Harrelson Hall and its Ultimate Demise
By a somewhat coincidence, the topic of Harrelson Hall came up at work shortly before I had planned to write about it. Considering the location (brickyard) and that it houses math and foreign language classes, everyone that went to NCSU is familiar with it and has some sort of opinion on it–usually negative. The folks I work with were no exception.
It seems as though the the talk of its destruction has been going on for at least a few years now. Wikipedia says that
Future plans call for the demolition and reconstruction of Harrelson Hall after a temporary hall has been constructed. A rebuilding plan was chosen after the estimated expenses for remodeling were compiled and deemed too costly.
Jason, a friend from work, said during the discussion that Harrelson Hall was often the base for some recurring dreams he’s had. I don’t find it that surprising. There are somewhat unreal elements to it. Getting to where you need to go is often a pain.
No one I know seems terribly sad that it is going to be torn down, myself included. Occasionally, function and practicality are more important than historical significance (first cylindrical building on a college campus).
- What are your experiences in this building?
- Any quirks you remember when having classes here?
- What are your thoughts on its inevitable demise?
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12/13/2007
This building sucks.
12/13/2007
I went to State and had all my many math classes and a few others in Harrelson. I have fond memories of the classes I took there. Being in the lecture halls was fine as long as you had at least one seat on either side of you. The smaller rooms made classes seem more intimate, which was good for some of them. The rest of the building, though, was a real pain to deal with. Even though it is a simple circle, it felt like a maze when you had to find a specific room, or even the bathroom. The helix center ramp felt endless and the stairs on the outer rim were brutal. Somehow they had the worst rise/run ratio, and it always tired you out.
I’m not at all sad that they’re tearing it down. It seems like one of those ideas that was great on paper, but just ridiculous when it came to fruition. I liked hanging out in the open space underneath it; I hated looking down on it from the bookstacks and thinking a spaceship had landed in the brickyard.
12/14/2007
From what I understand about the demise:
It’s part and parcel of the greater NCSU master plan.
Most of the engineering and laboratory classes are being (appropriately) moved to Centennial campus.
So, several of the “engineering row” buildings, especially those that were primarily laboratory buildings (Withers and Daniels, I’ve heard) have been gutted and remade into nice, modern classroom and office buildings. The Foreign languages department and the Sociology department (which houses Sociology, Anthropology, and the BA and Master’s programs in Social Work) are moving into those buildings. The 1911 building, which formerly housed the administrative and faculty offices for those two departments, is now being gutted and turned into a classroom and office building for the History Department.
Thus, all that would be left from Harrelson would be the Math and Statistics departments. Anyone that has been to NCSU in the past several decades knows the Riddick Parking lot, which was on top of what was the original football stadium in the 1st half of the 20th century. The last part of the stadium seats–they had been some sort of maintenance offices for about 50 years–were torn down about a year ago, and a new building to house the Math and Statistics department is going on that location; they’re going to tear up the asphalt and put down some more grass and trees.
So, what for Harrelson? It’s going to be leveled, and turned into a grassy area like the other two grassy areas that are a part of the brickyard.
I honestly hope that the University makes it some sort of fundraiser and sells tickets to alumni. I’d love to see it demolished. In my opinion, the worst thing about Harrelson–in the summer, you had to bring a jacket because it would be so damn cold. In the winter, you had to have a tshirt on underneath your sweater, because it’d be so damn hot inside the building.
(I don’t really have an inside-NCSU source for this info. I live in West Raleigh, drink beer and coffee with a lot of NCSU employees, walk around the campus a lot, catch news tidbits here and there. In other words, don’t take this as gospel; I’ve just taken about 50 different rumors and weighed them against each other and the evidence you see walking around campus to come up with what seems to be a logical explanation.)
12/14/2007
So a little history on the building; aside from the fact (thats right, fact) that it sucks.
Once upon a time (thats the way all good history stories should start) there was an architecture design student who presented the Harrelson hall design as his senior design project. The student failed this particular design on the premise that the building would not hold ground and would be unstable. After eventually graduating, said student went on to be a successful architect (probably in part to the strenuous training from doing two different senior design projects). As this successful architect got older he wanted to give back to his school and donated some ridiculous amount of money under the condition that they had to build his building. 15 years later, we have Harrelson hall and it is sinking. Thus the plan to demolish. In the end, we are all losers.
