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A BJA Facet
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The Quadrangle - Part I
Original Buildings - 1947-57
Early Quadrangle Buildings / Academy Hall
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The quadrangle is a time-honored design for academic buildings. Medieval parts of Oxford and Cambridge are open-air quadrangles. Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia’s quadrangle. Jones, Jr. designed two quadrangles for BJU’s Greenville campus. Faculty Court, located on Pleasantburg Drive near Grace Haight Dormitory, was part of the original campus construction and housed faculty and staff. The Jones, Jr. family originally lived in a Faculty Court apartment. With poured concrete floors, cinder block walls, and a brick exterior, it was built to last. It was demolished in the 1990s. Today that campus real estate is a parking lot.
While it was intended to be the Greenville location of BJA, the Academy Quadrangle did not originally serve the Academy. In fact, for its first few years, it was not really a quadrangle--nor was its original construction built to last. But with much repurposing and many renovations, the Academy Quadrangle is still in use. Early Quadrangle Buildings
Aerial photographs of the early campus show buildings on three sides of what would become the Academy Quadrangle. Academy Hall (today’s Academy Main) is missing. Close examination reveals that each of the three sides is two buildings. They were wooden barracks, moved from a temporary World War II army camp in Spartanburg and set on concrete blocks.
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A 1947 aerial photograph of the Quadrangle area - Several army barracks are in place. A portion of the practice studios can be seen on the left. The men's dormitories and the library are visible. In the foreground is the lone, mature, front-campus tree.
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Laboratory sciences and some home economics courses were not offered the first semester that the school was in Greenville. The Alumni building had no such facilities. By the second semester, Quadrangle buildings remedied that situation.
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A photograph of the early campus taken from the library roof. In the Quadrangle area are army barracks serving as science labs and a small, temporary construction building where Academy Main would be built. The practice studios (left) and the end of a men’s dormitory (foreground) are visible.
The barracks located on today’s Collins Building site were fitted with science equipment and served as University and Academy science labs. Each building housed two classrooms, offices and storage rooms. Within two years, the buildings were joined by a large, tiered Science Lecture Room, and a window-enclosed Science Porch. Dark green shingles, and a veneer of cream-colored brick gave the army’s temporary buildings a permanent look.
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A Quadrangle science lab. Much of the lab equipment was brought from Cleveland, but some of the furniture was originally used in Florida.
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The two barracks of the Science Building were eventually connected by the Science Porch and the large, tiered, Science Lecture Room room. Above the central doors is "Science."
Rear of the Science Building
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Co-ed outside Science Porch
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Science Porch entrance.
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One of the barracks near the top of today’s amphitheater was fitted for biological science labs. The other contained the kitchen and sewing labs for the home economics department. When the middle section was added, it served as the home economics residence house. Teams of University home economics majors lived there for several weeks, demonstrating their ability to manage a home.
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1947 photograph of barracks on cinderblock foundations - The building to the right became biological science labs. It is in the original location of the Hutto Building, which today would be the top of the amphitheater.
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The barracks in today’s Brown Building location was the University Hospital. The southern one housed a barracks-style infirmary for young ladies; the northern building was for young men. The middle section included a doctor’s office, examination rooms, nurses’ station, and pharmacy. The mid-section of the hospital had a rear extension that included an operating room (which became the Academy’s Audio-Visual Room, and currently is the Faculty Lounge) and a faculty wing (today’s B 108) that had individual rooms.
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University Hospital viewed from the Science Porch.
The operating room in the campus hospital saw many birthings, including many future BJA students and faculty members.
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The barracks-style hospital accommodations were used for students until 1969.
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The University ambulance parked behind the hospital c. 1953 - The ramp into the Brown Building’s hallway permitted ambulance access.
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A Seventh World War II Barrack
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A seventh army barrack came from Spartanburg and was placed near the Quadrangle. (If there had been an eighth, Academy Main may have been part of the original Quadrangle construction.) The only barrack still in use on the campus is the often overlooked building between Academy Main and the Academy Gym. Its history includes being used as offices for the maintenance department, a storage space, the original BJU Press production facility, producing the Faith for the Family magazine and early BJUP textbooks. It became production headquarters for the BJU television program Show My People (1976-86) and then served as Television Ministries and is currently designated Marketing Video.
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Academy Hall
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The Quadrangle’s fourth building was added in 1951. Academy Hall (today’s Academy Main) was constructed with a cement floor, cinderblock walls, and a cream-colored brick veneer. The original design had center doors which opened to the front and rear of the building. These central doors led to classrooms, school and faculty offices, and restrooms. The plan also included doors located partway down each wing, opening only on the Quadrangle side. They would lead to additional classrooms and offices. The eight Academy Hall classrooms were to be large.
