As part of new development to accommodate for the swell of incoming students, Deseret Towers was constructed in 1964 as additional housing. Shortly thereafter in 1965, the George Q. Morris Center, named after an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was opened to provide dining services and a common area to students living in the Towers.  The Center served as an epicenter of social life for students. In 1973, a cultural experience of France and Germany, which featured a yodeling performance, was held. In 1974, events held at the Morris Center included a winter formal, college bowl, and the play, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” In 1976, a charity dance was one of the main events at the center. Voting booths were placed in the Morris Center for student presidential elections. Elections were taken seriously by students and the university had strict regulations regarding campaigns. In 1983, Tom and Don Mullen were penalized when they violated campaign rules by handing out flyers at the Morris Center. Their punishment was one less day of campaigning. Students played pool, had religion classes, and ate their meals at the Morris Center. It was a place where “friendships were formed, [and] romances blossomed.” And, in 1986, when a fire started by an appliance short circuited closed the center, the center quickly opened five months later to resume activities and services. By 2007, structural concerns with Deseret Towers resulted in its demolition. Since no students were to be staying in the Deseret Towers, the Morris Center’s purpose shifted to accommodate the university’s other needs.  The building’s kitchens were used to assist on-campus catering services. Other parts of the building were used to house BYU’s Independent Study. However, in 2018, to the heartache of those who had enjoyed the Morris Center’s plentiful offerings, the building was closed and demolished. Today, Heritage Halls building 13 occupies the space where the Morris Center once stood.

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Amidst the Great Depression in 1936, Brigham Young University announced the construction of a Stadium House to replace the old creamery near the far west field of campus. The project was under the direction of William H. Snell, a professor of industrial arts. Due to limited funds, the project relied on the donations of faculty, alumni, and students to provide much of the money for the building. Students held fundraisers, local businesses donated portions of proceeds, and donations from the school’s drama programs and various sports games were contributed. In total, the school raised $25,000 for the Stadium House.  Construction commenced in the spring of 1936. In order to build the Stadium House, the school encouraged students to volunteer. Each male student of the university was encouraged to work ten hours on the project and were promised their names would be published in Y News. Skilled labor was also found amongst students. Student Rolland Perry did all electrical work, and students Grant F. Larsen and LaVell C. Gamut were primary carpenters.  During construction, different obstacles slowed the building’s completion. As they were tearing down the old training house to make way for the Stadium House, a wall fell on freshman Max Young, burying him to his waist and leading to minor injuries. Then, during the excavation of the grounds, skeletal remains were uncovered. The remains were found facing the ground, “crumpled in a heap”, with two stones laid underneath its head. No clothing or artifacts were found on or near the body, but Professor of Geology George H. Hansen purported that the person was male and older when they died. Foul play was suspected. Nonetheless, the bones were collected and then placed back in the ground where they were covered by the foundation of the building. Moreover, after the Stadium House was constructed, flooding occurred in the basement.  Despite setbacks, the opening of the Stadium House was met with enthusiasm by students. The building had varsity, freshmen, women’s, and visitor locker rooms and two restrooms. As a landmark on campus, many students utilized the Stadium House during their semesters for P.E. and intramural sports. In 1941, during a football game, Cosmo used the Stadium House to change costumes and then disappeared. It was purported that students had snuck into the Stadium House and discovered his identity. A newspaper article pleaded for their secrecy. In that same year, the wrestling team made the Stadium House its main area of practice. In 1942, the stadium house was used for the housing and headquarters of army cadets who were part of a new training program under Major Charles E. Powell. The program ended in 1944 when many were sent to Italy to fight in the war. When the Y Day celebrations—the day students repainted the Y and celebrated with festivities—rained out in 1950, the Stadium House sheltered workers from the rain as lunch was served. In 1951, the Stadium House accommodated the softball and football games that were part of the annual “Bury the Hatchet Week,” a celebration of the friendly feud between two of the university’s publications, The Y News and The Banyan.  The opening of the Smith Fieldhouse had decreased overall use of the Stadium House. In 1964, it was torn down and replaced by the Richards Physical Education Building.

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On Wednesday, November 9, 1898, a crowd gathered on the corner of 5th and O streets in Provo, Utah, for the opening ceremony of Maeser Elementary School. The ceremony was filled with performances from school children, congregational hymns, a raising of the stars and stripes, and a speech by the school’s namesake, Karl G. Maeser. For years afterwards, the school would continue to hold celebrations on November 9, naming the day “Maeser Day.”    Karl G. Maeser was born and raised in Saxony, Germany.  There, he received an unparalleled education that would benefit him throughout his life. In 1855, Maeser and his wife, Anna Therese Meith, were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and five years later, they both arrived in Utah Territory, where other members of the Church were gathering. Due to his academic training, Maeser was called to establish an academy for the Church, titled Brigham Young Academy (now Brigham Young University). He was adored and admired by his pupils, astounding them with both his academic knowledge and good character. Consequently, although many public schools at that time were named after American Founding Fathers—something Karl G. Maeser was not—there was no disagreement about naming the new school after him.  The new school building was designed by Richard C. Watkins, the same architect who designed other historic buildings such as the Knight Block Building, the Provo Third Ward Chapel and Amusement Hall, and the Thomas N. Taylor Mansion. The Old Maeser School is deemed the best-preserved example of his work. The school was built of brick, had eight rooms, and cost around $10,000 to construct. When the school was completed, it was able to accommodate 480 students. By the 21st century, enrollment in Maeser Elementary had dwindled. In 2002, the school closed its doors. The closing of Maeser Elementary impacted not only the families of its students, but the surrounding neighborhood as well. The building had been declining for years, and losing the school hit the community hard.  The future of the building was uncertain, and for a time, the school was a target of vandalism. It was almost demolished multiple times by Provo School District.  In 2003, the Provo City Housing Authority proposed saving the building by redeveloping it into housing for low-income seniors, and the new Maeser School Apartments opened three years later in 2006. The building continues to be a home for seniors in the area. 

