Background. The Stetson Renovation committee met between February and May 1998. It began by considering a range of renovation options, from the most modest ("paint and paper" in the parlance of B&G) to complete demolition. We also gave considerable thought to the incorporation of the Economics Department (approximately 26 additional offices) and the faculty and staff of Weston Hall (approximately 15 additional offices plus associated classrooms and the language laboratory) into the renovation. Our architectural consultants, from CBT Architects, Boston, proved deft at helping us work through these complex issues.

As explained below, the scale of a Stetson/Economics/European Languages complex, plus the resistance of the Weston staff to the concept of moving to this side of Rt. 2, convinced us to that a unified faculty complex that big would be inappropriate for this corner of the campus. The problems we foresaw would, of course, become exacerbated if we increased the number of offices by ten to fifteen percent in anticipation of signficant growth in the size of the faculty.

The following may help to give you a sense of the scale of buildings we considered. We looked at several other options not included here. Please keep in mind that the plans and building elevations were intended to help us see the implications of the building program. Our deliberations were suspended long before this project reached the design stage.

Michael Brown
The design to the right provides a sense of building scale if a Stetson renovation were to include 150 faculty offices and associated work/teaching spaces--which is to say, the present 94 offices plus 26 for Economics, ten emeritus offices, and room for modest faculty expansion. This program calls for the demolition of the entire 1956 addition (the stacks area currently housing faculty offices) and the Roper addition and their replacement by two parallel wings build to contemporary standards. In all of these models, the floors that currently fail to connect would flow smoothly into the original 1923 core of Stetson, which is to the left above.
This a plan of one floor from the model shown above. The 1923 core of Stetson is at the top of the drawing.
This is an entirely hypothetical elevation drawing of how this building might look from the rear.
After considering the outsized quality of the model above, we asked CBT to work up a model for two buildings: (1) a renovated Stetson approximately the same size as the current one (+/- 94 offices), plus several new teaching spaces, additional space for exisiting units, and about ten small offices for emeritus faculty; and (2) an annex big enough to bring Economics into the Stetson mix. In this version, the annex is sited at the bottom center (south) of the plan, in what is currently the upper Stetson parking area.
This is a hypothetical elevation of Stetson and the Stetson Annex, standing from the back of the building looking west, toward Sawyer.
Just for fun, I include the CBT sketch of what a renovated Stetson lobby might look like.