13 years ago

The old tennis courts are under the garages built for the Torrence hall apartments.  I recall watching them build the garages right on top of the old tennis courts. I don't think they even put down any new concret or asphalt.

B-man

about 13 years ago

I did a feeble Google search for the news article for details of the burning down of the building and came up with nada.  

Anyone have a link to the news story? I'm wondering who was charged, for what, and the results of the trial, if any.

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago

The fire was before the Duluth News Tribune published stories on the Internet, so you're unlikely to find the news story online. Old-fashioned microfilm at the library is probably your only hope.

But I would think most of the info that you are looking for isn't too important. Some kid burned the place down, paid the price and probably feels bad to this day about it.

B-man

about 13 years ago

Yeah, that's not very exciting when you put it that way.  

Maybe my next snow day I'll go to the micro-film and confirm the details.  

Do you know the name of "the kid."  I think I went to school with him, but have totally forgotten his name.

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago

No, I don't know his name.

Kris Gleason Miller

about 13 years ago

I lived directly across the street from Old Main & went to the Lab School in the mid to late 50s. I remember bears coming up from the ravine next to our house, occasional moose wandering down the street...My school served as a student teaching experience at the time & my home was at one time the Dean's home. Next door, on the corner was a tug boat captain I liked to visit. I visited there in 2010 & had a hard time visualizing my memories as I looked at the arches. It was a great place to grow up though.

Elias Hinckly

about 13 years ago

The Stillwater version goes a little something like this:  Back in the day, it was said the town had the choice between college or prison; they chose prison.  Why are any choices made you may ask? The answer is simple...

So the old historic prison, aside from being a place where many met their agonizing doom, was most famous for housing part of the James Gang after they had foolishly rode all the way to Northfield, MN from Liberty, Missouri on horseback where they were shot to pieces by a bunch of anticipating Swedes on rooftops who told them to 'keep the change...' 

Of course, Jesse and Frank got away.  Cole Younger had been famous, aside for his natural gifts of raiding and pillaging with the Confederacy and renegade bands under William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, for sometimes as a wager, stacking up Yankees to see how many of them he could shoot through at once.  As a convict, he also started the prison newspaper, still in print.  

The main prison building, located in a naturally enforced cove surrounded by forty foot cliffs, served as housing for some of the nastiest folk in the fledgling territory, many of them probably innocent.  Before Minnesota, in the 1820s, this valley had also been the site of a massacre whereby a party of Lakota, for revenge, had launched a volley of arrows into the teepees of sleeping Ojibwa below, killing mostly women and children.  So at night when you were walking through here, sometimes it could feel like your feet were being pulled into the ground, and we had tested this theory.  It wasn't surprising many  often reported feeling a sense of unease in this area. Einstein believed walls could retain memory, but he's been wrong before.

Rumors had it for some time, developers wanted a large makeover of the site, that even 'Dances with Wolves' had his fingers in the pie.  The only thing standing in the way, was this big old historic structure being used as bus parking. 

One hot summer night on the ten o'clock news, the anchorman announced  'the historic Stillwater prison is on fire!'  Poked my head out the front door, sure enough, 150 foot flames.   Hopped on my bike and with the aid of gravity in moments was front row to the largest fire my eyes beholden of old growth timber headed skyward the likes of which you probably never saw. That is one hell of a fire I thought. The local movie star's house had to be doused with some sort of special fire retardant to keep it from catching. Dogs were barking.  Children were crying.

Curiously, moments before, we had spotted a white S-10 pickup with three young men driving lost and frantic through the neighborhood.   It was them who'd set the fire. Young hoodlums from St. Paul lost in the outback and fueled by rumors?  Or had someone given them directions?

It didn't matter, because exonerations were swift, as was the completion of this giant condo risen from the prison ashes.  It also didn't take 'them' long to file chapter 11 when the market collapsed not long after, as Stillwater once again outstepped its boundaries attempting to maintain that thin historic veneer which so adeptly draws throngs of hungry tourists in the summer. 

Nobody really knows what happened, save for the writing on the wall. But I wouldn't want to live where cell block 327 used to be.

As an ancient chemist (who had invented reflective paint) once explained to me, "everything burns."

