Oct. 6, 2008 issue
‘A castle of learning'
By Melanie ZuercherNORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Bethel College’s Administration Building is not only the symbol of the college for generations of alumni. It is also a tangible piece of history and the centerpiece of this year’s Fall Festival.
The Administration Building has stood as the symbol of Bethel College for 120 years. — Photo by Vada Snider/Bethel College
Bethel, chartered in 1887, will mark its 125th year in 2012, but the celebration begins already this year when the Ad Building turns 120.
A display of Ad Building memorabilia, a storytelling project and a birthday party are on the Fall Festival schedule for Oct. 4.
So, too, is a multimedia presentation put together by emeritus professors Bob Regier and Keith Sprunger, to be given twice during Fall Festival.
Sprunger remembers his first glimpse of the Ad Building in 1963, when he drove to Kansas with his family to begin his nearly 40-year teaching career at Bethel.
“Even from a great distance, [the Ad Building loomed] over the Kansas landscape, a castle on the prairies,” he said.
When the Bethel board of directors laid the cornerstone for the Administration Building on Oct. 12, 1888, they stepped squarely into history.
Church-related liberal arts colleges were rising by the hundreds across the Great Plains as part of the movement to “civilize and educate the American prairies.” Southwestern College at Winfield, Kansas Wesleyan University at Salina and Bethany College at Lindsborg were all chartered in 1886, Sterling College in 1887 and McPherson College in 1888.
In those days, it was common to build one large, main college building, frequently referred to even today as “Old Main.”
More than that, however, Bethel was the first Mennonite college in North America. Its founders, well aware of the precedent they were setting, were determined that the college’s main building would be an outstanding structure.
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