Demolition of Moore Hall (Pond & Pond, 1893; 1922), South Campus, Lake Forest College, August 9-10, 2012, photographed by Harris Miller '15

Moore Hall, Lake Forest College

Thiese images looking show Moore Hall in the process of being demolished, with Roberts Hall (1965) in the rear, August 10, 2012.  .  

Moore Hall is the first major College structure to be demolished since the 1960s, to make way for a new residence hall that will house about two-hundred more students than Moore could accommodate.

Moore has had a long, sometimes interesting history and perhaps a too long delayed demise. It was part of the Chicago architects Pond & Pond's 1892-93 plan and program to create for Lake Forest University a boys' prep school campus on the eastern model for 1858-launched Lake Forest Academy. This lasted for over a half century, until a fire in 1946 destroyed the architecturally impressive main Reid Hall. By 1948 the Academy moved to the former J. Ogden Armour estate, Mellody Farm, then west of Lake Forest.

After considerable study, Lake Forest College decided to take over the space, now the institution's South Campus. From 1962 to 1965 four new fireproof, mid-century-modern residence halls were built and named for former presidents here: Nollen (John S. Nollen, 1907-18), Gregory (Daniel Seelye Gregory, 1878-1886), McClure (acting 1892-93; 1897-1901), and Roberts (1886-1892). Demolished in 1965 were several campus buildings housing students, but less secure against fire, including Alice Home (North Campus), Bross and Beidler houses (Middle Campus), and Remsen and Bross Cottages/Houses (South Campus). Moore, known from 1893 to 1962 or 1963 as East House, had been the second-class resicence hall for boys, with the two already-demolished cottages being the first-class residences.

Moore in 1921-22 was the home of Bix Beiderbeck (1903-1931; http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~alhaim/brief.htm ), jazz cornetist, who had met in the summer of 1921 Louis Armstrong who was playing jazz on riverboat docked at Bix's home town of Davenport, IA.  Bix followed Armstrong to Chicago, in effect, and sneaked out after lights-out in East House to go to the Calverts stop on the North Shore Line (interurban light rail) just west for the train into the city.  By dawn he would return, and sleep through class.  Bix wrote "In a Mist" in the East House lounge, played some dances that scandalized the locals, and finally got expelled in May 1922 over breaking into a jazz version of the hymn "Rock of Ages" in Chapel. In the 1980s and 1990s Moore was a pilgrimage stop for jazz history scholars and buffs from the U.S. and Europe.    

That fall of 1922 East House burned, too, and when it was rebuilt--apparently also by Pond & Pond--it had a floor added that threw off Irving W. Pond's excellent proportions for the original.  More fireproof, very likely, it was further fireproofed in the 1960s when the other dorms were built adjacent.  

With its original proportions, decorations, etc. lost in the 1922 fire, and with its interior features almost all removed in successive renovations for fire-compliance, Moore by 2012 was a vestige only of its old significant, historic self--as known by Bix and others.

One claim to fame for the now-demolished structure will be its possible status as a model for architect Louis Sullivan's Haskell Hall, later East Hall, at Morgan Park Academy, 1898-99; 2153 West 111th Street, Chicago.  Sullivan's remakrably similar structure is shown on p. 202 of the 2010-published The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan by Richard Nickel et al. Compare that view to this related one: http://collections.lakeforest.edu/admin/items/show/2642 .

Miller, Harris

2012-08-10

http://www.lakeforest.edu/library/archives/permission.php

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