Biography of Old Main

By Erin Peterson / Photos by David J. Turner / Photos courtesy of Macalester Archives

It was 1884, and Macalester College was in trouble.

Enrollment was low. The college had recently wrapped up a three-year campaign that failed to achieve its goal of creating a $45,000 endowment (about $1.4 million in 2024 dollars), and the trustees had not reliably met the payroll obligations of its six-person faculty for two years. With assets totaling just $160,000—a single building, a 160-acre tract of land, and a tiny endowment—the trustees could have decided on a course of belt-tightening.

Instead, they took the biggest swing imaginable. They approved a $68,000 contract to add a wing onto the west side of the original building. The addition, they reasoned, would help the ten-year-old college look more established. With a little luck, this sleight of hand would lead to more students, more tuition dollars, and more financial stability.

By 1889, the new wing, known today as Old Main, was open for use.

While the new building did not immediately turn the college’s fortunes around, it became an integral part of the college’s identity. “When you think about Macalester’s campus, Old Main is probably the first thing most people imagine,” says Andie Walker ’23, who wrote about the building’s history as part of her senior honors project. “It’s an iconic building, and it inspired a lot of the other campus architecture.”

Today, Old Main is home to six academic departments and the backdrop for countless viewbook photos and Instagram posts. It’s also earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of the West Summit Avenue Historic District. But Old Main has always been about more than its bricks and mortar. For decades, it embodied the joyful messiness and aspirations of a growing college. It continues to be a vibrant gathering place for students and faculty today.

Built for work (and play)

The wing that opened in 1889 included new classrooms, a museum, a reading room, and a gymnasium. It supplemented the original facility’s classrooms, student housing, chapel, and cafeteria.

Both wings of the building were built in a style described by the architects as “modern Elizabethan.” The stately brick exterior and graceful arched windows suggested a seriousness of purpose. It would be home, the trustees hoped, to deep study and lively debate. Certainly, it was.

But Macalester being Macalester, Old Main also immediately saw an assortment of shenanigans. Students surreptitiously hosted late-night dances in the building against administrative policy and snuck into one another’s rooms after curfew. They once brought a goat into psychology and logic professor Andrew Anderson’s classroom. “I invited Mr. Goat to leave,” Anderson recalled in a Mac Weekly article many years later. “He balked, looked at me woefully—and finally accepted my invitation to leave.”

As the college’s physical plant grew, offices, classrooms, and other campus spaces shifted in and out of Old Main like a sliding puzzle. The building became home, at least temporarily, to the school’s post office, a ticket booth, and the student union.

No matter what Old Main housed, the space was always bustling with lectures and student club gatherings. For students meeting to go to an off-campus activity, it served as a central spot to gather before their departure, and it was a common backdrop for class photos.

Although Old Main was always lively, its limitations were clear. An article in one Mac Weekly lamented the building’s inefficient design, noting that “much of the space is occupied by hallways, stairways, and pillars.” Another article reported that the college radio station was broadcasting from an oversized Old Main closet in which “the only comfortable position was an ape-like crouch.” By the 1960s, architects saw Old Main not as a historic asset, but as an aging liability. A comprehensive campus plan unveiled in 1968 slated the building for demolition by 1970.

Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed. That portion of the plan was never implemented, and instead, Old Main was nominated and accepted for placement on the National Register of Historic Places. At the time of its listing in 1977, it housed primarily administrative and staff offices.

A space for everyone

By 1985, Macalester was determined to develop a more modern library, and initially planned to renovate the original, east wing of the Old Main building. However, engineering analyses concluded that the century-old structure could not withstand the stresses of a significant renovation. The original Old Main building was torn down in 1986, replaced two years later by the DeWitt Wallace Library on the same site. Only the west wing of Old Main remains.

A few years later, Old Main got significant updates, which included airy, bookshelf-ready faculty offices. The improvements also made better use of the fourth floor, with a new, large lounge space featuring skylights, angled walls, and cozy niches. The space is now often used for student gatherings, faculty talks, coffee houses, and literary salons.

If the construction materials and furnishings give the interior a generally contemporary feel, the quirky corners and alcoves reveal the building’s history. Students often find the building’s unusual spaces inviting, says Beth Severy-Hoven, professor of the classical Mediterranean and Middle East. “I always tell first-year students that they should find a space to go to when they’re not in their dorm and they’re between classes. I think a lot of people find ‘their space’ in one of the nooks of Old Main.”

