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Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Opinion

Potter

This month the grand dames of our campus, Hopwood and Carnegie Halls, will turn one hundred. For their age, they are in remarkable shape. [That is what tender loving care will do for one.] Since I have a good part of the last fifty years in Hopwood Hall, I shall wish her happy birthday first. From 1909 until 1953 it was known as the Administration Building. As part of the College's fiftieth anniversary celebration the name was changed to honor our founders, Josephus and Sarah LaRue Hopwood.

The funds for the construction of Hopwood Hall were provided by the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, local donors, and long-term bonds. It cost $30,000 to construct, or $600,000 in 2009 dollars-still a bargain for a solid brick building that was designed to be earthquake proof! The architect was Edward Frye of the Lynchburg firm of Chestermann and Frye. He used the Jones Library which he had designed several years earlier as his inspiration for the administration/classroom structure. The buildings are approximately the same size, although the space was managed with more efficiency in Hopwood Hall than in the library. In short, Frye corrected a number of "mistakes" made in the earlier structure.

In his letter to the College's constituents, Dr. Hopwood described the new building as having "….fifteen recitation rooms, good as the best, with genuine slate blackboards; four offices or small rooms; an elegant library room; a handsome chapel; splendid art room with a skylight…" Lynchburg College is the second oldest college in Virginia founded as a co-educational institution, and the construction of Hopwood Hall was an important step in the realization of the founders' concept of that educational model. Within its walls men and women engaged in a variety of academic activities from painting to physics, from the study of literature to the mastering of foreign languages.

The list of academics, actors, musicians, poets, politicians, reformers, theologians, and others, who have graced its stage and classrooms, is seemingly endless. They included the brightest and the best that the last eleven decades have had to offer. Thus from the day its doors opened, Hopwood Hall has provided a cultural venue for the campus and the wider community. With the creation of a department of dramatic arts after World War II, Hopwood Auditorium became the setting for all of the college plays and musical performances until the completion of the Dillard Theatre and the Sydnor Performance Hall.

In the last century, Hopwood Hall has undergone several renovations; the most extensive one was completed in 1960. In 1983 the original blackboards, which were in perfect shape were removed and replaced with "modern" inferior ones. Why this was done has never been fully explained. The latest improvements have been the addition of an elevator which makes the building totally accessible to the handicapped and a new copper dome. We lost a classroom with the addition of the elevator, but we gained a real asset. How does Hopwood Hall remain so "young?" It is simple. A program of preventive maintenance keeps our grand lady in first-class shape-Happy Birthday Hopwood Hall.

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