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The David O. McKay Building, dedicated in 1954, was originally named the Church Teachers College. Since its construction, the building has gone through various renovations and name changes before achieving its current status. Today, it houses one of the largest Education Preparation Programs in the United States and offers 15 degrees, employs 87 faculty members, and has served over 50 thousand living alumni.  The David O. McKay Building honors the ninth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, David O. McKay, who was a lifelong educator. Throughout his life, McKay honored the School of Education's mission: provide a rigorous, gospel-centered education while learning after the Master Teacher, Jesus Christ. David O. McKay emphasized the importance of providing all young people with an equal opportunity to gain an education. His vision of schooling went beyond the common school movement of the twentieth century. He believed in creating experiences for children to learn and refine their character.  The David O. McKay Building commemorates his distinctive contribution to the Education profession and his quest to find and employ truth in teaching. One of BYU's core aims is to be a lifelong learner and the David O. McKay Building reflects it. 

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In 1974, the United States was home to over 11 million Spanish-speaking people. The Chicano Conference was organized in order to “understand and confront the challenges facing Spanish-speaking people in their struggle for education and for finding their proper place in American society.” These problems varied, but included an unemployment rate that was two to three times the national level, disease, and cultural barriers.

The basis of the conference included workshops, speakers, and lessons. Leaders of this conference included a wide array of professors and leaders of the Chicano movement, as well as leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Organizers highlighted non-stereotypical problems and people of the Spanish-speaking community in order to bring awareness to the disservice that such stereotypes were causing Spanish-speaking people.

One of these “non-stereotypical” scenarios was originally told by Dr. Clark Knowlton and was included in the opening statement. In a neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, gang members rallied together to raise enough money to give a college scholarship to one of their own. When that member failed his first quarter, fellow gang members woke him up at four in the morning to study, escorted him to and from class, and made sure that he completed his homework. That member passed his second quarter and went on to complete a law degree. Such a story emphasized one of the overarching messages of the conference: Spanish-speaking Americans were fighting battles that were important to the whole country and were not exclusively their own.

The symposium’s keynote speaker, Utah Governor Calvin Rampton, ended the conference by expressing his desire for greater action and initiative on behalf of Spanish-speakers within the state. He mentioned the involvement of the Spanish Speaking Organization for Community, Integrity, and Opportunity in creating government councils, as well as a 20-hour training on the culture of Spanish-speakers for law enforcement.

The Chicano Conference of 1974 was a part of the larger Chicano Movement which began in the 1960s. The movement itself was multifaceted and evolved overtime, but it originated in Mexican Americans rejecting previous efforts to assimilate into white American identity and instead embracing their heritage. The Chicano Conference—the “most important event on campus” at the time—followed previous conferences in Utah, such as the Chicano Conference in 1971 sponsored by Chicanas Unidas and the Chicano Conference in 1973 sponsored by La Raza; both groups were coalitions of Chicanos in the state. The Conference of 1974 joined previous efforts to alleviate pressure of assimilation as well as increase understanding of the needs of Hispanics in Utah.

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Born December 18, 1891 in Provo, Addie Iona Knight was the youngest daughter of Latter-day Saint philanthropists Amanda McEwan Knight and Jesse Knight. Her older brother, J. William, recalled that Iona had “a keen intellect, a generous heart, and an unusually intelligent sense of humor.” Always eager to learn, Iona enjoyed discovering the world beyond Utah, and in 1907 she traveled throughout Europe (with a BYU professor chaperone). Iona was well-educated; she studied first at Brigham Young University, then West Lake School for Girls in Los Angeles, and finally Stanford University in Palo Alto. While at Stanford, Iona befriended Professor David Starr Jordan—a renowned ichthyologist whose controversial legacy includes both democratizing education and propounding racist eugenics—and his wife Jessie Knight. Iona moved back and forth between Provo and California, and she had a brief stint teaching in BYU’s English Department. She remained close to David and Jessie throughout her life and even moved back to Palo Alto to live with them during David’s final, ailing years. Iona remained in California, and she also died there after a long illness on May 7, 1937. She was buried with the rest of the Knight family in Provo. The building’s story has its roots in 1942, when World War II defense workers flooded Provo, creating a housing shortage for students. To alleviate this, 1940s BYU bought houses and turned them into “co-op” student residences. Warnick House was the first, bought in 1942, and BYU considered it such a success they purchased and renovated a second in 1943, which they named Iona House, after the late English teacher. Like Warnick, Iona was a “co-op.” Student residents shared bedrooms, restrooms, a kitchen, and communal spaces, and they bore responsibility for working together to manage the home. Cooperative living had its pluses; residents always had a group to hold activities with, whether potlucks or sled parties, and they knew how to work together. For example, in a 1945 Women’s Athletic Association softball tournament with several other dormitories plus PEMM (the Physical Education Majors club), Iona’s residents lost only one game and overall tied with PEMM. Three years later, the 1948 residents won the Homecoming parade’s best humor award for their float, which “portrayed college life in the dormitories and completed the task so well.” In 1959, the need for men’s housing increased such that Iona House switched from a women’s residence to a male graduate student residence. For the next three decades, Iona served numerous purposes. In the 1960s or 1970s, Church missionaries learning to speak Navajo lived in Iona, and from sometime in the 1970s until 1976, sister missionaries learning Italian lived there. From 1976 to at least 1979, BYU Marriage and Family Counseling held its clinic in Iona. Finally, in the 1980s, Iona was the “Spanish House” for students in the intensive Spanish language program. In the early 1990s, BYU decided Iona had run its course. It demolished the building and apparently sold the lot; today, townhouses fill the property.

