WKU News

The round building on WKU’s campus is about to be no more as demolition of Tate Page Hall is underway.

WKU’s Amy Bingham talks to a professor who worked there almost from the beginning in this week’s View from the Hill.

Dr. Sam McFarland spent four decades on the second floor of Tate Page Hall.  He has nothing but fond memories of the round building that often had people walking in circles.

Tate Page Hall is coming down…

…One bite at a time.

“I do have almost entirely very fond memories of my time in this building and teaching in this building.”

It’s a nostalgic moment for long time psychology professor Dr. Sam McFarland.

“It opened in 1970 and I moved in in the fall of 1971 when it was still the new building that everybody was very proud of.”

The facility was named for Tate C.  Page, the Dean of the College of Education from 1959 to 1973.

“I knew Tate Page the person for whom the building was named.  He’s the person who hired me to come to Western.”

McFarland says the surroundings today are completely different than when TPH was first built.

“When I first came there were a few houses down there that were World War Two kind of leftovers.”

McFarland says finding landmarks and having color coded floors helped people find their way but he still witnessed a lot of confusion over the years.

“Students, or people who weren’t in the building very much,  got turned around a lot.  You know, couldn’t figure out exactly where they were in that building.”

But he says he and his colleagues embraced the building’s unique advantages.

“I enjoyed the building. You know the truth is I enjoyed the fact that it was fairly close from anywhere else in the building due to the fact that circular halls made it that way.”

Once the rubble is cleared away, the area will revert to green space and expand the South Lawn.

Tate Page Hall had been used as swing space since the Education and Psychology departments relocated to Gary Ransdell Hall at the beginning of 2011.