West Hall
	Start Over

Two surges in population rescued it. In 1923 the Albany Roman Catholic diocese purchased and then renovated the building to house a growing population of local high school-age students. The chapel was torn down and replaced with a four-story addition that contained a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and an auditorium, as well as separate, enclosed “boys” and “girls” staircases on the western façade. Catholic Central High School, when it was completed in 1925, contained 50,000 square feet of floor space and served 536 students. Within 25 years attendance swelled to more than 1,500 students and, in 1952, the diocese elected to move the school north to a larger space in Lansingburgh.

Rensselaer was experiencing its own population surge in the late 1940s, aided by the GI Bill and the increasing industry demand for engineers. Enrollment rose from 932 students in 1940 to 4,485 students by 1948, so Rensselaer seized the opportunity to buy the building to relieve the overcrowding that existed in several departments. Officially renamed West Hall in 1953, the building expanded Rensselaer’s academic facilities by 12 percent and became one of the major projects in the campuswide renovation program that began that year. When it was finished, it provided 34 offices, 20 classrooms, 10 laboratories, and nine additional rooms.

		West Hall has had numerous inhabitants during its 136-year history. In its half century as a Rensselaer property, the building has been home to the Geology Department, Earth and Environmental Sciences, the staff of the Rensselaer Union (while their building was being renovated), Property Administration, Purchasing, and more. Today, West Hall houses the Arts Department, along with the offices of Contracts and Grants, Research Administration and Finance, the Credit Union, and, until the new facility opens in 2007, EMPAC Director Johannes Goebel and his administrative staff. Over the years, West Hall has been home to some more unusual residents, including a pair of red-tailed hawks who have nested and raised their fledglings underneath a pediment on the western face of the building. Richard Scammell ’69, director of research administration and finance, can see the nest from his fifth-floor office. He’s “adopted” the hawks and chronicles their lives in photographs each year. For a close-up look, visit www.rpi.edu/dept/ocg/hawk.htm. Perhaps the inhabitant most well known on campus is the rumored ghost (some say there are more than one) that is said to haunt West Hall. For years, people using the building at night have reported the sounds of screams or whining, doors flying shut, and loud thumping noises. One story has it that a pair of students once stayed overnight in the basement to record evidence of the ghost. The night was mostly uneventful, except for a strange fluctuation on the level meter on the recorder. When they played the tape back, they heard a three-second unexplained whine. Depending on who tells the story, the ghost is named Betsy or Betty, and she may have been a nurse who cared for patients in the psychiatric ward when the building served as a hospital. Others say it’s a little girl, who may have attended school there. Still others contend there are up to 36 ghosts haunting these halls. What West Hall ghost story do you remember? We’d love to hear from you. Send your story to Rensselaer Magazine, Office of Communications, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, or alum.mag@rpi.edu.

Today Rensselaer is committed to righting this history with a restoration that is enabling West Hall to operate at full capacity as an academic building.

Inside West Hall, especially as night approaches, the shadowy atmosphere seems to lend credence to the campus legend that the ghost of a 19th-century nurse wanders its hallways. West Hall’s basement and five meandering floors present a labyrinth of corridors, art studios, and offices. Sounds like the insistent, staccato buzzing of a stairwell light, the moaning heat pipes, and the relentless gurgling of an aquarium complete the atmosphere. But there’s also laughter as several art students with portfolios walk down the hall, as a professor digitizing music in his office pokes his head out to say hello. A monitor above the aquarium shows clips from a new documentary, and posters on the bulletin board advertise upcoming events sponsored by the arts department’s iEAR Presents!, a series of performances, exhibitions and lectures featuring pioneering and emerging electronic artists.

The high-tech present mixes with the 19th century in West Hall.

“I’ve been here since 2002, and people are still saying to me, ‘Oh, there’s an arts department at RPI?’” says Kathy High, the chair of the Arts Department. Her office is a large, front-corner space on the first floor of West Hall that affords her a panoramic view of Troy. The arts department has added six new faculty members — almost doubling the size of the faculty over the last three years, which represents the Institute’s commitment to developing the arts, High says. The department currently uses the first four floors of the building. High hopes to move the department’s editing facilities and production studio, which are still in the Darrin Communications Center, down to West Hall.

“First of all, it’s really a good idea for us to have both our studios and our classrooms and our research facilities in the same area,” she says, “because oftentimes students will come and want to show us a project that they’re working on or ask about a technical problem, and just to be able to walk into a studio and work out those problems or critique a work is really essential to the teaching, and to our whole pedagogical approach of combining practice and theory.”

High also notes that the Arts Department serves as an essential link to the Troy community, both through the art work they do, which often involves the community, and also through the literal position of West Hall on the edge of campus.

The diverse nature of the arts department just fits with the unique layout of West Hall, says High, who believes being situated on the edge of the campus aptly represents the department’s role within the Institute as well. “We sort of sit slightly outside of what has traditionally been the pedagogical approach of the university, which has been primarily an engineering and science-based university. That’s changing. It’s one of Dr. Jackson’s mandates — to expand that and to include more humanities. This building has a lot of character, a lot of presence, and I love it for that.”

Montena agrees. “Rensselaer is a venerable old institution, and we would rather have a restored building that represents it rather than the kind of neglected and abandoned building that is usually in every town, that just sits there until it falls in on itself,” he says. “West Hall is architecture that people can relate to. It’s more human scale, and I think it’s a connection to the past.”

All photos on this page by Kris Qua, except where noted.
Historic photos courtesy of Rensselaer County Historical Society and Manuscripts and Special Collections, New York State Library.