Academic Hall
Academic Hall was born of fire in 1906.
The neoclassical-style limestone building replaced the red brick, Victorian-style Southeast Missouri State Normal School building, the original Academic Hall, which was leveled in a fire in 1902. Mark Twain, in "Life on the Mississippi," described the Normal building as situated on an "airy summit -- a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled -- a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete." While not peculiarly towered, the Normal building's replacement stands on that summit that had served as the site of a Civil War fort.
Academic Hall was designed by renowned St. Louis architect Jerome B. Legg. At 92,000 square feet and capped with a massive copper-sheathed dome, the building came in at a cost of $200,000, an astronomical figure at the time and a tab picked up mostly by the state.
"This figure was said, by critics at the time, to be twice as much as any pair of buildings on any college campus in the state of Missouri," according to Southeast's website.
Its stature continued to resonate in 1940, when the Southeast Missourian boasted that Academic Hall was an "architectural masterpiece located on a campus that gives it the honor of being the most beautiful and impressive state teachers college building in the United States."
Southeast Missourian
October 10/2010
Academic Hall
Academic Hall was born of fire in 1906.
The neoclassical-style limestone building replaced the red brick, Victorian-style Southeast Missouri State Normal School building, the original Academic Hall, which was leveled in a fire in 1902. Mark Twain, in "Life on the Mississippi," described the Normal building as situated on an "airy summit -- a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled -- a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete." While not peculiarly towered, the Normal building's replacement stands on that summit that had served as the site of a Civil War fort.
Academic Hall was designed by renowned St. Louis architect Jerome B. Legg. At 92,000 square feet and capped with a massive copper-sheathed dome, the building came in at a cost of $200,000, an astronomical figure at the time and a tab picked up mostly by the state.
"This figure was said, by critics at the time, to be twice as much as any pair of buildings on any college campus in the state of Missouri," according to Southeast's website.
Its stature continued to resonate in 1940, when the Southeast Missourian boasted that Academic Hall was an "architectural masterpiece located on a campus that gives it the honor of being the most beautiful and impressive state teachers college building in the United States."
Southeast Missourian
October 10/2010