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BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson planned for May 26, 1954 to be, in his words, “a very fine chapter to be added to the history of the Institution.” For years BYU had been growing, and there were twenty-two undedicated buildings. To celebrate, BYU hosted a special dedication on May 26. Speakers gave remarks for each building, and David McKay—president of BYU’s sponsor, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)—offered a prayer dedicating all twenty-two. Two days later, Wilkinson received an unexpected letter from Israel A. Smith, president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). In the twentieth century, both the LDS and RLDS Churches claimed to be the sole successor to the nineteenth-century church founded by Joseph Smith. The churches’ relationship vacillated between warmly sharing heritage and icily distrusting one another because they differently interpreted that heritage. Israel wrote that it was “an honor to be invited” to the dedication of one of BYU’s Heritage Halls dormitories: Lucy Mack Smith Hall, named after Joseph Smith’s mother, also great-grandmother of Israel. Wilkinson had asked his secretary to “send invitations to all known relatives of the women… having Heritage Halls named after them” but apparently had not expected her to invite Israel even though he was, after all, Lucy’s descendant. Israel did not attend, though. He offered “good wishes for [Wilkinson’s] personal success” but also brought up the LDS Church’s unfortunate history with Lucy. Nearly a century prior, LDS president Brigham Young excoriated a family history Lucy wrote about Joseph. Israel still felt stung by that undeserved rebuke against his ancestor. Still, while the letter seemed intended to ruffle Wilkinson’s feathers, Israel was otherwise polite. Given Israel’s relatively mild message, Wilkinson’s response may have been an overreaction. On June 14, he forwarded Israel’s letter to the Joseph Fielding Smith, an LDS apostle who was also a great-grandson of Lucy, and asked for Joseph Fielding’s “approval” of a reply to Israel in which he tried to defend Young’s objections to Lucy’s history. Strangely, Joseph Fielding apparently read “bitterness,” as he wrote, into Israel’s letter and claimed Israel “could not answer a letter like a gentleman” even though Israel’s letter was polite. Perhaps Joseph Fielding felt galled by Israel’s implication that he disrespected their common ancestor, whom Joseph Fielding affectionately called “Grandmother Smith.” Israel and Joseph did not write directly to each other, and since Israel did not attend, the missed encounter became a kind of muddled tragedy. The Smiths were cousins, after all—family—and both had good reason to celebrate a tribute to their ancestor. Rivalry, unfortunately, kept them from understanding one another and coming together. Warmer feelings had to wait for a future generation. Lucy Mack Smith Hall went on to be a rather ordinary dormitory, though the hall’s residents did win the 1962–1963 year’s homecoming housing sweepstakes. Like the other Heritage Halls, it was demolished in 2015 to make way for a new Heritage Halls complex with building numbers instead of names.

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Born April 8, 1883 in Pleasant Grove, Utah, approximately ten miles away from Brigham Young Academy (BYA), Effie Warnick enrolled in BYA’s Normal School when she was seventeen-years-old. After finishing the two-year teaching program, she taught for about ten years before enrolling at Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, where by 1914 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in food and nutrition. After several years spent teaching first in Cedar City and then in Lehi, in 1922 Warnick returned to her alma mater, the rechristened Brigham Young University, to continue her career as a home economics instructor. For the next thirty-one years, Warnick was a beloved leader on campus and a pioneer in home economics. She served as president of the Utah State Home Economics Association from 1924 to 1925, and by 1927 she was an assistant professor at BYU; in 1935, she became a full professor. During this time, Warnick continued her own lifelong learning and obtained a Masters degree in Home Management from Iowa State College in 1937. And when BYU built its first women’s dorm in 1939, Warnick stepped up to serve as matron. Warnick chaired the Home Economics Department for twenty-five years, from 1923 to 1948, and she broadened BYU’s vision of what studying home and family could mean. In a posthumous tribute, Virginia Poulson and Angelyn Wadley reported that under Warnick’s direction, “the focus changed from separate homemaking skills to a focus on the family with increased emphasis on management problems and relationships of family members. Effie was years ahead of her time.” To Warnick, home economics was more than discrete skills; understanding the home meant understanding people, and that meant studying social sciences and more. Warnick’s expansive Home Economics Department became the forerunner to BYU’s modern College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. In 1942, defense workers supporting America’s World War II effort flooded Provo, creating a housing shortage for students. To alleviate the situation, BYU purchased a home near campus to use as student housing, and Warnick directed its conversion into a “co-op house” where student housemates worked together to manage the home. BYU dubbed the building “Warnick House,” fittingly naming it after the pioneering professor who dedicated her life to scholarly study of the home. Warnick House hosted its first cohort of students, whom Y News called the “sweet sixteen,” in 1943, and the Banyan yearbook reported that in their arrangement, “girls who live in one room cook together, and all cooperate on the general upkeep of the home.” Warnick achieved emeritus status in 1953. In 1963, she suffered a head injury from a serious fall, and she died on January 16, 1965, in Pleasant Grove.