07/02/2008
Matt s is mostly correct, except for the part about future plans for this space. The University Architect says that there are currently no concrete plans for this space, but as we move closer to the time of demoltion the campus community will be asked to weigh in on that decision. It is possible that another building may be erected in this location, but more like that brick or green space will be added. You have to keep in mind that there is a huge hole under Harrelson that facilities uses. If you want to get a good picture of this, you should go to Harrelson at night, walk toward the trees with the benches (toward the north west of Harrelson) and find one of the man holes. They all have a 2 inch hole in the top fo the cover, which you can look through to see the massive space underneath. This would generally prevent them from building too much on top of this space after they demolish Harrelson.
02/23/2009
nooooo! I think it is too interesting a building to demolish. But then I went to UNCG and didn’t have to deal with attending classes in Harrelson ;-)
02/24/2009
I must be among the few people who like Harrelson. I was a math major and took a bunch of classes there obviously. I always really liked it. I didn’t find it confusing to navigate (okay, maybe the first few times I had to find stuff, but that was true of most of the buildings) and I enjoyed the circular ramp down the enter.
02/26/2009
kate – for what it’s worth (and somewhat contradictory to what I originally wrote) I, too think it is too interesting to tear down. but, mostly as an admirer from the outside.
and jeff – I like Harrelson too, to some extent. It is unique, but at the same time I understand the grievances leveled against it.
04/03/2009
I suffered through many classes in Harrelson. The place was awful. The HVAC (climate control) was either freeze or fry. The blackboards were curved…if sitting down front on one side of one of the small rooms, the other end of the blackboard was not visible. If sitting in the back of one of the large rooms (eg, 107, 207 etc) and the HVAC came on, the teacher could not be heard over the roar of the ductwork. Fun to look at? Yes. Useful as a classroom building? Heck no. Use it for something but get classes out of it…
09/02/2009
In my years on campus, I had many classes in Harrelson Hall and was never fond of it. The idea of wedge-shaped lecture halls on this inside sounds goog on paper, but in execution, it wasn’t as successful.
But I will say that there was nothing more fun that roller-blading down the spiral ramp in the middle of the building.
12/01/2009
[…] i have heard… that if you go outside of harrelson at night… and look down in the manhole covers.. you can see the lights that light the tunnels up… Harrelson Hall and its Ultimate Demise | Goodnight, Raleigh! […]
09/23/2010
Two years after your original posting, not much has changed: Harrelson is still god-awful, and it lives.
When I took my job in the History Department in 2004, I was immediately doubled up with another young assistant prof in Harrelson Hall. A giant hole in one corner seemed to serve no function, but it let in clanking sounds and occasional moaning. We joked nervously that maybe a freshman had fallen in and gotten stuck. Though History has moved over to a castoff engineering building (lovely Withers Hall, thank you JESUS!) we continue to teach classes in Harrelson. I often feel physically ill after teaching in Harrelson; I have actually vomited after a class. I think it may be the flickering flourescent lights and lack of ventilation, plus the lack of windows (any windows!) in the classrooms.
My favorite Harrelson story: Long time History department member Joe Hobbs has for decades told his students to “take a brick with them” as they leave his classes. He hoped to slowly demolish Harrelson, brick by brick. Here is hoping it is gone before he is.
01/11/2011
Come to think of it, I probably had more classes in Harrelson than any other building, save Nelson. This truly is a terrible building, but as with many memories, I now have a somewhat fond feeling towards it. The only good thing about Harrelson was its convenient location.
01/21/2011
Yes, this was an ugly, depressing, hard to manuever building…but I have so many memories in this building!!! This is where I met my “first love” while taking an impossibly hard statistics class. The teaching assistant was so stupid that I got away with cheating through this class the entire semester!! He would sit in front of the class and read the newspaper while we took our tests. I remember trading final exams with the aforementioned “first love” so he could complete the test for me…I did indeed pass the course. It would be a shame if they tore this monstrosity down. In a weird way it does add some character to the old brickyard.
03/30/2011
I honestly do not believe that they have actual concrete plans to destroy this building… It will never happen
06/28/2011
[…] its days are also numbered, it seems unfair for Harrelson Hall to outlive the […]
06/29/2011
My strongest memory of Harrelson was the power going out during a final exam. The only place that remained lit was the circular hall, so all the students were brought into the hall and told to finish the exam on the floor.
