Beardsley Hall

The oldest building in the Institute group, Beardsley Hall, was completed in 1907. The building was named in honor of Reverend Bronson Beardsley of Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose widow left the Institute $5,000 to build a memorial to her husband. It housed forty girls on the second and third stories, while the basement served as a dining hall, and the first floor contained the school’s chapel. The attic was a gymnasium. On December 29,1913, a fire gutted this dormitory, but its walls remained sound and the interior was immediately rebuilt.

It is three stories in height, while a two-story ell to the north and several small, later, utilitarian extensions beyond that; none are greater than a story in height. The main block is five bays wide with a one-story, outset, enclosed entry ell fronted by a shallow portico with a double boxed cornice on fluted cast columns; it is approached by a flight of concrete steps. The entry is round-arched and double-doored. Roofs are hip-and-ridge. Hip-and-ridge shingle-sided dormers emerge on either side of an eyebrow dormer centered over the entry, and from each end.

Its reinforced concrete walls, which are scored to imitate block, are sixteen inches thick in the basement and taper to eleven inches at the roof.

From SlocomHall.org