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As the 1950s dawned, Brigham Young University administrators recognized the campus badly needed to expand in size and capacity. In addition to new buildings for housing and classrooms, expanding the bookstore was also necessary. After scrapping plans to simply add a wing to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, BYU resolved to instead erect a brand new building, hired architect Fred L. Markham to design the structure, and contracted Tolboe Construction to build it. Tolboe finished in 1952, and the BYU bookstore opened in the new location in March 1953 after an opening ceremony presided over by Elder Harold B. Lee, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. BYU dubbed the building the Herald R. Clark Student Service Center, naming it after BYU’s former dean of the College of Commerce (1934–1951) and longtime bookstore manager (1915–1952). BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson considered giving the bookstore’s new home Clark’s name especially appropriate “since his management of the bookstore is largely responsible for the funds from which this building has been constructed.”  Clark was both a businessman and a scholar; while managing the bookstore, he graduated from BYU in 1918, earned an MBA from the University of Washington in 1924, and taught students for forty-one years. Clark’s influence extended even further, beyond the bookstore, classroom, and college. Something of a renaissance man, Clark was a musical aficionado, and he found ways to book world-class performers at prices BYU could afford. As Gerrit de Jong said, Clark “accomplished the seemingly impossible in booking world famous artists… at extremely low fees.” BYU released Clark as bookstore manager in 1952, shortly before it reopened in the new space named for him, and he gave remarks at the 1953 opening ceremony. Although BYU built the Clark Student Service Center specifically to host its bookstore, in 1964, BYU moved the bookstore to the brand new Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center. Around this time, BYU also renovated the Clark Building, adding new offices and workroom spaces in what as well as air-conditioning. About a decade later, in the early 1970s, the Clark Building also hosted offices for Continuing Education and Educational Media Services. In 1984 and 1985, BYU extensively remodeled the Clark Building, after which it became almost exclusively dedicated to hosting the offices of the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, plus some general-use classrooms. Born in Randolph, Utah in 1905, David Matthew Kennedy, the Center’s namesake, was a banker and statesman. In addition to serving as Richard Nixon’s secretary of the treasury, as a Latter-day Saint Kennedy strove to “bring the Church to the world” after Church president Spencer W. Kimball called upon Kennedy in 1974 to serve as the Church’s global ambassador-at-large. Just as BYU had named the Clark Building for an admired elder businessman, so too did BYU name the Kennedy Center for an admired elder statesman. The Clark Building continues to host the Kennedy Center, and each carry on their namesakes’ legacies of creativity, dedication, and faith.

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Marigold Mall is a pedestrian mall nestled between the Harold B. Lee Library, Herald R. Clark Building, and Martin Classroom Building on the west and the Wilkinson Student Center, Harvey Fletcher Building, and Clyde Engineering Building on the east. The space has been named and maintained in honor of Marigold N. Saunders and her generous gift to Brigham Young University. A resident of Oakland, California, Marigold N. Saunders was the wife—and, in her later years, the widow—of H.J. Saunders, a life insurance executive who had worked for companies such as New York Life Insurance and California–Western States Life Insurance. The couple had no children or heirs, but they took an interest in supporting the young. Personal friend and colleague Grant Taggart remembered them as “an inspiration” who mentored him from an eighteen-year-old salesman into a member of the California–Western board of directors. After contemplating how to bequeath her wealth, Saunders decided to leave it to college students in need in the form of scholarships. Saunders named Taggart executor of her estate and instructed him to take whatever remained of her wealth after other bequests and taxes and donate it to universities and colleges of his choosing. BYU was one clear choice. Saunders had visited BYU as a guest of Adelaide Hardy before Hardy’s passing in 1967. As the Provo Daily Herald related, Saunders “was tremendously impressed by what she saw and learned about the University, what it stood for, and what it was doing with young people.” After contacting BYU administration, in May 1977 Taggart publicly announced the Saunders estate was donating $500,000 to BYU for the establishment of an endowment to fund scholarships. Dallin H. Oaks, BYU president at the time, announced that this endowment would annually finance twenty-five “Marigold N. Saunders Awards.” Each grant fully funded a student’s tuition for two semesters. In gratitude, the Board of Trustees moved to name the campus’ north-south pedestrian mall “Marigold Mall,” in Saunders’s honor, and landscape it with decorative flora, including marigolds. Today, a commemorative plaque on the east side of the Lee Library denotes Marigold Mall. The landscape stretches as far south as Campus Drive, encompassing both the concrete sidewalks between the library and Wilkinson Center and the grassy lawns between the Clyde Building and Martin Building. In addition to the sidewalks, benches, and lawns—perfect for resting between classes—the mall also hosts three distinctive art pieces. The class of 1916 established a sundial on the mall, giving the time during daylight hours. Since 1975 (just two years before the mall was named for Saunders), the south end has featured Windows of Heaven, a stained glass statue by sculptor Francis P. Riggs commissioned to celebrate BYU’s centennial year. And in 2002, BYU relocated First Born—a statue featuring a family holding hands—from the then-demolished Smith Family Living Center to the north end of the lawns on Marigold Mall. Saunders’s gift continues to finance what is now known as the Marigold N. Saunders Scholarship, which fully funds each recipient’s tuition for a year, and Marigold Mall continues to express BYU’s “grateful remembrance.”