Apparently a squirrel had jumped into a power transformer. This was some point between 1992 and 1995.
I won’t miss Harrelson.
08/17/2011
Just went over to Harrelson to pick up my books and thought it was the most ridiculously designed building I had ever been in. I just don’t understand how I can walk in circles for five minutes just to get to the second floor; give me some regular stairs!!! But oh, the stairs. When I left the building, absolutely refusing to go back down the dizzying spiral, I found the most oddly constructed pair of up/down sets of stairs. The architect was on something when he came up with that one! In fact, I felt like I was on a bad trip from ever having entered that building.
08/17/2011
But the construction photos from the NCSU archives are kinda cool:
http://images.lib.ncsu.edu/luna/servlet/view/all/what/Harrelson+Hall
09/27/2011
[…] case you’re wondering, Harrelson Hall on the NC State campus was Raleigh’s first ’round […]
10/28/2011
Was in Harrelson today, walking the campus with two other alumni. We went into Harrelson and noticed several changes, including the fresh painting of rooms in a building that is scheduled to be demolished. The building itself was almost empty, devoid of occupants in the round outer ring of offices. The inner circle on the second floor is now partially closed off as it appears that some of those famous intimately small classrooms have been enlarged to somewhat medium size lecture rooms.
Hated those steep steps going up, hated the round spiral in the middle even more. Cold classrooms first thing in the morning during winter’s cold but heated up as the day went on.
Harrelson was supposed to have been 6 or more stories high when originally conceived but I’ve always heard that they stopped at 3 stories after the foundation supposedly was found to be unable to safely support more than 3 stories.
Neat but ugly building, always loved the space underneath when it was raining, dash from there to the tunnel to Turlington or the SSS, was able to stay somewhat dry.
10/28/2011
hmmm…my first experience in Harrelson Hall goes back to when I was a junior in high school: early one bright Saturday morning a bunch of us in 3rd year German at Broughton took a national standardized German test in HH. Have no idea why that was the designated location. Went to State for my junior & senior years, 1970-72, recall having philosophy (hated that course/instructor but had interesting classmates)and British history in small classrooms in HH and sociology courses in larger rooms. Smaller classrooms with no windows inspired feelings of claustrophobia. A memorable occasion was the day when there was some kind of plumbing problem…altho signs were on RR doors warning people not to flush, some did anyway which resulted in some nasty stuff running down those ramps. Speaking of RRs, I honestly don’t recall seeing any womens’ RRs in that building (surely there must have been some kind of facilities since some female faculty had offices there). In the early ’70’s when female students were very much a minority group at State, RRs for women were few and far between—a reality which had to be considered when planning one’s class schedule. But getting back to Harrelson…it’s a well-known landmark and I sort of hate to see it go. Too bad it can’t be used for something besides classrooms.
04/11/2012
I remember sitting to one side in Calc class and you couldn’t see the professor writing on the far side of the chalk board cause it wrapped around – ugh. Also remember folks skateboarding down the ramps – and oh yeah, the men’s bathrooms could get scary ‘frisky’ sometimes..
12/02/2012
Am I the only person sad about Harrelson.
I’ve loved the building from day one.
My first class was here, and I found it quirky, old, and 60s, which I love.
Everything about it gives me an ‘architecture buzz’, if you will.
I love the study room at the top.
Everything.
Gosh, this makes me sad.
12/02/2012
It’s not that I’d miss the actual building so much, but I had some good classes/made some good friends during the time I spent in Harrelson so to see it demolished is like seeing a positive part of my past/my youth destroyed…as former Hugh Morson students feel about the destruction of their school building. I’m guessing the Morson students felt more of an attachment to their building than I do to Harrelson, however. Yes, I admit to being a sentimental sap.
02/25/2016
I’ve never had a class in Harrelson, but I’ve always liked it for how weird it is. The bathrooms on the inner ring look like something out of Harry Potter and the Chamer of Secrets, the crisscrossing stairs on the outside remind me of MC Escher, the lounger at the top of the building was usually empty and a pretty good place to go if you needed quiet. The spiral ramp that went the entire length of the buildings core is just memorably weird. All around, it’s a totally weird and wacky building, I’m not sure how it ever got built, but to me that’s what was great about it.
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