"Matsumoto Wing"
description: “When you think about the building it’s added onto, the Matsumoto Wing is a powerful statement for modernism. It’s attached to a 1920s neoclassical building, and it’s the first example of this type of curtain wall in North Carolina. It was meant to, in many ways, exhibit the ideals of modernism from a technological standpoint, where the building is free to have complete walls of windows instead of being constructed of heavy load-bearing walls. It made a statement about the School’s progressive ideals,” said David Hill, current Department Head of Architecture, in the College of Design's news. The Brooks Hall addition, unofficially known as the “Matsumoto Wing” was built in 1955. The wing was planned to house space for ceramics, sculpture, freehand drawing, descriptive drawing, painting, landscaping, design rooms for each year (first to fifth year), a tool room, and offices. Fred Carter Williams and Associates served as the designers and George Matsumoto was the consulting director. George Matsumoto was an architecture professor (1948-1961) and was one of the founding professors of the School of Design. Matsumoto taught second year students in construction material and processes. Matsumoto described the second year being the weed-out year in the architect program. Classes started with about one hundred students, but only about thirty students moved to the third year. Despite the small number these students went on to be brilliant architects. In 1959, ten NC State students won $11,000 out of $18,000 of the total award in the Light for Living Medallion Home Competition. Matsumoto's students competed against students from fifty other colleges and universities. Not only did Matsumoto’s students gain knowledge and prestige, Matsumoto also learned much about himself as an architect and intellectually benefitted from his students. Matsumoto stated in a 1997 interview, “It [teaching] consolidated my own thinking because I had to verbalize what I thought. And it was good disci…
creator: Jordan Scott
date: 2020/1/6

Bostian Hall
description: On December 17, 1980, NC State University Chancellor Joab L. Thomas dedicated Bostian Hall on North Campus as a facility for research and teaching biological sciences. Thomas said during the dedication that the new building near the Brickyard honored “Carey Bostian, a warm, compassionate human being, dedicated and skillful administrator, and very clearly one of the world’s greatest teachers.” Three years prior, the News and Observer reported the school enrolled a record number of students in biology courses, leaving little laboratory space for “individual work by students and professors.” In response, the university allocated $2,705,000 to construct Bostian Hall. According to the dedication program, Architect F. Carter Williams paid particular attention to lecture halls and laboratories for instruction in designing the building which totaled 38,529 square feet. A 1983 Course Bulletin indicated many biological programs operated there, including the interdepartmental Biological Sciences and Pest Management for Crop Sciences programs. In 2020, Bostian still housed the Biological Sciences department, along with Plant and Microbial Biology. After hours, school organizations hosted events in Bostian such as the 1983 History Department panel with African American historians entitled “John Hope Franklin, Black History, and North Carolina State University” and the 1990 Women’s Resource Coalition discussion “Sex, Lies, and Campus Rape.” Bostian originally came to NC State in 1930 because of the Zoology Department. A Zoology professor had resigned suddenly, Bostian reported in a 1987 oral history, and his major professor at the University of Pittsburgh recommended the North Carolina native to fill the vacancy. NC State took the recommendation even though Bostian had neither applied for the position nor finished his dissertation. The State College News (SCN) reported that Bostian’s service on faculty committees after gaining full professorship in 1946 helped him attain the Dire…
creator: Alanna Natanson
date: 2020/12/11

Yarbrough Drive Steam Plant and Smokestack
description: Since at least 1996, Facilities Division has called the plant “Yarbrough Drive Steam Plant.” The drive, noted historian Doris King in 1987, was a “permanent memorial” to Louis Thomas Yarbrough, “a man whose love and loyalty to the institution were outstanding.” Yarbrough was born on October 18, 1873 in Caswell County, North Carolina, according to his obituary. The graduate of a “one-teacher school,” Yarbrough enrolled with the college’s first class in 1889 on scholarship. AN reported he taught at NC State for four years after his graduation in 1893, then joined the US Post Office Department. Yarbrough spent over thirty-seven years with the mail service, first as a clerk, then as manager of the state capitol’s post office, and finally as an esteemed postal inspector. As inspector, he caught local thieves stealing mail and international criminals shipping fraudulent merchandise. Yarbrough remained close to his alma mater, physically and socially. He settled on Hillsborough Street, where he offered an “Open House” for visiting alumni until his death in 1952, according to King. AN reported Yarbrough also chaired the Alumni Association’s “Necrology [obituary] Committee” and attended commencement ceremonies until at least 1945. Most importantly, Yarbrough helped his daughter Mary fall in love with and eventually attend NC State, where she became the first woman to earn a Master of Science from the college in 1927. Today, the smokestack named after Louis Yarbrough overlooks a courtyard named after Mary Yarbrough. The iconic spot had humble beginnings, and since has reflected larger themes in US environmental history. On February 8, 1924, The Technician newspaper announced North Carolina State College’s plans for its new power plant located seventy-five feet from the railroad tracks. A 175-foot-high smokestack was adjacent, eight feet in diameter. “The name of the college,” the newspaper wrote, “will be set in white brick near the top of the stack…visible to those approachi…
creator: Alanna Natanson
date: 2020/10/13