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Jean Elizabeth Fossum was born on January 30, 1906 “with sawdust in [her] veins,” as she described, in the sawmill town of Baker, Oregon. Jean’s parents were Scandinavian, having immigrated to America after joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1926, Jean embarked on an ecclesiastical mission to California, where she preached to the interested, labored in the mission office, and even became president over the mission’s Primaries and Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (auxiliary Church units for children and young women respectively). “I am thrilled to my toes,” Jean wrote in a letter, “but… the position looks so big, and I feel so little.” Still, she dedicated herself to the responsibility for the remainder of her mission. Jean finished her mission in 1928, and in 1930 she married Andrew May. However, Andrew died in 1933, leaving Jean alone with their two sons. Jean rose to meet the tragedy and challenge, and she worked to support and raise her family. In 1959, after her sons were grown, Jean began working as head resident of Stover Hall (a Helaman residence building). Jean was fond of the young men there. She encouraged each to be a “true son of Helaman,” and they called her “Ma,” reenacting the Book of Mormon story in which a troop of young men called their beloved leader, Helaman, “Father.” With fond memories of her mission, Jean urged her “Stover boys” to also serve missions. Across her ten years as head resident, approximately 2,000 Stover residents became missionaries. When Jean died in May 1969, her students mourned. BYU president Ernest Wilkinson remembered “an irresistible plea was made for a building to be named in her honor.” Later that year BYU named its newest Helaman Halls building May Hall, after Jean Fossum May. With 43 residents to each wing, May Hall’s early rooms were a tight fit for two roommates. Beds were pull-outs, and when both were out there was so little space roommates could only pass each other by turning sideways. Rooms had one window, one door, two closets, and two desks. Restrooms were communal to each wing and became “social gathering space[s].” May Hall gave rise to close friendships. Residents in a wing could end up doing nearly everything together: eating at the Cannon Center, studying at the library, listening to music, celebrating engagements, gathering for hall parties, and praying every evening. Residents had playful indoor water fights, followed by laborious efforts to dry the carpet with hair dryers. There were nicknames and banana bread; tender hugs and tearful goodbyes. One 1977 resident reminisced, “For the first time in my life I had sisters. We loved and lifted each other.” Between 1993 and 2005, BYU renovated all Helaman Halls buildings, including May Hall. Brought up to modern standards, May Hall still stands and still hosts women BYU students who carry on Jean May’s legacy of education, independence, and conviction.

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As enrollment for programs in BYU’s College of Biological and Agricultural Sciences swelled in the mid-1960s, the college was strapped for classrooms. Dean Rudger H. Walker called on the university to provide a new building designed with life science in mind, and the Board of Trustees drew up plans during the 1966 to 1967 academic year. Around the same time, six BYU stakes reached out to the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requesting that BYU design the new building to accommodate eight wards (original plans made the building large enough for four). In order to meet this request, BYU administration decided to split the planned building into two: one for laboratories and faculty offices, the other for lecture halls suitable for both classroom instruction and Sunday worship. Walkways at multiple levels connected the buildings. The laboratory building became the Widtsoe Building, and the other was named the Thomas L. Martin Classroom Building. The name was a happy triumph for Walker. Thomas L. Martin was an English immigrant and internationally-renowned agronomist, and he was an agricultural science professor at BYU from 1921 to 1958. During that period he also served for a time as dean of the College of Applied Sciences, later renamed the College of Agricultural and Biological Sciences, making him a predecessor to Walker. However, their connection was even more personal: Martin had taught Walker while at BYU, and Walker was Martin’s first student to enroll in a PhD program. In total, about 110 of Martin’s students went on to earn PhDs, for which the American Society of Agronomy cited him as “teacher of the year” in 1950. Central Utah Architects designed the edifice, and BYU contracted Tolboe Construction for building. Tolboe began construction in July 1968 and finished in 1969. Throughout the Martin Classroom Building’s three stories (one underground, two aboveground), there are about 40,000 square feet of floor, twenty-four lecture rooms, and enough seating for over 2,000 students. Because the university planned to use the building for science lectures with slide projections, the classrooms have no windows, ensuring sunlight never interferes with projection visibility. BYU remodeled the Martin Building in 2000, and in 2014 it added an elevator. (Previously, the only elevator access was through the Widtsoe, which BYU razed in 2015.) In the twenty-first century, the Martin Classroom Building—typically nicknamed the MARB for its building code—hosts classes in many subjects, not just life science. Unfortunately, the MARB is not as beloved as its namesake was. Students often lament the windowless rooms, originally designed as a feature, for being dispiriting. And without the old walkways into the Widtsoe Building, the MARB’s single stairwell is frequently crowded. A satirical website declared the MARB one of the “BYU buildings no one cares about” and suggested “the highest priority” for any campus improvement should “be to fix the MARB so it is not absolutely terrible to get in and out” by adding “entrances for each level,” unwittingly hearkening back to the days when the Martin Classroom Building did have exits at multiple levels into the Widtsoe Building. Students may not appreciate the MARB as much as their forebears admired Dr. Martin, but with so many lectures assigned to his Classroom Building, it will continue affecting their lives.

