Montclair State University - Alumni Magazine - Winter 2005

Chapin Hall Renovation Will Bring Music to Our Ears

Chapin Hall residents gather for a group photo in the 1939 La Campana.

By Lise Greene '74, '81 M.A.

For 48 years, music graced Chapin Hall during its life as a residence hall. The music emanated from students' voices, from concerts and dances in the living room, and from male students serenading the women under their dorm windows on starry nights. When the building housed faculty offices and classrooms for the next 30 years, the music was hushed. But get ready for its return--Chapin Hall will become home to the Music Department in its next incarnation.

In a 1907 article for the journal Education, Charles S. Chapin wrote that in teaching, "the one thing that is both impossible and undesirable is uniformity." The following year he became the first principal of the new Montclair State Normal School and proclaimed at its opening: "Before our first class graduates, this [school] will be crowded." He was right on both counts, but could not have foreseen how his comments on nonuniformity and crowding would come to life in the building that would bear his name.

A view of Chapin Hall in spring 1935.

In 1927, three years after Principal Chapin died, the state legislature appropriated $225,000 for the construction of a second dormitory at Montclair State, following a dozen years of requests by both Chapin and his successor, President Harry Sprague. The new dormitory, Chapin Hall, opened its doors in 1928 to 102 junior and senior women as Montclair State's second residence hall. It was built in the Spanish mission style of the administration building and Russ Hall dormitory.

The 1930-31 college catalog spelled out what dormitory life was all about, and what it wasn't. "The dormitories are not social clubs. However, students have their opportunities for good fun including social activities and entertainment of various types. The regulations governing dormitory life cover such matters as study hours, church attendance, week-end excuses, social activities, guests, schedule of meals, care of rooms, chaperones and care of the sick."

The housemother and dean of women provided practical experiences in the ground level living room for the young women to learn the niceties of preparing formal invitations (and graciously refusing them), greeting guests, setting tables, serving tea and generally conducting themselves properly. The living room was also used for club meetings.

Each dormitory housed an infirmary with a live-in nurse. Clara Mayo was interviewed for the Chapin Hall position by Sprague in his office in the administration building, which is now occupied by Nurse Mayo's son, Provost Richard Lynde.

"Despite the presence of a housemother and strict curfew, some students who stayed out late arranged with a friend to drop a string from a dorm window," said Lynde. "The latecomer could tug on the string upon arrival, alerting the friend to sneak down and open the door without the housemother's knowledge. Nurse Mayo didn't have the heart to turn in the miscreants."

In accordance with the times, African-American students were admitted to the college but not to the dormitories. Katherine Bell Banks '34, daughter of a prominent black physician, made history as she was admitted to Chapin Hall in her senior year. "I knew that I was Katherine Bell, a little bit different from the others in that I was of the Negro race. And after that was understood, taken as a fact, there was no other problem. I was just another American student along with them," said Bell. Nevertheless, she lived in a single room and did not attend the dances or date other Montclair students. "I had my social life outside the dorm. But other than that, I was very happy in Chapin Hall." It would be 13 years before the second black student lived on campus.

The Chapin Hall Living Room as it appeared in 1930.

In 1939 Chapin Hall experienced another first as it became co-ed. Audrey Vincentz Leef '43 remembers "a solid wall between the women and the men. And then there were little holes… that the men put in that wall!" The late Morris McGee '49 was one of the men who lived in Chapin Hall in the mid-1940s, by which time the division between the sexes in that building had been rearranged. "We were on the second floor. There were girls on the first, third, and fourth. Our virtue was protected by duct tape on one
set of doors. So we went down one set of stairs and they went down the other. What the management didn't know was that there was a dumbwaiter, which was just the right size for several cases of beer or one small girl!"

Leef recalled that male students attracted the women's attention by serenading under their windows with such ditties as "Pull Your Shades Down, Mary Ann." As more men entered the college, temporary housing was constructed for them--"in back, at the far end of the campus," said Chapin resident Juanita High '51. Chapin Hall then reverted to a women's dormitory.

In 1970 Chapin was a lively center of residential life. But whose way of life was threatened by the increasing enrollment, which necessitated additional classroom and office space as well as the construction of larger residence facilities. The 600-bed Bohn Hall opened in 1971, the Clove Road apartments were being designed, Russ Hall was converted to office and classroom use, and President Thomas Richardson planned to do the same with Chapin Hall. Residents waged a fierce campaign to rescue their home as they wore "Save Chapin Hall" shirts, built a Chapin float for the Homecoming parade, and voiced their protest through banners, buttons, fliers and the press.

Their efforts were successful for a couple years. Chapin was granted a new lease on residential life through the return of men in fall 1973 in a coed "experiment in community living" for which the students received three credits. The experiment continued in the 1974-75 academic year, despite the critical need for office space, due to the efforts of Student Government Association President Angelo Genova '75 and others. President David Dickson told the Montclarion in its Feb. 21, 1974 issue, "The faculty are deprived and I hope that the students appreciate the building." As an unhappy compromise, a classroom was created in Chapin Hall 313 in the midst of student rooms. It was an impossible situation. With the opening of the Clove Road apartments in 1976, Chapin Hall finally closed its doors to residents and became home to the School of Educational and Community Services, which had outgrown its space in the former College High School (now Morehead Hall).

Lillian Olesfskie, secretary to the late Anne Cole Castens '38, '48 M.A., chair of the Educational Leadership Department, recalled that her boss had lived in Chapin Hall as an undergraduate and never expected to set up office in her dormitory. Professor David Weischadle of the Counseling, Human Development and Educational Leadership Department had six different offices in Chapin. The first had been a hallway leading to the veranda, where he held meetings on sunny days.

The School of Educational and Com-munity Services later combined with the School of Professional Arts and Sciences to become the School of Professional Studies and later the College of Education and Human Services. President Irvin D. Reid returned Russ Hall to residential use in the mid-1990s and considered reconverting Chapin as well, but office space was still desperately needed. The College continued to feel the squeeze in Chapin Hall and has finally found breathing space this semester in the newly opened University Hall (click here for related story).

Chapin Hall's next inhabitants will not be moving into offices that resemble dorm rooms. The Hillier Architecture firm--which also designed the Alexander Kasser Theater--is planning a renovation that will respect the original Spanish mission style. A new 250-seat recital hall fully wrapped by a balcony will be added to the southwest side and feature a Spanish mission-style tower. New rehearsal and multipurpose rooms on the west side will be connected by an open arcade across from the veranda, forming a courtyard. Construction is expected to begin this year with occupancy slated for the 2007-08 academic year. School of the Arts Dean Geoffrey Newman pointed out that the quality of all music programs--performance, education and therapy--has far surpassed the capabilities of the current facilities in McEachern Hall. The renovated Chapin Hall will double the Music Department's space and, in the words of the architects, "reflect the metaphysics of music and the poetic quality of emotion."

Rendering of the renovation and addition to Chapin Hall, which is scheduled to open during the 2007-08 academic year. The renovated facility will house the Music Department and a 250-seat recital hall.

The legacy of Principal Chapin lives on. The Chapin Loan Fund continues to assist students in financial straits, and the building that bears his name has exemplified both the nonuniformity he valued and the crowding he predicted. His vision for Montclair State carries on through President Susan A. Cole, whose leadership has provided a state-of-the-art home in University Hall for the innovative teacher education program that was the institution's initial raison d'être. And in Chapin Hall, the music will resound once more.