"Truth or fiction, the truth will always be stranger."

Peter D

about 13 years ago

I lived near Old Main for two years (1976-1977).  I am happy to say "my" building, Torrance Hall, still survives.  Old Main was used by medical students back then.  On the other side of the drive was Washburn Hall.

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago



Here's an old postcard of the school to add to the collection.

Paul Lundgren

about 10 years ago



Another postcard image of Old Main / Duluth Normal School.

emmadogs

about 10 years ago

I'm so glad you updated this post, because I missed it the first time, and you have now answered a Mystery Situation.  When we moved to this neighborhood a few years ago, my dogs and I would walk around/through Old Main arches and park, as it is a great place in summer to wander around in. Then: in 2011 or so, my beagle and I wandered onto the sidewalk and yard of Washburn Hall. Suddenly some scary guy came out and started yelling at me for "trespassing." "Don't you know to stay out of yards?" he shrieked. "Would you like your neighbors to let their dogs stroll through your yard???" (Answer: they do.) I kind of stammered out a "Sorry, I thought this was part of the park -- did you just buy the building?" but this gentleman sort of growled at me, threw up his hands, and stormed back into Washburn Hall. So it apparently had been sold, and Las Vegas-ians really, really don't like trespassers.

I have diligently avoided Washburn Hall since then. I still love the arches, though.

Blain Burke

about 9 years ago

I'm that scary man who kindly asked that she play with her dog over at the park. That dog was taking a dump and the nervous lady gave me a evil look and never said a word to me. I was politely asking her to play with her dog across the street at Old Main Park. Although my company is located in Vegas, I reside in L.A. and spend summers in Duluth (where I was born and raised).

One thing that hasn't changed after all these years is the attitude of the East enders. They still act privileged and seem to have gotten worse. I've posted private property and introduced myself to the neighborhood but there is still a steady stream of nosy people peering though Washburn Hall windows and dog walkers who don't pick up after their dogs. Oh well, I guess I'm the strange scary guy to anyone who treats this private property as an extension of their property or park. I did ask one lady if she would mind if I walk my dog through her back yard to relieve himself but I said it in the most friendly and jokingly way possible.

One thing I don't get is this whole privileged thing. East end families look down at the rest of Duluth but there is what, a 40 or 50 grand difference in yearly income? Private schools? Doesn't make sense. Try treating people like you want to be treated and see how much better life is.

Washburn Hall will provide an event center, a few vacation rentals and offices once completed. I will be resisting east end business and very open to anyone wanting to take advantage of the facilities that are from other areas of Duluth. I love this city but turned of by the attitude of the majority of these cake eaters.

Pnuts

about 7 years ago

Hmmm. Pretty sure it was not vacant in 1981. My girlfriend and I had a situation in the dorms there. Police were called. Not Halloween. Alcohol was involved.  Had forgotten about it after all these years. She lived close by and we wandered over there and it ended with me throwing up all over the halls and stairs. I wonder what ever happened to Lisa? Lost track of her when I left town not long after. I recall a student involved. Saw him 25 years later but didn't realize it was him. I wonder if he knew who I was? Ironically I dropped him on his head accidentally. ... Felt bad but now thinking should have repeated. If you are reading this, concussion boy, I have a question for you.

[email protected]

about 6 years ago

I was stationed at Torrance Hall in 1984. It had freshman kids at that time. We had so much snow that winter season they had to use a cherry-picker type crane to bring food up to 2nd floor. We were snowed in and we loved it!

We also explored the buildings in the area at night. One picture in my mind I pull up frequently was a chalkboard set up in the basement of one of those beauty buildings. On the chalkboard It had a person's head with their mouth open and written in a speech balloon it said, "People talking without speaking."
Crazy, huh?
 

Jacob Jacobson

about 5 years ago

Lived in Torrance Hall in 1967/68. We regularly snooped through Old Main. Found a homeless dude squatting there one night. Cool old building.

Leave a Comment

Only registered members can post a comment , Login / Register Here

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!
Read previous post:
Some great storytelling events coming up!

Local storyteller extraordinaire Elizabeth Nordell is organizing the following exciting events. Be sure to put them on your calendar!

Close