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In the 1960s, BYU’s life sciences were flourishing as enrollment rose. However, with so many students, the College of Biological and Agricultural Sciences was hard-pressed for sufficient classroom space. Life science coursework required both lectures and hands-on labs, but most BYU classrooms at the time had not been designed with laboratory use in mind. As Ephraim Hatch explains in his Brigham Young University: A Pictorial History, “practically all [BYU] laboratories [at the time] were remodeled spaces originally built for other purposes.” Students and faculty called for a new building to accommodate the growing program, and Dean Rudger H. Walker was especially vocal. After deliberations, BYU administrators decided to build two new buildings: one for classrooms and another for laboratories and faculty offices. Administration dubbed the latter the John A. Widtsoe Life Sciences Laboratory Building, naming it after the Norwegian immigrant, agricultural scientist, and apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a scientist, Widtsoe had been famous for innovations in dry farming; the International Dry-Farming Congress elected him as their president in 1912. Among Latter-day Saints and BYU’s community, Elder Widtsoe was beloved for his conviction in the harmony of science and religion as complementary means for learning truth. Widtsoe was also a BYU educator, having founded the agricultural science program in the early 1900s. Building the Widtsoe Life Sciences Laboratory Building (later called the Widtsoe Building) was a significant endeavor. Sam Brewster and Ephraim Hatch of BYU’s Physical Plant Department prepared a building program describing every room needed for the building, and members of a building committee traveled to study laboratory buildings at twelve different universities, compiling their findings in a trip report. BYU hired Utah Central Architects to design the building and contracted Tolboe Construction Company to build it. Tolboe began construction in 1968 and finished in 1970. The resulting building was a nine-story tower (two floors underground; the rest above) spanning over 180,000 square feet of floor. Faculty offices and general laboratories filled much of the structure, but it also housed an electron microscope, animals for experimentation and study, and aquaria (both fresh and saltwater) in the basement. The Widtsoe Building became, in the words of BYU’s University Communications, a “campus icon.” However, as time passed, the building aged and societal safety standards expanded. In 2011, BYU announced plans to replace the Widtsoe with a new Life Science Building and raze the Widtsoe following the new structure’s completion. Administrators considered the Widtsoe Building too old: walls contained asbestos, old lights had mercury, and the building lacked modern earthquake-proofing. At a deeper level, despite Widtsoe’s life as an educator, the building did not suit modern pedagogies emphasizing mentorship and collaboration. Dean James Porter of the College of Life Sciences (successor to the College of Biological and Agricultural Sciences) said,  The Widtsoe Building was not designed with a lot of space for student interactions or collaborations… [in] the new Life Sciences Building, there’s lots of couches, chairs and whiteboards and you’ll see students sitting around doing homework, studying, talking together—there’s nothing like that in the Widtsoe Building. The Life Sciences Building was completed in 2014, and the Widtsoe came down in 2015. During the spring, Oakland Construction spent over a month removing hazardous substances like asbestos and mercury. Then, starting on May 21, Okland spent two weeks tearing down the Widtsoe and gathering its scrap for sorting, since they estimated about 70% could be recycled. The Widtsoe’s former place has been landscaped to provide a clear line of sight to the new Life Sciences Building, the College of Life Sciences’ home ever since.

