Bulldoze Van Hise!
I heard the other day that the grand new architectural plan for the UW campus may involve demolition of Van Hise Hall.
I’d pay good money to swing the first wrecking ball.
Which isn’t fair, of course. It’s not the building’s fault that there are (or were) some people on its tenth and eleventh floors who need to be dropped off the roof (repeatedly, if necessary). Even so. I spent many, many unhappy hours in that place. I’ll cheer on the wreckers with a light heart.
It’s a butt-ugly building, too, which is why it’s on the list. (I hope they trash its fraternal twin Van Vleck too, for the same reason.) People in high places finally seem to have realized that the UW campus is horribly, unnecessarily ugly owing to Iron-Curtain slum-style architecture. Nobody’s talking about laying a finger on the Red Gym or Music Hall; it’s the ugly stuff that’s going. All to the good, that.
I just can’t help thinking that eliminating some of those buildings will greatly lighten the campus’s psychic load, too.