Photography by Keith Boyer
Maps by Ron Mabon
Phase II of IUP’s sweeping housing transformation takes shape this spring, with the demolition of Langham, Mack, Stewart, and Turnbull halls near Maple Street and Gordon Hall on the campus’s north end. Within hours after the Commencement recessional’s last strain wafts across the mid-May air, Residential Revival II swings into high gear.
Construction trailers clog Grant Street, closed to traffic since last spring. Pratt Drive is in the foreground. Langham Hall, behind the new construction, is in its last semester of occupancy. Governors Quad buildings are visible behind it.
Meanwhile, along Grant Street and Pratt Drive, Phase I of the revival has dramatically altered the skyline of university and town. From any vantage point—Regency Mall, Mack Park, Owen J. Dougherty Field on the South Campus—the change is incredible. Next to the elegant new suites buildings with their sloped roofs and bay windows, the “old” halls seem small, squat, and somehow unfinished. In the end, the net visual effect of the project, a collaboration of the Foundation for IUP and the university, is IUP as it was meant to be.
In the current map at left, the buildings in yellow await demolition in late spring. The buildings in orange will open to house students next fall.
By the Fall of 2008, in the map at right, the demolished buildings will have been replaced by two residential structures along Maple Street and another on the north end of campus between Keith and Breezedale.