| A New Life for Cardinal Hall |
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| And so it is with Catholic University’s Cardinal Hall, an imposing Collegiate Gothic structure on Michigan Avenue. Completed in 1914, it was christened Graduate Hall, enlarged twice (in 1959 and 1962), and served as a dining and residence hall and student gathering place for almost 90 years. When the Edward J. Pryzbyla University Center opened in 2003, Cardinal Hall (then known as University Center East and West) closed. Now it’s poised to become a state-of-the-art enrollment center and student business hub for the university. W. Michael Hendricks, vice president for enrollment management, says the building has the location, stature and history to dazzle prospective students, and the space (more than 69,000 square feet) to house many offices under one roof. “Cardinal Hall is an incredible asset to our university. It represents not only our history, but with its proposed renovations, also our future,” Hendricks says. It will be a place where prospective students and families can get a feel for what CUA is all about. “With the basilica to one side and the whole university laid out in front of them, they will see in Cardinal Hall a representation of what CUA is — a superior education in an atmosphere of Catholic faith.” “Cardinal Hall is a beautiful building. It’s exactly the kind of building that students think of when they think of going to college, and it’s at the front door of our university,” says Julie Englund, university treasurer and vice president of administration and finance, who’s helping plan Cardinal Hall’s renovation. “I think the building has tremendous potential because it represents tradition, stability and history.” The history and tradition are on the minds of those helping to plan the building’s future. One such person is Carl Petchik, B.Arch. 1966, executive director of CUA’s facilities operations, who remembers when graduate students used to sit in the building’s now-shuttered balcony overlooking the two-story dining hall. Although the balcony has been closed for decades, it would have given a bird’s-eye view of the room’s Gothic tracery windows and ornate paneled ceiling. Richard Weil, B.Arch. 1975, CUA facilities manager and also a member of the renovation project team, remembers another well-loved part of Cardinal Hall: the student bar and hangout called the Rathskellar, which was located on the lower level of the 1959 addition. “It was a very welcoming place — like ‘Cheers’ before there was ‘Cheers,’ ” says Weil, who met his wife, Sherri Lang, B.A. 1976, outside “the Ratt,” as it was affectionately known by generations of students. Weil also remembers eating meals in the large dining hall. It was occasionally a rowdy place late in the day, he says, when pats of butter were sometimes launched ceiling-ward from leveraged table knives. Casimir “Sneeze” Ksycewski, B.A.E. 1942, doesn’t remember chucking pats of butter when he waited tables at Graduate Hall in the late 1930s and early 1940s as part of his football scholarship. “Most of the guys on the football team came from low- and middle-income families like I did and we didn’t throw food around lightly,” says Ksycewski, who now lives in Carlsbad, Calif. But he does remember trying to pilfer an extra piece of cake if there was any left over. “That went with the privilege of being a waiter,” he says. Cardinal Hall was known for more than just “fine dining.” It housed male graduate students for its first few decades and female undergrads in later years. Sherry Dana, B.A. 1975, of Springfield, Va., lived in Cardinal Hall her last two years on campus. “We had to camp out to get our room, that’s how much of a privilege it was to live there,” she remembers. “Cardinal Hall had character even then.” Some of Graduate Hall’s earliest residents were Knights of Columbus fellows, male graduate students attending CUA on scholarships from that organization. They appear to have been a colorful group. “ ’Tis said that next to travel, daily contact with persons from many localities has the most broadening influence on the mind. If this be true… the residents of Graduate Hall can never be accused of narrow-mindedness,” boasts the 1916 Cardinal yearbook, describing the geographic diversity of that year’s 35 fellows, hailing from Maine, Florida and Colorado as well as Canada and Latin America. “With such an international body of men it may, indeed, be said that to live a year in Graduate Hall is in itself an education.” Cardinal Hall, then, has long been a gateway to and from the outside world — and now promises to be even more so. Once transformed, it will be the university’s ambassador in stone and mortar, a business center and recruitment office in one. Admissions, enrollment management, graduate enrollment, student accounts and financial aid are among the building’s probable new tenants. “Cardinal Hall will become a portal into the life of the university. We want to make students’ entrance here as easy, efficient and exciting as it can be,” says Robert Sullivan, vice president for university development. “We want to show students that our facilities are as vibrant as our academic program.” Although plans for the redesign are preliminary, the new Cardinal Hall will retain the best of the old — the dark wood paneled walls, Art Deco lighting fixtures and mullioned windows of its old self — while losing the pizza oven and steam tables of its more recent, University Center West food court days. Much of the space, including the upstairs warren of former residences that recently served as student activities offices, will be reconfigured as university offices serving the building’s new functions. A project of this size and scope — the complete restoration of Cardinal Hall’s nearly 70,000 square feet of space — will require, of course, a significant capital expenditure. This presents an interesting, even compelling, opportunity to invite benefactors to help the university raise the funds needed to restore the building. “Conversations are now under way with a select group of prospective benefactors about this opportunity,” Sullivan says. “When the results of these conversations are known, the university will determine the next steps needed to reach out to others — including and especially alumni — for their assistance with this exciting project.” Once completed (at least two years from now) the new Cardinal Hall will provide the university a much needed one-stop shop for enrollment and student business, a building that attracts and retains students — and that leaves them with fond memories of CUA long after they depart. “Cardinal Hall has had many lives,” Sullivan says. The newest one may prove the most enduring of all. |
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A university is known not only by its professors and students, but also by its buildings. They are institutional priorities made tangible, dreams made whole. The best campus buildings lead many lives, reflecting, as they age, the changing needs and values of the school that gives them life. 