Alexander Hall
description: Alexander Hall is located on North Campus just south of Wolf Plaza and is home to the living learning community Global Village. The residence hall opened in 1939, and was originally called “A” Dormitory. In 1940, Alexander Hall was renamed after Sydenham Bernard Alexander, Jr, an alumni and member of the Board of Trustees. According to Alice Reagan’s North Carolina State University: A Narrative History, during World War II, Alexander Hall was used by the Army Air Corps, along with nearby Turlington Hall. Between the two dorms there was a barrack area, a sentry post, a canteen, and a recreation room provided by the YMCA. After the war, Alexander Hall housed male students, however, in September 1967, Alexander Hall became a women’s dormitory, making it the second women’s dormitory at NC State after Watauga. An article in the Statelog from December 1966 stated this was due to an expected increase in women students, and the fact that Carroll Hall, which was being built to house women, would not be completed by the fall of ‘67. Women living in Alexander would have had to follow special curfews which only applied to women students. According to Regan’s A Narrative History, the restrictions gradually lessened in 1968 when junior and senior women were exempt from the curfew and were finally dropped altogether in 1971. Alexander Hall became a men’s dormitory again and in the fall of 1975 the Alexander International Hall program opened. This program was meant to facilitate cross-cultural understanding between domestic and international students and was organized so that each international student would room with a domestic student. The dormitory also held events such as international coffees and hosted trips to Washington D.C. for the international students. Alexander Hall was chosen due to its central location and the large basement which could serve as the International Lounge. In 1977, the International Program expanded to include women and Alexander Hall became a co-ed do…
creator: Emma Stout
date: 2021/05/14

Brick Layers: An Atlas of New Perspectives on NC State's Campus History

Brooks Hall
description: Brooks Hall, off Pullen Road on North Carolina State University’s North Campus has a diverse history. It is the site where trailblazing professors who emigrated from around the world worked to inspire students. It housed the first library of the university. Its namesake, Eugene Clyde Brooks, was a complicated figure whose policies both enhanced and limited education. The physical building originally housed D.H. Hill Jr. Library, according to a 1925 Technician article. But after the library moved to a larger facility in 1955, scholar Robert “Bob” Burns said the School of Design (SOD) housed offices, studios, and classes in Brooks. By the time SOD moved in, Dean Henry Kamphoefner had hired a faculty that he told NC Architects “discarded the deadly eclecticism and senselessness of the American Beaux Arts to search for a new design expression compatible to modern times [and] committed to design as a social art.” Scholar Victoria Ballard Bell noted that at the suggestion of sociologist Lewis Mumford, Kamphoefner looked outside the United States for faculty, hiring “many leaders of the international Modernist movement.” From 1948-1959, professors and instructors came from Argentina, Austria, Australia, Chile, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Poland, and South Africa, according to Burns’ notes. In contrast, the 1956 catalog showed that the rest of the university’s faculty trained in just five countries. “Imagine having had teachers whose names were Parker, Allen and Grigg,” noted alumnus Marley Carroll, “now having professors named Buisson, Caminos, Catalano, Matsumoto, [and] Sengupta.” Scholar Paolo Favole argued Modernism travelled from Europe to the United States and was “revolutionary in character.” Early SOD appointees supported the claim; Maciej “Matthew” Nowicki was a Polish architect who resisted Nazi occupation with clandestine classes during World War II. He and wife Stanislava both taught at NC State, according to Student Publications, and Maciej de…
creator: Alanna Natanson
date: 2021/03/12

Caldwell Hall
description: Caldwell Hall is situated between Winston Hall and Tompkins Hall on Hillsborough Street. Built in 1981 and originally named Link Hall, due to the fact that it links Winston and Tompkins Hall together, it was renamed for former NC State Chancellor John Tyler Caldwell in 1987. Caldwell, former NCSU Chancellor who served from 1959 to 1975 presided over significant growth in the student body (enrollment more than doubled, reaching over 15,000 students by his retirement) as well as radical increases in the number of women attending. Many new degrees and colleges were added to NC State in the 1960s. Especially notable were the addition of the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1960, and the School of Liberal Arts in 1963. The History of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences states NC State felt the new School was necessary in order to meet “the requirements of modern technology.” The School of Liberal Arts was created as a degree-granting school given to the former non-degree granting School of General Studies. Race was another issue at the forefront of Caldwell’s time as Chancellor. As described by John E. Batchelor in “Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation,” North Carolina’s response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was slow, halting, and obstructive, with many people alarmed and angered by moves to desegregate schools. While NC State had admitted its first Black graduate student before this decision, in 1953, it did not admit its first Black undergraduate students until 1956. This all preceded Caldwell’s time as Chancellor, leaving him much to resolve. In 1959 when Caldwell became Chancellor, desegregation and race were still pressing issues for the school and continued to be so. In 1960, NC State had no official policy on accepting Black students from out of state. “The Inclusion and Involvement of African-Americans at North Carolina State University, 1953-1993,” details how Caldwell decided to…
creator: Emma Stout
date: 2021/04/03

