Northern Arizona University: Taylor Hall Expansion and Renovation – Flagstaff AZ

Description

The Public Works Administration (PWA) gave the Arizona State Teachers College a grant of $105,000 and a loan of $313,000 to build housing on the campus – today’s Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff.  These were North Hall, expansion of Taylor Hall and Cottage City.

Taylor Hall had been built in 1905 as a girls’ dormitory and switched to men in 1908.  An earlier expansion had added a north wing to the original building (the date of the photograph in NAU library is given as 1937, but that’s not possible given the car and clothing in the scene).

The New Deal expansion and renovation probably began in 1935, at the same time as the construction of North Hall, with a new wing added on the east end of the hall and the exterior renovated to change the entire appearance of the building.

The older Richardson Romanesque sandstone block look of the turn of the century was slimmed down to red-brick Georgian Neoclassical, similar to most of the newer buildings of the time on campus – such as North Hall.

The New Deal wing is distinguished on the front by white bas-relief columns and there is a disjunction in the roof line. From the back, the entire building looks to be more of a piece.