During the summer of Academy Hall’s construction, Gene Fisher (future BJA teacher and principal) was a University student working construction on the campus. He recalls that Academy Hall’s foundation had already been poured when Mrs. Jones, Jr. saw what was planned and objected. School buildings should have a protected central hallway away from windows where students could go and cover their heads with textbooks during storms or air raids. At that time virtually all school buildings were built with this safety feature. Plans with a central hallway that would fit on the foundation were hastily drawn. The central hall took space from the proposed classrooms. The narrow hall and the long, thin classrooms were the result. Until the 1990s, the front and back lobby doors were the building’s only entrances. That the building was a single story, of cinder block construction, and had an abundance of large windows permitted it to pass fire codes despite the lack of exits. |
Construction of Academy Hall.
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The Road Moved – Originally South Drive was closer to and above the foundation of Academy Hall as seen by the stance of the student in the 1953Vintage photo (left), and the photos (right-1955, bottom-1953). By 1956 South Drive was moved. The dirt helped flatten the athletic fields.
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Most classrooms in Academy Hall were 15 ft wide and between 27 and 33 ft in length. Ceilings were 12 ft high, and originally had large, bare bulbs for illumination. Most classrooms had at least 3 large windows. Originally unpainted, walls were eventually painted the same yellow as the hallway. Desks were generally repositioned as students entered or left the classroom. Chair rails were installed to protect the walls from the constantly moved furniture. Walls were covered with chalkboards and bulletin boards.
Back of Academy Hall, 1952. Note the lack of sidewalks.
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Academy Hall's Hallway
.The cinderblock interior of Academy Hall's hall was originally unpainted. The door frames were green, and the doors were white. By 1957, the walls of the hall were painted what one teacher described as “dusty yellow." Hallway illumination was a single bare bulb in the 12 ft high ceiling halfway down each length of the hall with a third bulb in the lobby. The floors were bare concrete.
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Some of the BJA "personalities" photos for the 1953 Vintage were taken in the Academy Hall's hallway.
There were no lockers, but hooks on a rail in the hall held coats during classes. An area of doorless “cubbies” stored books and items students did not want to take to class. These were predominantly to serve town students. With 10 minutes between classes, many dorm students made the trip back to their room to deposit and retrieve books during the day. At the time, state regulations required a phone available for student use in schools. Academy Hall had a rarely used payphone booth in the lobby. Two drinking fountains were available in the same location where they can be found today. Lobby bulletin boards held announcements, the Discipline Committee list, and lists of students with A and B averages. Students were to check the main bulletin board daily. The lighted bulletin board outside the Academy Office was the 1951 class gift. |
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The 11 classrooms in Academy Hall were lettered counterclockwise, starting on the far left of the building. The three, shared faculty offices were numbered, starting from the right end of the building. New comers often found the arrangement confusing and there was no signage to help. The Triangle Office was in the rear of classroom J, where Edith Markham taught English, and directly across from the Principals Office (Pr.).
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From 1953-60 most BJA classes were held in Academy Main. Science labs, typing, physical education classes, fine arts classes and lessons, and (because of their size) Bible classes were held in various University buildings. The average class size was 20 students, but some classes reached 35–40 students. Lilian Brown, the Academy principal, reported that in such classrooms “there is no room for an aisle, it is difficult for a teacher to get to a student in order to give him individual help, . . . (and it is) also difficult for a student to get to the board.”
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Unpainted cinderblock walls and large bare light bulbs are visible in this Academy Hall classroom. Five rows of student desks leave room for a very narrow aisle. The teacher is using the latest educational technology, borrowed from the University.
In a review of the Academy’s facilities, Brown lamented that there were no exterior doors at the end of Academy Hall which would relieve the extreme hallway congestion between classes. She proposed that a “wide hallway with many windows on the outside could be built on the Academy building toward the home economics (Hutto) building. Four hundred lockers could be placed in it. . .” She also proposed a “ladies lounge and restroom” on one end of this new hall and adds, “It would be very convenient if hot water were available in the Academy Building.” Except for the adding of hot water to existing bathrooms, none of her recommendations were realized.
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Students posed by rear doors of Academy Hall. 1952
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Eventually the bare light bulbs were replaced with modern fixtures, and the walls were painted. The rooms, however, were packed with more desks and students.
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