Wesley College Wednesday

We are on the clock in the Wesley College Documentation Project with asbestos mitigation looming next week for Robertson/Sayre Hall and simply not enough time or person-power to document everything that we want to document as carefully as we’d like.

That being said, we do continue to make progress. While Corwin/Larimore undergoes asbestos mitigation, we’ve had three good days of documenting in Sayre Hall and will return today for another few hours. Roberston/Sayre Hall(s) were built in 1930 and 1908 respectively with Sayre serving as a men’s dormitory for until the 1970s when it was acquired by the University of North Dakota. Robertson Hall was Wesley College administration and once it became part of UND, the building served as home to the TV studio, some administrative offices for UND, the learning technology division (under various names), and, of interest to our students, the honors program. The students in the one-credit honors class have worked to document the ground floor of Roberston/Sayre which housed honors until last year.

Another group of us have worked to capture video and still photos of the upper three floors of Sayre Hall – in particular – which featured several well-preserved dormitory rooms. The accommodations consisted of double rooms with a sitting room and a sleeping room. The latter had a shaving sink and a built in wardrobe as well as a small window to the hallway that allowed for cross ventilation in the warmer months.

The latter had a picture rail that ran around the entire room at about 7 ft. The large windows in both rooms allowed in plenty of light. 

In one room the window glass preserved the etched names of four previous residents.

Archie Whipple, class of 1910, went on to be head of grounds for UND and then University of Kentucky, follow UND’s President McVey to his new post in Lexington. Ben Russell (’11) became an executive at Idaho Power Co. Edgar Fisher (’13) died in France in World War I, and Ludvig Vobayda (’14?) became a lawyer in Minneapolis. 

The original staircase into Sayre remained in use throughout its history making it easier to envision the organization fo the space. It would appear that Sayre hall was a bit nicer than its twin Larimore Hall across the quad. Sayre featured terrazzo floors even on the ground floor and a common room there, with a fireplace and according to accounts, a piano. It is easy to imagine the clomping of hard soles on the terrazzo floors would be, as one account put it, “like approaching horses on cement.”

Roberston Hall likewise seems more ornate than Corwin with more wood fittings that were more carefully preserved. While Wesley College was never a tremendously prosperous institution, Robertson himself was a tireless fundraiser who courted some particularly wealthy and generous patrons. The well-appointed space of Robertson Hall likely suited John Milton Hancock, the New York investor and donor who made that building, and the completion of the Wesley College plan possible.