The Buildings' Courses: Stone, Fire Risk and Second Lives

1903–2026

How to read this campus: The base tells the motherhouse buildings — Bertrand Hall and its annex and Lourdes Hall, the Tower Building, the convent of 1954, the cemetery — from the congregation's side. This article tells the college's buildings from the college's side: the houses the college itself raised, what each was for, and what each became. The two sets intertwine at exactly one modern point, the 2021 sale in which Bertrand Hall, Bertrand Annex and Lourdes Hall passed from congregation to college (base), after which the oldest buildings on the ground joined the college's own stock — Bertrand Hall housing, in the current catalogue's account, the offices of human resources and finance. The college buildings proper begin with Holy Cross Hall. It was once the primary building on campus, in the current catalogue's words, and it remains the oldest residence hall, favoured for cathedral windows and for the campus's only quint rooms, with the post office and a second-floor chapel. Its dedication date stands in the record at both 1903 (the college chronology and the catalogue's building line) and 1906 (the college reference record); both print, in the base and here. Annunciata Hall, created in 1995 on Holy Cross Hall's fourth floor for seniors seeking a more independent community, shows the building still being re-cut for new uses a century on.

Le Mans Hall, the signature: Le Mans Hall is named for the French city where Moreau founded the congregation, funded from 1916 by Stella Hamilton Stapleton's fifty-thousand-dollar gift (base), and dated three ways in the record, all printed: built in 1923 in the catalogue's current line, ground broken 19 March 1924 in the archives (the date kept for the separating of college from academy), completed in 1925 in the college chronology, and dedicated in 1926 in the reference record. The dates reconcile as a building course — construction across 1923–25, dedication in 1926 — more plausibly than any single year does alone, but the record prints them separately and so does this article. Its function has never changed in kind: the largest residence hall (501 women) wrapped around the administrative core — admission, registrar, financial aid, the president's offices — the academy-era arrangement inside a college-era plan. The college kept its centennial in 2025, dating from completion. No fire is recorded for Le Mans Hall in any carrier (see wave note).

The postwar academic plant: Moreau Center for the Arts, built in 1956 and named for the founder, houses art, music, communication, dance and theatre; within it, O'Laughlin Auditorium seats 1,300 — the second-largest venue in the county in the reference record's account — and the Little Theatre seats 275. O'Laughlin's name carries a bequest: Sister Francis Jerome, born Susan O'Laughlin, Madeleva's vice president and a professor of Greek and Latin, left five hundred thousand dollars designated for a fine arts building. Science Hall — now the Mathile Science Hall, for Clayton and Mary Ann Mathile and Jennifer Mathile Prikkel of the class of 1995 — was built in 1954, dedicated 23 April 1955, and enlarged in 1986, 2016 and, in the current catalogue's line, 2026, reaching 105,000 square feet with laboratories, a greenhouse and a 110-seat auditorium. Madeleva Hall, built in 1967 and dedicated in 1968, memorializes the third president in her own lifetime's afterglow; its interior and exterior renovations of 2009, 2012 and 2013 are the catalogue's dates, and it now houses mathematics and computer science, education, communicative sciences and disorders, the Judd Leighton Speech and Language Clinic, the college archives and the 350-seat Carroll Auditorium. Havican Hall, built in 1947 as the model campus school and renamed in 1975 (base), now houses information technology and the Early Childhood Development Center — a building that has taught children, then nurses, then served the college's own systems, in unbroken educational use.

Residences of the lay era, and the library: McCandless Hall, built in 1964 and completed with a new dining hall in 1966 in the college chronology, houses 264 residents and is named for Marion McCandless of the class of 1900, the first alumnae secretary. Regina Hall's course is the most instructive on the campus, because it crosses the congregation–college boundary twice: begun in spring 1963 for the sisters' postulate and house of studies, dedicated in 1964 (the catalogue and archives agree on the building), leased to the college for student residence in 1968 in the archives' line — 1969 in the reference record's account, with purchase in 1994; both lease years print — and now a 173,700-square-foot structure whose south wing, in the base's phrase, carries the Center for Integrated Healthcare Education, with nursing simulation and fundamentals laboratories, an eighty-seat lecture hall and graduate students on its fifth floor.Opus Hall, opened in 2005 (built 2004 in the reference record), houses seventy-two seniors in apartment style and is named for the Opus Corporation of the Rauenhorst family, whose daughter and granddaughter are alumnae. The Student Center of 2005, at 82,100 square feet, gathered what the academy era had scattered — dining in the Noble Family Dining Hall, the bookstore, student government, campus ministry — into a secular-era commons. Cushwa-Leighton Library, dedicated in 1982 to designs by Evans Woollen III, is a four-story, contemporary-Gothic library of 78,000 square feet in the reference record and 86,606 in the catalogue — both print — seating 540, named for Margaret Hall Cushwa '30 and Mary Lou Morris Leighton, and since 2016 re-cut as a learning commons. It replaced the Alumnae Centennial Library of 1941–42, itself converted in 1983 into the Haggar College Center: no building wasted, every house given a second life.

Angela, and the fires question: The Angela Athletic Facility deserves its line at depth because the base's motherhouse article carries its origin — St. Angela Hall of 1892, demolished in five days in 1975 — while the college record carries its achievement: designed by Helmut Jahn of C. F. Murphy Associates, built in 1977, winner of an American Institute of Architects Honor Award in 1979, and built, the record pointedly notes, solely for women, at a moment when women's athletics facilities of that ambition were rare. Renovated and expanded in 2014 to 103,000 square feet in the current catalogue, it houses a three-court fieldhouse, training and health suites and the college's NCAA Division III programme — facts only, per this build's athletics rule. That absence is printed as a gap with its settler in the wave note, not as a claim that no fire ever occurred: the HARC building files, which the base used at first hand, are where a fire record would settle.

Sources:

1. Saint Mary's College Catalogue, Campus and Buildings (current, crawled November 2026) — Le Mans built 1923 and 501 residents; Holy Cross Hall built 1903; Cushwa-Leighton 1982, Evans Woollen, 86,606 square feet; Angela 1977/2014, 103,000 square feet; Regina 1964 and its healthcare centre; Mathile Science Hall additions to 2026; Opus opened 2005; Student Center 2005; Annunciata 1995.
2. Saint Mary's College reference record and chronology of important dates — Holy Cross dedicated 1906 (reference) against 1903 (chronology); Le Mans completed 1925, dedicated 1926; O'Laughlin's Sister Francis Jerome bequest and county ranking; Regina leased 1969, purchased 1994; Cushwa-Leighton 78,000 square feet; Opus built 2004.
4. Saint Mary's College, Avenues (Fall 2025) — the Le Mans Hall centennial kept in 2025.