A Brief History of the Administration Building (composed from anhistory that is located in the MC General File and material in the Howe file*)
When President Howe founded Manchester College in 1889 it took great energy to transform his dreams into brick and mortar. By July of 1889 the fifteen acres of white oaks along the Vandalia Railway began to look like a campus. Two buildings were under construction; a 14 room boarding hall and an academic building, Bumgerdner Hall. Bumgerdner Hall is now the east section of the Administration Building. An August cornerstone-laying ceremony drew some pastors and a crowd of townsfolk.
When the school opened on November 5, 1889, classes were held in the boarding hall while Bumgerdner Hall was being completed.
One early student recalled:
The foundation walls were in for Bumgerdner Hall, and day after day we watched the walls of this building rise. As soon as it could be gotten under roof, the northwest room on the first floor was finished, and it became the college chapel, as well as the college recitation rooms. Here President D. N. Howe taught sixteen hours a day, beginning by using coal-oil lamps in the morning, and using these same lamps in the evening.
Students helped work on the buildings. Student, Jonathan Wagner wrote:
During the year 1889-90, it was not unusual thing for the boys to work on the grounds and building until the ringing of the first warning bell and then drop axes, shovels, hammers and saws and meet president Howe and Professor Berry in classes.
President Howe, himself, felled trees and tree limbs in order to advance the construction. President Howe and his family lived in the basement of Bumgerdner Hall…and it is in this apartment where his first wife, Delilah, died.
Under the second President, Professor Kriebel, the College fell into financial ruin. The school was then purchased by the Young Brothers. The brothers, E. S. and S. S. Young, were members of the Church of the Brethren, E. S. being a biblical scholar. Both brothers had strong ties to Mt. Morris College, a Church of the Brethren institution in Illinois.
In 1895 the local paper announced the names of E. S. and S. S. Young as President and Business Manager of the new Manchester College and The Bible School. The Bible School building, currently the west side of the Administration Building, was built in 1895 from money contributed by the Town of North Manchester and from the new Church of the Brethren owners. To raise their share of the cost, the town bought a farm, divided it into lots, and sold them. The Bible Building contained the college chapel, offices for the President and Treasurer, a small library and several classrooms.
Bumgerdner Hall eventually took on the name of the College Hall. After debate, College Hall and the Bible School building were incorporated into the Administration Building in 1921. The renovation was done with reluctance. President Otho Winger remembered:
When we began to talk about joining the College Hall and Bible building, there were many objections because of the fact that it would mean many beautiful trees would have to be cut down but the more we thought about this, the more we felt it was the only thing to do. So in the summer of 1920 we turned the first spade in that ground. Many were the regrets as the trees were cut down, one by one.
The newly-named Administration Building was dedicated on January 7, 1921. It held spacious class and literary society rooms, a larger, brightly lit library, and an auditorium that seated nearly a thousand people. Ex-Governor M. G. Brumbaugh of Pennsylvania, a member of the Church of the Brethren, presented the main address that day.
In 1920, alumni decided to raise funds to purchase a ten bell chime estimated to cost as much as $10,000. When the bells arrived on August 9, 1922 hundreds of people were on hand to help pull them one by one into the tower.
There are inscriptions on the bells that represent the idea to which each bell has been dedicated.* In 1923, a student, Ermon Clingenpeel, wrote a letter to his parents. He wrote about the tower and about the bells:
They ring the chimes every morning at quarter till seven, and every evening about 6 o’clock. We were up in the observation tower the other day, you can see for miles around from up there.
Elaborate stagings for oratorios and dramatic productions were produced within the auditorium of the Administration Building by Professor Sadie Stutsman Wampler. In 1964 this space was named the Sadie Wampler Auditorium in recognition of her service to the school.
Information compiled by Jeanine Wine, Archivist, April 2008
*See also: MC General File: Faculty/Staff, Howe.
*MC General File: Chime.
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