Students and President Doggett at the Building Site of Weiser Hall at Springfield College, 1921
Description:
The photograph is taken at the building site of Weiser Hall at Springfield College, summer 1921. The students are from the summer school and they helped to clean the site. In the photograph a few students are trying to remove a tree root from the building site and load it in the wagon while others are watching. The President of the College, Laurence Locke Doggett, is standing in the photograph second to the right, looking at the camera. In the far back, is the grandstand of Pratt Field. In 1920, Clifton A. Crocker, a member of the Executive Board of both Springfield College and Hampden Hospital, presented the need for an infirmary at Springfield College. Meanwhile, the Hampden Hospital was closed, Crocker together with the hospital administrator Walter R. Weiser turned over the hospital’s financial assets, $40,000, to the College for the purpose of constructing the infirmary. The estimated cost of the building was $180,000 with funding coming from the Springfield and college communities. In the summer of 1921, summer school students worked to clear the building site and to raise money for furnishings. The corner stone was laid on September 27, 1922, and the building was opened in January, 1923. The building is brick with granite trimmings and 3-stories high, with the ground floor 3 feet below ground level. It is 93 feet long and 44 feet wide. The building originally extended the height of the lower two floors in the rear of the building to be a large gymnasium for medical gymnastics. Medical gymnastics is the forerunner of the athletic training program at Springfield College. The building also included hydro-therapy facilities, 4 operating rooms, and the entire third floor served as the college infirmary. In 1938, the basement housed the labs and classrooms of Dr. Peter Karpovich, the premier exercise physiologist in the U.S. at the time. In 1971, the student infirmary relocated to the Towne Student Health Center. After 1971, Weiser was refurbished and has been used as home to the Humanities Department, housing offices, classrooms, a TV studio, and the journalism department. For more information on L.L. Doggett, see https://springfield.as.atlas-sys.com/agents/people/589.
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