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In the mid-twentieth century, Brigham Young University’s student population continued to grow as more students from further afield sought enrollment at the flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In its ongoing efforts to grow the campus, BYU purchased the building which eventually became Knight Mangum Hall in 1943 from the National Youth Administration (NYA), a New Deal program designed to maintain education and employment among young adult men and women. NYA built the edifice in the mid-1930s as a shop building to teach auto maintenance skills, and BYU initially planned to use the facility for similar purposes in its Industrial Arts program. However, university administrators changed their plans and decided to use the building as a women’s dormitory, renaming it Campus Dormitory. The decision to use the building as housing was so abrupt that few renovations were made to make it suitable for living. The university filled the hall with bunk-beds, and coeds hung sheets from the ceiling to cordon off sleeping spaces and create a semblance of privacy. BYU began renovating the hall to make it more suitable as a dormitory in 1946 and added a kitchen, dining room, and laundry over eight years. When renovations were completed in 1954, administrators renamed the building Knight Mangum Hall, after Jennie Pearl Knight Mangum and Lucy Jane “Jennie” Brimhall Knight, respectively a daughter and daughter-in-law of Jesse Knight and Amanda McEwan Knight, a philanthropist couple who supported BYU in the early-twentieth century. Jennie Pearl was active in her religious and civic communities and established a scholarship at Provo High School. Lucy Jennie was the daughter of George H. Brimhall, a former BYU president, and in 1898 she had been one of the first two single women to serve as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving alongside Inez Knight, another daughter of the Knights. Both were considered lifelong friends of the university. By the 1950s, Knight Mangum Hall housed between 280 340 coeds at a time. In the early 1960s, however, huge dormitory complexes like Heritage Halls and Helaman Halls took over the heavy lifting in housing BYU students, perhaps diminishing Knight Mangum’s necessity. In June 1963, the Church took over Knight Mangum to use as a headquarters for its Language Training Mission, which taught missionaries foreign languages for ecclesiastical missions abroad. In 1976, the Language Training Mission moved into a new headquarters, leaving Knight Mangum Hall back in BYU’s hands. Rather than restore it to housing use, BYU maintained it as an office space for faculty. Since it was no longer used as a dormitory, at some point the campus began calling it the Knight Mangum Building. Eventually, every department of the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences spent some time in Knight Mangum, as did the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. With the building aging and falling behind modern standards for safety, university administration decided to demolish the building. BYU tore down Knight Mangum in the summer of 2008.

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In 1938, after Brigham Young University’s new Allen Hall dormitory for men successfully addressed student housing needs, BYU administrators resolved to build a companion hall for women. BYU rehired Allen Hall’s architect, Joseph Nelson, to design the second building. Nelson innovated upon the Jacobethan Revival style he used for Allen Hall by seamlessly blending it with the English Tudor Revival, such as in the steep main gable, making the building simultaneously regal yet domestic. BYU Administrators named the building after Amanda Knight. Known as a philanthropist to BYU alongside her husband Jesse Knight, Amanda Knight also exemplified positive attributes worth emulating. Knight was thrifty, unselfish, devout, and feisty. A nephew’s journal noted her home industry, as she made and sold butter and cheese while raising her children. A friend, Mary Hammond, called Knight “absolute[ly] devot[ed]… to all that is better and purer and truer.” Construction crews finished building Amanda Knight Hall in 1939, and nine women lived there as early as April 1940. Only two were from Utah, while one was from Canada, two from Hawai’i, and three from Mexico. Over the years, many students, from around the world, followed these initial nine. Amanda Knight Hall was BYU’s first all-women dormitory, and before World War II it was BYU’s only institutional housing for female students. In 1954, the hall housed 130 students. Amanda Knight Hall was designed for student use. For “those interested in the books,” as a 1954 dedicatory program described, the hall had a study room with nighttime quiet hours. There was also had a sewing room so students could practice applied home economics. Student government was another feature, and residents elected a hall president and council to serve, represent, and manage the hall. Students lived in Amanda Knight Hall until 1964, when BYU stopped using the building as a dormitory. The university occasionally used Knight Hall as extra office space, and the Church’s Language Training Mission also used the building as overflow housing for missionaries until 1976, when the Church completed new housing and headquarters for the Training Mission. Thereafter, BYU also used the building for language training, and its English Language Center held classes in Amanda Knight Hall through the 1980s. The offices of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies even had a stint in Amanda Knight Hall into the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, however, BYU began seriously considering demolishing the building, deeming it unsafe. Amanda Knight Hall lacked modern earthquake-proofing, and its lead paint was a health hazard. However, Preservation Utah—a historic preservation nonprofit—urged BYU to instead conserve the building, especially after BYU demolished Allen Hall in 2018, making Amanda Knight Hall the last “visual tie between the original (lower) campus and the current (upper) campus of Brigham Young University,” in Korral Broschinsky’s words. Administrators had reservations about Amanda Knight Hall’s usefulness, but under university president Kevin Worthen’s leadership, BYU forestalled demolition and placed the building on sale. In 2019, Mountain Classic Real Estate—a firm with historic renovation experience—purchased Amanda Knight Hall and announced it would restore the building for its original purpose: student housing. During the process, the firm’s managers, brothers Chris and Davis Phipps, serendipitously learned they had a personal connection to the building: their grandmother, Patricia Leone Taylor, lived in Amanda Knight Hall in its early years. After two years of renovation, Mountain Classic held an open house for the restored building in August 2021, and it opened its doors for up to fifty-seven women as BYU contracted women’s housing. More than eighty years old, Amanda Knight Hall could once again be home to pioneering women scholars in honor of its pioneer woman namesake.