Centennial Campus
description: Centennial Campus was named in honor of NC State’s 100th anniversary, which occurred in 1987. It is located south of the original campus (now North Campus). Differing from traditional campuses, Centennial plays host to university, industry, and government partners. It is home to academic bodies like the College of Engineering, the Veterinary Medical Campus, and the Wilson College of Textiles, but also to LexisNexis, an office of the National Weather Service, and Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School. The campus also has housing, a golf course, a state-of-the-art library, and a hotel and conference center. Plans for Centennial Campus began in the early 1980s at NC State. There was a desperate need for more space to accommodate a growing student population which had surpassed 20,000 for the first time. To address this need, Bruce Poulton, who became chancellor in 1982, spearheaded plans to create a new campus and in 1984 Governor Hunt (an NC State graduate) transferred 385 acres to NC State for a new campus. This was followed by a second grant in 1985 by Governor James. G. Martin of another 450 acres. The governors transferred this land from Dorthea Dix Hospital, originally known as the Asylum for the Insane of North Carolina to the college in order to enhance the level of education and economic opportunity in North Carolina, and for this reason Centennial Campus is often considered NC State’s second land-grant. Centennial Campus grew through additional grants and purchases to eventually total over 1,000 acres. In 1988, NC State bought 76 acres from the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh. After negotiating over the price, the News & Observer reported the Diocese agreed to sell the land for $7.5 million, pending approval from the Pope. The land had once been the site for the Nazareth Catholic Orphanage. The orphanage had a small graveyard and there is some uncertainty about where or whether the graves were moved. In September of 1985, Chancellor Bruce Poulton created the Uni…
creator: Emma Stout
date: 2020/11/3

Court of North Carolina
description: Various architects and landscapers created the Court of North Carolina slowly, bit by bit. The court has taken on many lives: as a pasture for cows, a location for classrooms and professors’ offices, open space, a place for students to gather, and a scenic view. The open space was previously known as the 1911 Field. In the beginning, in 1889, the court was a grassy field for the school’s cows. The cows were used for teaching animal husbandry, and occasionally pranks. The pasture was fenced in and there were significantly fewer buildings surrounding it until between 1902-1912 when Winston, Tompkins, Leazar, 1911 Building (previously a dormitory), and Page Hall were built. The court’s modern borders were finalized with the construction of Poe and Caldwell Hall in 1971 and 1981, respectively. The cows and fences were removed likely around 1910. From 1910 to 1946 the field was just grass with no paths cutting through and trees lining the edges. The biggest change to the court happened in 1946. The end of World War II and the G.I. Bill of 1944 brought a major increase in student enrollment. The Serviceman’s Adjustment Act, or the G.I. Bill of 1944, funded veterans in their tuition, school supplies, housing, and counseling services. At NC State about 4,000 more students enrolled into the school. The additional students put pressure on NC State’s facilities, faculty, and staff. To remedy the space issue, the university built five, two-floor rectangular buildings, and twelve Quonset huts. These huts were used as temporary classrooms that sat 40-45 students. The huts were 48 feet by 20 feet, and were shaped like a half cylinder. Peden Steel Company of Raleigh was the supplier, and Crane and Denbo Company of Durham built the huts. The huts were not insulated, but were heated by oil, had windows, and had electricity. The temporary buildings housed classes for English, math, the School of Design, and likely other liberal art classes. One of the classes taught was a speed readin…
creator: Jordan Scott
date: 2019/09/24

D.H. Hill, Jr. Library
description: The main library located on North Carolina State University’s North Campus celebrated with an opening ceremony in March of 1955, when Chancellor Bostian and the administration of the university dedicated the building to Daniel Harvey Hill, Jr. Daniel Harvey Hill Junior came from a long line of military leaders. He was born in January 1859 to Daniel Harvey Hill Senior and Isabella Morrison in Davidson, North Carolina. Hill’s father was the son of Revolutionary war Colonel William Hill. Hill Senior was also the chair of the mathematics department at Davidson College, the superintendent of the North Carolina Military Institute and a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Daniel Harvey Hill Junior often went by the abbreviated version of his name, D.H. Hill, and he tended to drop the “Junior” part altogether. In 1880, D.H. Hill, Jr. graduated from Davidson College with a bachelor of arts degree and in 1885 he graduated from Davidson again with a master of arts degree. Hill worked at the Georgia Military and Agricultural College from 1880 to 1889 as an English professor prior to being hired at North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now North Carolina State University) as a founding faculty member and as the school’s first English professor. From 1889 to 1899, Hill served as the supervisor and first librarian of the university library, which was located on the first floor of Holladay Hall. While at North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Hill served as an English professor, librarian, vice president of the college and eventually president of the university. Hill served as the president of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts from 1908 to 1916. During Hill’s tenure, the number of students and faculty at the college grew significantly. Hill’s scholarly reputation grew from research on North Carolina’s role in the American Civil War. The North Carolina Historical Commission offered H…
creator: Jordan Scott and Kelly Scott
date: 2019/06/10