By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
Described as “nostalgic” at best and “elderly” at worst, residents of Dawson and Allen often felt their residence hall was more like Grandma’s house than a college dorm.
But after 60 years of housing Baylor students, Grandma’s place got a $44 million facelift and probably even a handful of organ transplants.
Opened in 1954 and 1956, respectively, Dawson and Allen Halls began the process for a much-needed renovation last year. The list of upgrades is expansive, ranging from a landscaping overhaul to a complete redesign of the floor plan.
“With Allen and Dawson, we were given the opportunity to come in and take it down to its studs, and by that I mean exterior walls and columns,” Nichole Bekken, a construction project manager at Baylor, said.
With a blank slate, the renovation team was able to provide LEAD LLC, which calls Dawson and Allen home, with all the fixtures they needed. On the outside, those passing by on foot will notice an update to the Allen front porch and to the entrance of Memorial Dining Hall along 8th Street. Those in cars will also notice a newfound smoothness to the notoriously bumpy Baylor Avenue on the north side of the halls.
On the inside, all bedrooms and bathrooms have been updated, as have all plumbing and electrical wiring. Lobbies and common areas have been refreshed and more communal spaces have been added. Study pods now dot the hallways and, more notably, a two-story common area similar to the Honors Residential College’s Carona Family Commons now connects the men’s and women’s sides with a shared living, cooking and studying space.
“It’s just so nice to have a shared space that we can have our events in that’s not just choosing one lobby or the other,” Dodge City, Kan., junior Mallori Bouchard, who has lived with LEAD LLC for three years, said.
After a year in refuge at North Village during the renovation, LEAD residents have returned to their original halls excited about the building’s new features, and perhaps equally excited about the removal of some of its less favorable old ones.
“I used to compare old Dawson to your grandparents’ house,” Bouchard said. “It felt like home; It had its charm, but it was definitely just old and needed a little bit of a facelift.”
With the improvements, however, came some tough decisions. While previous renovations sought to keep the charm of the old building, Dawson and Allen had to sacrifice a lot of old characteristics in exchange for functionality.
“With Allen and Dawson, it was different because we were actually given a clean slate,” Bekken said. “We focused more on what the community needed and what the LEAD program needed more than the physical charm of the building.”
And while all that remains of the original building itself is the exterior walls, some components have helped the building keep its history, like an original piano that has returned to the lobby. For Weatherford junior Kaili Norris, another three-year resident of LEAD LLC, the charm will return when the photo of the building’s namesake does.
“We have a picture of Willie Dawson, and we’re waiting for her to come back,” Norris said. “Once she’s in the living room, I think we will be like, ‘OK, this is still the same place.’”
But even among all the new changes, the building still “feels like home,” according to Bouchard. And after a year of waiting on the other side of campus in a larger, less intimate living arrangement, there is no better place to be than home.
“It definitely feels like we’re back,” Norris said.
