Harris Hall

Built in 1886 for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church to serve as a parish house and student center for University of Michigan students, Harris Hall is significant as an important center of University of Michigan and Ann Arbor social and cultural life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Harris Hall is also important in architectural terms as a large and well designed Late Victorian structure -- notable for its picturesque massing and eclectic Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Gothic detailing in stone and terra cotta -- and as a major work by Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd, one of the leaders of the profession in Michigan in the late nineteenth century. Harris Hall was the brainchild of the Right Reverend Samuel Smith Harris, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Michigan. Bishop Harris, caught up in the controversy of the time over Darwin's theories and believing that open discussion would demonstrate the fundamental compatibility of Christianity and science, conceived the idea of constructing a forum for such discussions in Ann Arbor, the seat of Michigan's oldest and largest university. The Bishop and St. Andrew's, the episcopal parish in Ann Arbor, began raising funds in 1883; in 1887 the building named Hobart Hall in honor of the Rev. John Henry Hobart, the first Episcopal bishop, whose diocese included Michigan -- was completed. Renamed in 1888 in honor of the then recently deceased Bishop Harris, Harris Hall contained what was probably the largest and best-equipped auditorium in Ann Arbor at the time of its construction. It was used for lectures, concerts, and all other 'edifying' forms of entertainment and served not only the university but the Ann Arbor community at large. A multi-purpose structure, the building also contained a gymnasium, bowling alley, and billiard room for the use of students and parish house facilities for St. Andrew's Church. Harris Hall continued to serve its original purpose until 1943. From 1943 to 1946 it housed a u.s.a. for servicemen undergoing military training at the University of Michigan. The university leased it from 1946 to 1974 as the headquarters for the Band and Wind Instrument departments. Since 1974, when St. Andrew's sold the structure, Harris Hall has been used for office purposes. The architect of Harris Hall was Gordon W. Lloyd. Born and trained in England, Lloyd (1832-1904) was working in Detroit by the early 1860s. Best known in Michigan for the Gothic Revival churches he designed for many parishes across southern Michigan, Lloyd also planned several buildings for the University of Michigan, including the 1879 heating plant and the 1886-87 Anatomical Laboratory and Engineering Building Annex.

Harris Hall is located at the northwest corner of Huron and State streets opposite the northwest corner of the central main campus of the University of Michigan. Constructed in 1886, the building is a two-and-a-half-story, gable-roofed structure, fifty feet by eighty-eight feet in size. Standing on a random-ashlar foundation, this red-brick structure is trimmed with simple, wooden, Queen Anne-style, bracket-supported eavesboards and with yellow-gray, stone string courses, doorway and window sills and lintels, and drip moldings over the brickwork arches crowning the windows. The recessed, arch-topped, spandrel panels above the first-floor windows and the entry portal gable are finished with red, molded, terra cotta work. In the second story, however, the arched panels above some of the windows have colored glass transom lights. The entry portal, protecting a flight of limestone steps running up to the main entrance, is a projecting, gable-roofed structure containing a broad arch crowned by a stone drip molding and flanked by buttressed walls; the portal's rounded flanking walls and carved stone capitals are suggestive of Romanesque columns. Originally constructed to house parish and student social, cultural, and recreational activities, Harris Hall was rehabilitated in 1980 and now contains office space. The structure has three floors. The basement, which contained a gymnasium, bowling alley, and billiard room, along with coal and boiler rooms, has been remodelled to house offices. The main floor was and is divided into two parts by a corridor running from front to back. Finished in northern Maple, including a three-and-a-half-foot high tongue-and-groove dado all around, the main floor had men's and women's parlors -- each containing a fireplace with an oak mantelpiece on the right-hand or east side. On the west side there was a library and, connected to it by double doors, a parlor/dining room and kitchen. These rooms have been somewhat altered in the process of conversion to office space, but retain much of their original trim, including the two mantelpieces. The stair hall, located at the southwest corner, remains intact; it has a fine, U-shaped staircase with a delightfully ornamental pierced, slatwork railing. The upper level contained the stair hall (still intact) at the southwest corner and a room for the 'curator' at the southeast corner. The curator's room, containing a third fireplace, has been little altered and is now used as a waiting room for the advertising agency which occupies the entire floor. Between these spaces was a lobby and, back of it, occupying the rest of the floor, an auditorium, seventy-six feet by fifty-three feet in size and entered through two sets of double doors. The auditorium was equipped with a twenty-two-foot-wide stage -- the segmental-arch proscenium displaying another drip molding -- at its north end and folding opera chair seats. In the process of conversion to office use, while the seating was removed, few other substantive, non-reversible changes were made. The only significant alteration was the partitioning of the floor space into low-walled offices along the side walls and on the stage (the stage floor and proscenium remain intact) and into work stations in the center. The dado and other wooden trim and the original ceiling have also been retained. Of tongue-and-groove-board construction, the ceiling has sloping side sections against the east and west walls and a flat central portion. Three deep, timberwork trusses of mildly Gothic inspiration span the room, sweeping in great arcs from simple corbel brackets on either side wall.