Renovations on the Compton Union Building and Martin Stadium continued on the WSU Pullman campus. The nine-hole WSU Golf Course was also renovated into an 18-hole championship course and renamed WSU’s Palouse Ridge Golf Club. The renovations were completed and both the CUB and Martin Stadium were open for the fall semester in 2008.
Construction began on the new Plant Biosciences Building, the first of several new buildings that will create a new research and education complex along Stadium Way. The building was dedicated on October 14, 2005 and named for wheat researcher Orville Vogel in 2007.
The facility, a five-story brick-and-wood building vilified by President Bryan for its lack of looks and efficiency, burns after a kitchen fire spreads out of control.
In 1900, the new Ferry residence hall opens. A four-story brick structure topped with a four-sided cupola, it houses between 100 and 180 students. Ferry serves as the only men’s residence hall on campus for three decades. The hall also houses the first campus fraternity, which starts as a club before moving off campus.
Despite an effort by alumni, students, and staff to preserve it, Ferry is demolished in the late-1960s—but not before the cupola was saved. In 1975 it’s relocated to the Glenn Terrell Friendship Mall, near Murrow Hall. Construction in the Murrow Yard in 2008 sparks the cupola’s relocation to its present site in the new arboretum near the Lewis Alumni Center.
Famed “Agony Hall” (Music Conservatory) is torn down to make way for the new Kimbrough Music Building.
Post-WWII construction at WSC was marked by the importing of many temporary buildings to handle the boom of returning soldier students. Many of these buildings came from the Farragut Naval Training Station near Coeur d’Alene, ID while others came from Vancouver, WA. These buildings were torn down by the mid 1990s.
Construction begins on the Women’s Gym, now known as Smith Gym, and on Davis and Wilmer residence halls.
The Washington Legislature creates the office of State Veterinarian specifying that they also be the Professor of Veterinary Science at the college and a member of the State Board of Health. Sofus Bertelson Nelson, a native of Denmark, an Iowa State College graduate, and Spokane practitioner, is appointed to the post by the Board of Regents. Nelson later serves as Dean of the College of Veterinary Science and in 1919 he resigns to assume the post of Director of Agricultural Extension. In 18 years of service, records show he personally examined 149,182 animals. Cost of the services rendered is $45,000 total. The initial curriculum consists of a series of courses intended to supplement agriculture classes and to provide initial training to students who intend to transfer to another school. The veterinary labs are housed in (old) College Hall and a shed is constructed for $60 on the south end of campus to house the operating rooms.
