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*Meet at the north/right doors on the east/quad side
Dennis Craig, Campus Senior Planner and Associate Director for Contract Administration
The University of Illinois English Building since 1956 was previously known as the Woman’s Building and Bevier Hall. The original portion of the English Building was designed in the Georgian Revival style, a key part of the UI campus’ identity, by McKim, Mead, and White, and completed in 1905 and expanded in 1913 and 1924, with the distinctive columned front facing the Quad dating to the 1913 addition, designed by W.C. Zimmerman. As the Woman’s Building, it included classrooms and a chemical lab as well as a pool and a gymnasium, and as a ‘safe space’ for women at the University, men were initially not allowed inside. The Woman’s Building was renamed Bevier Hall in 1947 to honor Isabel Bevier, a longtime UI faculty member, and later that name was transferred to its current location on Goodwin, and the structure was given its current name of the English Building in 1956, with 2019 renovations by Bailey Edward earning a Preservation and Conservation Association of Champaign County (PACA) Award for its work on the project. According to campus legend, the English Building is haunted – join us to find out!
Dennis Craig, three-degree Illinois alumnus who is also a Bronze Tablet honoree, left the private sector as an architect to become the UI’s Campus Historic Preservation Officer. When he’s not managing projects to ensure the UI is compliant with the National Historic Preservation Act, he’s responding to inquiries like the one from a granddaughter of a contractor on the Mumford House or a woman whose great uncle carved one of the statues at Memorial Stadium. And of course, he’s the go-to person whenever a newly unearthed time capsule is discovered. (He thinks there are at least twenty or thirty still buried around campus.)
**NOTE: For logistical reasons, this SAS will be limited to the first 25 confirmed registrants.**
If this event is full when you try to register, please email chp@illinois.edu to be placed on a waitlist.