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Building facts only, by the discipline of this wave: Washington Hall is the university's Victorian theater building on the main quad, just east of the Main Building, and its course as a building is a clean three-act structure of its own — built out of a fire, painted over in a modernization, and restored in the 2020s. (The building's famous lore is another wave's assignment and appears nowhere in this article.)
Act one is the replacement. On 23 April 1879 the great fire destroyed five major campus buildings, among them the music hall. The Chicago architect Willoughby J. Edbrooke — the same architect rebuilding the Main Building — was commissioned to recreate the campus, and Washington Hall rose in 1881, dedicated in 1882, combining in one building the functions of the burned music hall and the old exhibition hall: classrooms and practice rooms for individual students, the orchestra and the marching band in one component, and in the other an octagonal theater that took the building's name into the university's vocabulary. Sorin named it for his hero, George Washington. The building's style is given in the sources as the "modern Gothic" of the rebuilt campus (one reference tradition says Second Empire; the hall's own history page says modern Gothic, and the conflict is noted in the wave note rather than decided here). The theater's original capacity was 700 — 400 on the floor, 300 in the gallery. Its first floor in the early days also held the working furniture of a small town: a barber shop, a Western Union office and a billiards recreation hall. The first student production on its stage was Oedipus Tyrannus in 1882, and the hall served as the university's primary auditorium from then until the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center opened in 2004 — the room for commencements, debates, film screenings, lectures and the long list of visiting speakers the tour page samples, from William Jennings Bryan and Will Rogers to Henry James and Tim Russert.
Act two is the decoration and its burial. In 1894 the auditorium received a full high-Victorian decorative scheme by Luigi Gregori and Louis Rusca — the same hands that decorated the Main Building's interior and the church that is now the Basilica — portraits of Washington and of Shakespeare, Molière, Mozart and Dante, emblematic figures of tragedy, comedy, music and poetry, gold accents in mica or artificial gold. The scheme faded, and in 1956 a remodeling and modernization painted over what remained in gray; Gregori's canvas portraits were removed in that work and are believed lost. The building entered the National Register in May 1978 with the campus historic district, its nomination identifying Washington Hall (1881) as the seventh-oldest extant structure in the district and a critical structure in the original campus plan. Through the later twentieth century the hall worked on in diminished decoration — a renovation in the 1980s left it, in Mark Pilkinton's recollection, without air conditioning and at one point under discussion of condemnation — and after 2004 it settled into the supporting role the DeBartolo's opening assigned it: student theater, rehearsals, lectures.
Act three is the restoration. Pilkinton — professor emeritus of film, television and theater, and author of the building's 300-page history, Washington Hall at Notre Dame: Crossroads of the University, 1864–2004 (2011) — had ended that book by calling for the rehabilitation of the 1894 interior. In the summer of 2024 the university did it: seats and floor came out in May, and Conrad Schmitt Studios — the Wisconsin decorative-arts firm that also regilded the Dome and has worked at Notre Dame since the 1930s — restored and reimagined the auditorium's walls and ceilings in the trompe-l'oeil tradition, recreating the high-Victorian scheme with gold leaf where the original used mica, alongside new seating, LED lighting and safety upgrades. The renovated house seats 546 (the university tour's pre-renovation figure of 564 is the older count, printed here so the two numbers do not collide unexplained), and the auditorium reopened after fall break in October 2024. Its present state in November 2026: the university's historic theater, in frequent use for lectures, student productions and events, wearing — for the first time since 1956 — something like its 1894 face.
Sources: University of Notre Dame, Washington Hall — History (fire of 23 Apr. 1879 destroying the music hall among five buildings; Edbrooke commission; modern Gothic; music component and octagonal theater; 300 gallery + 400 floor; productions from Oedipus Tyrannus, 1882; NRHP May 1978, seventh-oldest extant structure; 2024 restoration by Conrad Schmitt Studios; 1956 paint-over). Notre Dame Magazine, "The Jewel Box" and "A Retrospective Renovation" (2024) (built 1881, dedicated 1882; primary auditorium until DeBartolo, 2004; 1894 Gregori/Rusca decor; gray paint 1956; portraits believed lost; renovation scope; 546 seats; reopening after fall break; Pilkinton's 2011 history). University of Notre Dame Campus Tour, "Washington Hall" (barber shop, Western Union office, billiards hall; early capacity 700 in chairs; speakers list; 564-seat modern count before the 2024 work). Washington Hall reference entries (Second Empire style attribution — conflict noted).