NU will build a new student commons to replace the horrid Norris building.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2016/07/university-commons.html
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2016/07/university-commons.html
OT: Norris Replacement
- Thread starter NJCat
- Start date
Very much agree. Crappy building. However, the newer buildings on the lakefill are a very weird collection of crowded.
New Commons looks like it will take advantage of the lake view...Unlike some of those boxes on south campus.
It will be a good recruiting tool. Every time you go to visit a prospective school, you go see the student union. It is short hand for lots of people about the perception of the campus.
NU did a survey of strenths and weaknesses a few years ago, and dorms and student union were two of the top priorities to address. They are really going after those weak spots.
It will be a good recruiting tool. Every time you go to visit a prospective school, you go see the student union. It is short hand for lots of people about the perception of the campus.
NU did a survey of strenths and weaknesses a few years ago, and dorms and student union were two of the top priorities to address. They are really going after those weak spots.
My son attended a residential soccer camp recently and slept in Bobb-McCullough. He described it as a dump. But he thought the new turf fields - Hutcheson and Martin - were pretty nice. He also played his best games on Long Field, my old stomping grounds of IM football and softball glory.
Surprised Bobb-McCullough has not been demolished by now, It was in terrible shape when I was there in '86. Perhaps it was renovated since then?
Heck, Bobb and McCullogh were dumps in the 70's when I was there. Used to go to Bobb for beer night on Wednesday or Thursday from the dump I lived in, Hinman House. Back in the day, kids didn't expect much from student housing.......
There have been major changes to them since the 70s. They filled in the ends and connected them. To those of us that lived there pre-connection, that is a sacrilege. I also noted that they have air conditioning now which would have been a big improvement over my time there. Pretty much anything would have been an Improvement as they were dumps.
I ran the game room at Norris as my student job so I spent a lot of time there and have fond memories of the place. So there is a bias. But the exterior architecture looks to be replacing a 1970's Mies van der Rohe box with an updated Mies van der Rohe box. I like the interior open space but wish it would look less like a shopping mall but that may be what they are going for.
Ha my son said the AC was a joke. Just a weak trickle of semi-cool air leaked out of the vents.
When my sn went to college, he got put in the worst dorm on campus. Complained bitterly and got very tired of me explaining how much better it was than Bobb.
A/C? There were dorms with A/C at NU? I lived in Willard during my first two years at NU during the mid nineties and all we had were open windows and electric fans.
Permit me to speak from the veritable stone age, but my first time away from home was as a summer Cherub at NU in 1957. We were housed in McCullough (sp?) and I thought it was idyllic. Was the place almost new then? All I know is that it felt like a privilege to be living in the big leagues, especially as that was when football's College All-Stars lived next door as they practiced to play the reigning NFL champs at Soldier Field in August. They took their meals, as did we high schoolers, at Sargent (I think it was) and it was customary to us to be standing in cafeteria lines with the likes of Jim Brown, Paul Hornung, Jim Parker et al. A guy named Otto Graham was head coach of the All-Stars that year.
All by way of saying that there was a perhaps more innocent time when life at McCullough (and then later in Bobb, my freshman year's domicile) seemed quite pleasing and almost heavenly. But that was then ... and my old quarters are now regarded as a dump.
All by way of saying that there was a perhaps more innocent time when life at McCullough (and then later in Bobb, my freshman year's domicile) seemed quite pleasing and almost heavenly. But that was then ... and my old quarters are now regarded as a dump.
Great experience for you sir. Those are legends and you were able to experience a slice of history. Time marches on, however, and sorry to report that Bobb-McCullough are no longer cutting edge college dorms.
I don't remember much of anything having a/c at Northwestern when I attended there in 1969-70. At my undergraduate campus my dorm, brand new and state of the art in 1965, has just been torn down. Of course, the housing and food are much nicer now, but it's not totally unrelated that the costs are much higher now. Rather than institutions of higher learning, more and more colleges seem to be straight-up businesses catering to clients.
I believe they're wall units, not central air, but they're new since I was at Bobb McCullough 20 years ago. Didn't really need a/c much, but then again we weren't there in July or August.
