Teaching Thursday: Columbia Hall

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking with some colleagues about documenting Columbia Hall on the University of North Dakota’s campus. Built in 1952 as St. Michael’s hospital, it is a nice example of Institutional Moderne architecture. In 1981, I believe, it was leased by UND as the home for its medical school after St. Michael’s merged with Deaconess Hospital to form United Hospital and moved to a new site. In 2017, with the opening of the new Med School, the building took on a hodgepodge of other functions including the honors program, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Communications and Psychology departments, some IT support, and various other campus functions across 280,000 square feet. With the building schedule for demolition, I visited it with a team from facilities and my wife, who is the historic preservation coordinator for the city of Grand Forks. We toured it and talked about how to document this massive building and its many phases and interventions. We decided…