For Walker, Old Main is beloved in part because it’s never been preserved in amber: the space has shifted with the needs of the college, students, and faculty. “Old Main is an important part of Macalester’s history and community, but it is sustained for the people who use it,” she says. “If we care about these buildings and put energy into them, they’ll continue to be places that are important for us.”

The morning routine of a centenarian

Two custodial staff members are assigned to a 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. weekday cleaning shift in Old Main, where they handle everything from disinfecting surfaces to removing snow, says Nathan Lief, AVP for Facilities Services.

37 seconds

The time it takes to travel from the basement to the fourth floor in Old Main’s elevator. “You can have a reasonable-length conversation,” jokes classical Mediterranean and Middle East professor Beth Severy-Hoven of the elevator’s notoriously leisurely pace. “It’s not just, ‘Hi, how are you?’”

Critchett Fund supports Old Main’s popularity

The Critchett Fund, named in honor of the late Thomas Critchett ’79, who earned an English degree at Macalester, supports a range of initiatives for the English Department. The department primarily uses the fund to support academics, for example class theater trips. But what may be more visible is funding for treats for English majors and friends. “I think our bagel Mondays are famous across the whole campus,” says English professor Daylanne English. “We have a vibrant snack culture that matches our vibrant academic culture.”

But do they know about the English Department’s bagel Mondays?

“There were no squirrels in Tehran where I grew up, but lots of street cats. I would always feed them. I could not have pets when I moved to California, but I saw many squirrels and birds around my apartment and started feeding them. I continued the habit when I moved to Minnesota. I cannot describe the joy watching animals brings me. I think almost every student who’s ever walked into my office has seen the squirrels.”

—Ahoo Najafian, assistant professor of Islamic studies, feeds squirrels from her office, Old Main 116

Gardens of knowledge

“I came to Macalester in 2018. At one point, I brought in three or four medium-sized plants, and these ‘mother’ plants grew and grew. I ran out of shelf space in the departments’ office and snuck some out into the hallway window areas.

Initially I worried someone might tell me they had to go, but I try to take care of them in ways that don’t cause any additional work for anyone else, and I have observed the increased use of the plant-laden areas for student study. It has now become rare to find these spaces unoccupied and this connects our departments to college life and adds to the vibrancy on our floor.”

—Sara Dion, department coordinator for philosophy and religious studies, Old Main 108

Tea time

“Three or four times a semester, I make Indian-style chai for an event called ‘Chai time.’ I boil up a big pot of water, and add milk, tea leaves, and sugar to make about thirty cups of tea. I always add spices— cardamom, ginger, cinnamon—for ‘special chai.’ It’s open to the public, and we might have as many as twenty-five students. It’s nice! We hang out, we chat. My new innovation is vegan chai made with oat milk. But I’ll never make non-sugar chai. It’s got to have sugar to be authentic.”

—Jim Laine, Arnold H. Lowe Professor of Religious Studies, Old Main 103

Accounts of their swordplay skills were inflated

“This past fall, I took a history class, ‘Pirates, Translators, Missionaries,’ in Old Main from history professor Karin Vélez. She’s always encouraging students to be creative, and she knew I could make balloon animals. So she asked me if I could make balloon swords for everyone in class so that when we talked about pirates, we could actually duel with real weapons. I think there’s just something about Old Main—it looks like a castle, and I think it encourages students to fill those spaces with creativity.”

—Liam Athas ’26

Behind the locked door, treasure: a copier

“There’s a secret Xerox machine on the ground floor, tucked in an alcove behind the elevator; it used to be behind a locked door that required a special key. It was like a Harry Potter closet! I remember fighting to get one of those extra keys. The copy machines always break the first week of school, but if you’ve got a key to that room? You’ll still get to class with your copies.”

—Karin Vélez, associate professor of history, Old Main 306

A beautiful home for the humanities

When I came to Macalester in 2003, I remember walking into Old Main—the fresh carpets, the stunning offices, the beautiful bookshelves. It was a building that housed mostly humanities, and it was literally in the center of campus! It was, to me, a sign that the college really valued the humanities and the liberal arts. It made such a big impression on me.”

—Daylanne English, professor of English, Old Main 201

Did a student— maybe even DeWitt Wallace—really bring a cow to the top of Old Main?

Nope. That’s a tall tale.

Erin Peterson is a Minneapolis-based writer.