Memorial Hall in perspective

Carol Hoffecker did what she does best at the rededication of Memorial Hall on May 16. The Richards Professor of History gave the guests a brief history lesson on the origins of Memorial Hall and the role it has played on this campus.

It was Delaware College President Samuel Chiles Mitchell who suggested the location of a library on the Mall midway between the all-male Delaware College (to the north) and the Women's College (to the south), she said.

In a letter to benefactor Rodney Sharp just 10 days after the armistice ending World War I, President Mitchell wrote of a building that would "dominate the whole development" of both campuses, shaping them into a single institution, Hoffecker said, adding that President Mitchell was the first to suggest that the building be dedicated to the 270 Delawareans who died in the Great War.

The actual building of Memorial Hall fell to Mitchell's successor, Walter Hullihen, who "took up the work enthusiastically because he recognized that the Memorial Library would become the cornerstone of his goal to create a comprehensive institution from the two single-sex colleges," she said.

"Indeed, historically, it is correct to say that Memorial Hall was the first building of the University of Delaware, for it was Hullihen who pushed through the renaming of the institution as the University of Delaware in 1921, and the library became the renamed institution's first building and its symbolic center," she said.

The Memorial Hall project was envisioned as "a gift of the people of Delaware," Hoffecker said, and the fund-raising drive in support of it was "the largest, best organized and broadest in the state's history.... Its themes, 'Delaware Does Not Forget' and 'He is not dead who giveth life to knowledge,' were carried into thousands of homes, factories and offices."

The campaign, which included, among other efforts, a parade of school children soliciting funds through the streets of Wilmington, exceeded its goal of $300,000.

"When one considers that nothing like this campaign had ever been tried in the First State, nor has anything quite like it ever happened since, this accomplishment is unique in Delaware's history, and Memorial Hall can truly be said to be the people's building," Hoffecker said.

"The cornerstone laying in June 1924 coincided with the two colleges' first joint Commencement exercises-or to put it another way-the first Commencement of the University of Delaware," Hoffecker said.

On the eve of World War II, Memorial Hall was expanded and archways were added linking it to its neighbors-Brown Laboratory and University Hall (now Hullihen Hall), she said.

In the post-World War II era, the University outgrew the library in Memorial Hall, she said. The Scrounge and the University Bookstore occupied the basement of Memorial Hall until 1958, when the Perkins Student Center opened, and in 1963, the books were moved into the new Hugh M. Morris Library. At that point, Memorial Hall was converted into a classroom and office building, she said.

"As the years went by, thousands of students and faculty trod Memorial's hallways and a veritable rabbit warren of offices were constructed within to accommodate new faculty and functions. Its only really dignified space, the memorial room at the building's center, seemed out of place, as well as out of mind, its purpose of remembrance of young lives sacrificed in a long-ago war all but forgotten," Hoffecker said.

"Recent renovations have transformed the building, restoring its inner dignity and its place of honor as the true center of the University of Delaware that is was designed to be. Delaware, indeed has not forgotten its pledge that 'He is not dead who giveth life to knowledge.'

"So, as we rededicate this historic building today, we do so in memory of the men, women and children whose vision, dollars and cents built this structure to honor those 270 young lives lost on a foreign field more than 80 years ago."

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