The Council of Independent Colleges: Historic Campus Architecture Project

LaDue Auditorium

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LaDue Auditorium (view from the west), Greenville College

Institution Name: Greenville College
Original/Historic Place Name: LaDue Music Hall
Location on Campus: College Ave. at Elm St.
Date(s) of Construction:

1905	original construction

Designer: unknown
Type of Place: Individual building
Style: Federal, Regionalist/Vernacular (Glossary)
Significance: architecture, culture, education, history, religion
Narrative: see below
References: see below

Materials:

Foundation: brick

Walls: brick

Roof: Duralast

Function:

1905	classrooms
ca. 1905	chapel
ca. 1905-present (2006)	auditorium
ca. 2004-present (2006)	academic department building (music)

Narrative:
After the resignation of the first president (President Wilson T. Hogue) of Greenville College, Augustin Lucien Whitcomb was called upon to fill the position. One of his first orders of business was to raise funds to build the new Assembly Hall Building. According to a description in a 1907 Vista (college yearbook), "The building will be four stories high. The dimensions are 48 x 80…The assembly hall has a seating capacity of 800. There is a large gallery to the main hall, 14 feet wide on three sides. The rest of the building will be devoted to recitation rooms laboratories and a gymnasium." A new enterprise was afoot on the grounds east of Old Main, where games had been played after the south campus was sold: a commodious building, which would provide class rooms and a chapel, was to be reared. By June 1906 the new chapel was ready for Commencement Exercises.

It was written at the time, "There were some who mourned the passing of the old chapel, with its memories of Mrs. Hogue at the organ Sunday afternoons and President Hogue pointing the way to higher spiritual and intellectual attainments. But in the new auditorium Professor LaDue, now chaplain, accomplished in his own unique way the same mission, and hundreds of alumni look back upon those vesper services with a feeling of inexpressible gratitude for hours of deepened spiritual insight."

References:

Tenney, Mae A. Still Abides the Memory. Greenville, IL: Tower Press, 1942.