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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 1971)
University construction, destruction ensue : 4 ' > '4 While students begin winter term this week, construction has also begun on three major projects around campus. Damage to the Men's P.E. Building and PLC is now under repair though no arrests have been made yet in either case and the construction of the new recreational facilities has begun where “the bubble” use to be. The old Vet’s Dorms are scheduled for destruction in the near future, also. Deflatable ‘bubble’ difficult to auction Want to buy a bubble? It’s a very large bubble—suitable for covering an Olympic size swimming pool, holding football practice, housing an ice skating rink, or providing 876,960 cubic feet of storage space. The 3-ton structure, which has been used jointly by the University athletic department and the physical education classes for the past two years, has been removed from its site behind McArthur Court to make way for new handball and tennis courts. The dome-shaped facility has been used primarily for rainy weather football practice, track workouts and tennis classes, according to Arthur Esslinger, dean of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, with soccer, rugby and touch football ac tivities also taking place under its protective roof. However, Esslinger said, the Astroturf field at Autzen Stadium, the new all-weather track at Hayward Field and the covered tennis courts now under con struction have eliminated the need for the dome. Esslinger said he knew several persons had ex pressed interest in purchasing the structure, but that so far there have been no “hard cash offers.” Original cost of the huge nylon bubble, which is inflated by two heavy duty blowers, was approximately $35,000. The now-deflated dome is stored in one of the University Physical Plant warehouses. Also disappearing from the new recreational facil ities site were two quonset huts used for classrooms and offices since post-World War II days. To save razing costs, the huts were turned over to Howard Nelson Construction Co., contractors for the $480,000 tennis-handball facilities, when construction work began the week after Christmas. The covered area, which is intended to provide multi-purpose use in addition to its primary purpose as eight tennis and eight handball courts, is expected to be completed on or before July 1. Repairs to P.E. building begin John T. Moody & Sons Con struction Co. of Junction City was the apparent low bidder for a contract to rebuild the fire damaged north portion of the University of Oregon’s Men’s Physical Education Building. Moody’s bid was $238,782. Approximately 22,000 square feet of classroom and office space were contained in the portion of the building ithat was gutted by fire last Feb. 16. Construction costs will cover restoration and certain PLC bomb damage scheduled for repair An apparent low bid of $57,769 has been submitted by Milton Powell & Sons Construction Co. of Eugene for restoration of the University’s Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, damaged by a bomb ex plosion October 2. Five other bids were submitted to the Department of General Services in Salem which opened them Dec. 9. The high bid was $67,849. It was originally estimated that the bomb had done $75,000 damage. Repair and reconstruction work to the four restrooms and ten offices on the ground floor that received the major damage in the October blast will follow the original architect’s plans. The building v'as erected in 1962. Work is expected to begin as soon as the Department of General Services gives final approval to the contract, and is expected to take 90 days or less. Preliminary checks have indicated there was no structural damage to the building, but architects and structural engineers will be making a load test. Reconstruction costs will be paid from the State Restoration Fund, accorindg to the Department of General Services. alterations and remodeling which will make the building more useable and provide for possible future expansion. The architectural firm of Morin, Longwood and Edlund prepared the plans for the project, which were approved at the September meeting of the State Board of Higher Education. Improvements to the structure include better ventilation and air cooling for some rooms, enlargement of restrooms, re arrangement of space to provide better circulation, and roof engineered to permit future structural expansion, possibly through the addition of another story. General demolition work and replacement of flooring have already been accomplished under separate contracts. Of the total budget, the major portion is expected to come from the State Restoration Fund, another portion from the 1967-68 capital outlay budget, and the remainder financed from building use credits available to the institution. This may be supplemented by an allocation from the State Board of Higher Education’s reserve for plant rehabilitation and minor capital outlay. ‘Hazardous’ Vet dorm to be destroyed The last of the old Vets’ Dorms on the east campus of the University finally has been vacated and soon it will be torn down. Vets’ Dorm No. 2, which includes five units, has been deteriorating over a period of years and during the past few months only a few usable parts have been occupied as graduate student offices and an ar chitectural laboratory. Earlier in the fall, the University requested the City of Eugene’s Public Works Department to inspect the building. The report of the inspection, to J.O. Lind strom. University director of fiscal affairs, concluded that the building was unsafe for occupancy. Cited in the report were a number of major conditions that make the structure hazardous. The deficiencies of the building included the lack of fire resistive con struction and fire prevention measures, sanitation, building safety, and “hazard to life.” The report recommended that the University terminate the use of the building. At the time the report was received, 60 graduate students were using parts of the building for office space. These students, from the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the College of Education, and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, are being relocated. They have been assigned space in Straub Hali, in the Agate Street housing, and, in the case of the architectural students, in Lawrence Hall. The history of the Vets’ Dorms goes back to 1946, when the frame buildings were moved to the campus to handle the flood of vetemas returning from World War II. At that time, Straub Hall was the only dormitory for men. The buildings came from Vancouver, Washington, where they had been built during World War II as public housing for ship yard workers. When the Veterans’ Memorial Dor mitories were installed on the campus, a decision was made to name the several wings for University alumni who had lost their lives in World War II. Names of all alumni lost in the war were placed in a large glass bowl and ten were ceremoniously drawn for the ten units of the two dormitories. Dormitory No. 1 units were named for L. Kent Stitzer, Stanley Ray, John A. McChesney, Francis Mintum, and Paul Merrick. Units in Dormitory 2 were named for Robert Chemey, Wyman French, Maurice H. Hunter, Francis Nestor, and Verdi D. Sederstrom. Installation of the buildings was on a rush basis, as was the furnishing. The war surplus furnishings were trucked in from Seattle and, as Lindstrom recalls, were barely in place on the Friday just before the buildings were opened for veteran occupancy on Monday. There was room for 748 men and the dorms were filled. Dormitory No. 1 was tom down in 1955 to make room for tennis courts. By that time permanent dormitories had been constructed for men and the building no longer was needed for housing. Tennis courts, razed before the construction of Walton Hall, were replaced by the tennis courts constructed on the off-Alder Street site. Vets’ Dorm No. 2 was used for housing men during the next seven years, although by 1961-62 only four units were used as dormitory space. In the next year, the usable parts of the building were con verted to academic purposes as offices, classrooms, and eventually to house minority programs. In 1962, the old World War I surplus building that housed ROTC was destroyed in two fires. The Army and Air Force units were moved temporarily to French and Chemey Halls Following a series of demonstrations and window breaking in the spring of 1970, ROTC units were moved to University housing facing Alder Street. The move had been planned some time before, to be accomplished when new quarters became available. In the meantime, most of the broken windows in Chemey and French were boarded up and nothing was done to repair the damage. Space shortage became acute, however, and graduate students were allowed to occupy the most usable space. An era and the history of the Veterans’ Memorial Dormitories will end very soon. Bids for razing the old building will be let at an early date and the “tear down” work will start in three or four weeks, according to Leland Lorange, acting director of the University physical plant. Back in 1946, when the buildings were trucked to the campus, President Harry Newbum remarked that the life ex pectancy of the dorms was ten years at most. He was wrong, by 14 years in the case of Vets’ Dorm No. 2. Incidentally, on the campus maps, the dorms are labeled collectively as Hudson House. It is doubtful if anyone ever used that name except the cartographer.
