Clark Hall

Clark Hall

Quick Info

Building # 1040 | Abbreviation: CL
College of Arts and Sciences

  • Dean’s Office
  • Administrative Services
  • Student Services Center
  • Theatre and Dance - Dance Studio

College of Arts and Sciences

Clark Hall, built in1884 and named for the 1800s University Trustee Willis G. Clark, contains the Dean of Arts and Sciences Office and the Department of Theatre and Dance’s dance studio. It is the central building of the College of Arts and Sciences.

A 3400-square-foot studio, which used to be a public meeting room and is now the dance studio, is located on the third floor. The Arts and Sciences advising and administrative offices are located on the second floor.

Clark Hall, constructed on the site of the old Lyceum dorm that was destroyed during the Civil War, was originally designed as an all purpose building and contained a library, reading rooms, chapel, and large public meeting room with a balcony. Sixteen items were placed in the cornerstone of the new building, including a silver 1821 dime from the cornerstone of the Lyceum dorm. The large meeting room was used for the University’s commencement ceremonies, but the extremely tall windows created a terrible glare and inconvenienced all within. Determined to cut down the glare, the university had yellow, green, blue, brown, and orange “cathedral glass” installed, but the glass was so brittle that it was heavily damaged in a hail storm a few years later.

In 1910 the building started to go downhill and by 1948 it was near collapse with bowing walls from the heavy sagging roof. However, the engineer Fred Maxwell saved the hall by erecting an interior steel frame within the building, making it the most structurally sound building on campus at the time. Still dealing with the problem of the windows, the university hired a Birmingham artist to paint a trompe l’oeil effect of the sky outside on the boarded up panes. This only lasted until the inside needed a fresh coat of paint and had thoroughly disappeared by 1981 when the building went through its latest remodeling.

Information collected from The University of Alabama : a guide to the campus by Robert Oliver Mellown (Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c1988), and The University of Alabama, a pictorial history by Suzanne Rau Wolfe (University : University of Alabama Press, c1983).