In 1978 in Bobb, heat and insulation would have been nice. I remember finding when the frost from the inside of the window melted during the day and then re-froze on the built-in Formica desktop the following night.
Not many of you will remember Latham House, where I was when Oklahoma came calling in about 1965-6, and got sickened after trying The Hut's quisine on Clark Street..NU stomped their weakened team. We had window AC if we wanted it--we could put our own in our windows. Many days of cold water baths and furnace dying in the night.
Although I've previously described being in Bobb and McCullough when they were relatively new and, to my then-standards, quite acceptable -- by 1960 I was in Latham House. Now that ... was a dump! I can't imagine it was any better five years later, Inova. But we had a household of eccentric types living there, and fond memories abound of some strange times.
My recall wasn't very accurate yesterday, it seems. I got to Latham House in Fall 1960. I left after being president and being nearly thrown out of my room by a sticky RA who couldn't see the joy in all the upper class mail boxes being stuffed with envelopes of dead fish from the lakefront. Ivan D had been there a year. Ann-Margret Olson was often an overnight housemate. Dan Kowal played Rachmaninoff concertos in the back room when he could get Tom Holden away from the keys, then Dan tried a match lighting trick and lost sight in one eye. I returned in 1966 as a non-student and lived in the basement until I was invited to leave. Being a returned soldier from Vietnam needing a couple of cheap night's lodging didn't mean anything to yet another rule-abiding RA.
Wonder who the lucky guy was whose frequent overnight housemate was Ann-Margret?!
Wow. You guys are opening the floodgates. So many stories I have to tell of my adventures in various dormitory facilities at NU.
But my favorite is not my own. My pledge brother George Milner owns the best tale from our freshman year when we were forced to do nefarious bidding for a Greek organization in order to curry favor and gain acceptance into their purported brotherhood.
We were tasked with procuring a sorority composite picture to use as ransom for some sort of social interchange.The target was Delta Gamma. George was our mole. Late at night, clothed in appropriate camouflage attire, we entered the quad and hoisted George through a window. He made it through and stepped onto the sleeping form --- of the 60 year old housemother!
Thankfully she was not packing. George was greeted with surprise, and eventually understanding. He was escorted out the front door unscathed.
But my favorite is not my own. My pledge brother George Milner owns the best tale from our freshman year when we were forced to do nefarious bidding for a Greek organization in order to curry favor and gain acceptance into their purported brotherhood.
We were tasked with procuring a sorority composite picture to use as ransom for some sort of social interchange.The target was Delta Gamma. George was our mole. Late at night, clothed in appropriate camouflage attire, we entered the quad and hoisted George through a window. He made it through and stepped onto the sleeping form --- of the 60 year old housemother!
Thankfully she was not packing. George was greeted with surprise, and eventually understanding. He was escorted out the front door unscathed.
There are stories from that era about her that are pure gossip but definitely would indicate multiple possibilities. Those stories were still floating around in 1978. Probably hugely out of proportion by that time.
She was(is) an amazingly attractive woman.
Thanks for the history. My time at McCulloch was a decade later, but it was still "new" to us, and yes I recall the Football Table over at Sargent as I showed up on campus several weeks before classes started. Seeing the piles of steaks I had to ask myself if this is what I had to look forward to for freshman cafeteria food once school started?
Rumor has it that is was a football guy. Saw a sign in a frat house stating, "Ann Margaret Slept Here".
Ann-Margret is 75 years old now. To feel like a "young" man, again, where are the stories about Cindy Crawford (50), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (55), or Jeri Ryan (48)? I'd even settle for Marg Helgenberger, who is 57. I mean, that's a spring chick.
Please, no Richard Kind love making stories, though. I have sat by him at football games and he's very nice and a big NU fan, but I'm just not attracted to him.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus was there when I was there. No stories or reputation that I recall. My uninformed guess is that she was pretty monogamous with Brad Hall. Since I was a Tech Ween, we obviously did not run in the same circles.
I knew Jeri at Northwestern. We were friendly but not really friends, we didn't hang out or anything, we just had a theater class together and shared some lunches at Norris (as a group, post-class). Just a nice and friendly all around Wildcat. No stories to tell, sorry!
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