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To accommodate the growing student body, in 1937 BYU began constructing its first building meant specifically for use as a student dormitory. Utahn architect Joseph Nelson designed the building in the style of Jacobethan Revival, including gabled parapets and striated brick, and BYU students donated time and labor as construction workers to help building contractor Louis De Young turn Nelson’s vision into reality. Completed in 1938, the dormitory accommodated up to seventy residents, which BYU set aside for specifically male students. BYU named the building Allen Hall, after Inez Knight Allen and R. Eugene “Gene” Allen. The Allens were the daughter and son-in-law of Jesse Knight, a Latter-day Saint philanthropist who had financially supported BYU (a loan from the Knight Endowment Fund financed Allen Hall itself), and they were accomplished Latter-day Saints in their own right. Inez had been a student at BYU’s predecessor, Brigham Young Academy’s Normal Training School, from 1892 to 1896, where she studied pedagogy and philosophy. Two years after that, Knight became one of the first single sister missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving for twenty-six months in Great Britain from 1898 to 1900. Gene was also a Brigham Young Academy alumnus; he also studied at Rochester Business College. As an officer of Knight Trust and Savings Bank, Gene managed the Knight Fund. Gene and Inez married in 1902, and they became philanthropists in their communities, following Jesse Knight’s example. BYU considered Allen Hall such a success as a housing unit that it immediately drew up plans to build another dormitory building, this time for women, which it named Amanda Knight Hall and completed in 1939. BYU Students lived in Allen Hall for the next twenty-four years. Though originally intended only for men, when an influx of female students strained available housing during the mid-1940s, BYU temporarily used Allen Hall to house both men and women, renting first-floor rooms to men and second- and third-floor rooms to women. Eventually, the first floor was converted to women’s housing as well, and men did not fully occupy Allen Hall again until 1953.  In the 1950s, BYU built new dorms to house its increasingly numerous students, perhaps making Allen Hall less significant to BYU’s overall housing needs. Students stopped living in Allen Hall in 1962, and the Church’s Language Training Mission took over the building to house missionaries-in-training. In 1980, BYU took over the building again and used it to host its Museum of Peoples and Cultures for over thirty years. After the museum moved to its present location on Canyon Road in 2014, BYU occasionally used Allen Hall to accommodate university employees when construction created a shortage of office space. Four years later, in June 2018, BYU announced plans to demolish Allen Hall on the grounds that its age made it unusable for university purposes. Preservation Utah, a historical preservation nonprofit, objected to the planned demolition, arguing that losing Allen Hall would “erase a key part of the university’s story of historical growth and expansion.” Despite Preservation Utah’s passion, however, its intervention came too late. BYU demolished Allen Hall in August 2018. As of January 2022, BYU maintains the empty lot as a grass field.

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Before there was a Brigham Young Academy (BYA) Building at Academy Square, BYA’s first schoolhouse was the Lewis Building (or Lewis Hall, evidently named after J.W. Lewis, who leased it from Brigham Young, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). The Lewis Building was originally built as a warehouse and used as an amusement hall, but it became a place of learning when brothers Warren and Wilson Dusenberry rented it as an expansion to their “second Dusenberry school” in 1869. By the summer of 1870, the University of Deseret took notice of the Dusenberry school and incorporated it as the Timpanogos Branch of the University of Deseret. Young, who owned the Lewis Building, was keenly interested in the school’s success. When the Dusenberrys struggled to make ends meet, Young often waived their rent. Starting in 1873, however, the Timpanogos Branch began buckling under financial hardship. Rent prices rose while enrollment stagnated, and the Dusenberries had to take on extra jobs to keep themselves afloat while the Timpanogos Branch struggled. In the spring of 1875, the Timpanogos Branch closed completely. However, Young turned the closure into a new beginning. Having contemplated establishing a school in Provo for years, Young deeded the Lewis Building as a home for a new institution, Brigham Young Academy, and he hired Warren Dusenberry as a principal and Wilson Dusenberry as a teacher. The Lewis Building underwent repairs for the remainder of 1875. Brigham Young Academy opened for its first term in January 1876. Warren resigned as principal in April, and Karl G. Maeser replaced him as the Academy’s first long-term principal. Although the young Brigham Young Academy now fully controlled the Lewis Building, it still struggled to keep financially afloat. Young’s deed voided rents as a burden, but enrollment was still down; in August 1876, BYA started its fall term with only ninety-seven students and about $100 in its balance. To stay solvent, BYA rented rooms for parties and concerts, even during school hours, which interrupted students’ studies. A year later, in August 1877, Young died, leaving it up to trustees to manage BYA. Yet the longer BYA survived, the more it thrived. In 1878, the school’s Academic Department, the only department for older students, split into four: Language, Polytechnical, Commercial (these three were taught at a high school level), and Scientific (for even more advanced students). In the late 1870s, BYA also organized a Normal Department, for teacher training. By 1880, over 300 students were enrolled, and in 1881, BYA awarded its first collegiate diploma to James E. Talmage, the future apostle-scientist. Tragedy struck when a fire destroyed the Lewis Building in 1884, leaving BYA without a schoolhouse. Reed Smoot, future apostle-senator, recalled saying to Principal Maeser, “Oh, Brother Maeser, the academy has burned.” Maeser rebuffed Smoot’s dismay. “No such thing,” Maeser said. “It’s only the building.” BYA worked quickly to borrow and rent rooms for classroom use, and it lost only a day of classes, reconvening on Tuesday in whatever spaces could be secured in buildings around Provo. BYA was homeless until a new structure was built in 1892. The Lewis Building was gone, but Brigham Young Academy—now University—lived on. In recognition of the Lewis Building’s legacy, in 2004, This Is the Place Heritage Park built its Smoot Hall building as a replica of the original Lewis Building, BYA’s first home.

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