This summer, renovations began on Tower Court, the College’s largest residential hall and the first built after the cataclysmic fire that destroyed College Hall on March 17, 1914. Tower Court West will be renovated this summer; Tower Court East, Tower Court’s dining hall, and the Great Hall will be renovated in summer 2024. As part of the Great Hall restoration, accessibility issues will be addressed for the first time in its history. (See “This Old Hall,” fall 2022, for more on the College’s 10-year plan to renovate all large residence halls on campus.)
Tower Court came into being thanks to gifts from a donor courted by Louise McCoy North, class of 1879, the College’s first alumna trustee. The donation was announced just three months after the fire. After the anonymous benefactor’s death in 1916, she was revealed to be Ellen Stebbin James, a philanthropist without connections to Wellesley but who had donated Hamilton College’s library. Her gift came with a few strings attached—including that the residence hall be made of fireproof materials, Gothic in style, designed by Coolidge & Carlson, and “built so as to form an interior court or quadrangle opening on the lake,” giving the hall its name. James also stipulated that the building include “a suitable space for the more formal and dignified social events and celebrations connected with the College,” reminiscent of the “Centre” in College Hall—the impetus for the Great Hall. In 1917, a memorial tablet bearing her name was placed above the Great Hall fireplace.
On Jan. 15, 1915, the College held a simple ceremony to lay the building’s cornerstone, attended by trustees, faculty, and students. After the student choir sang a hymn, North spread mortar with a ceremonial silver trowel, and President Ellen Fitz Pendleton, class of 1886, placed the stone.
Just eight months later, the (nearly) completed building was occupied by 194 students and 12 faculty members. Pendleton wrote, “When the lights actually shone out from Tower Court into the autumn evening, one realized how much the darkness on College Hall Hill had meant to the college life.”
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