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| Samantha Roney Class of 2015 |
For the past two years I have had the opportunity to work for the University of Louisville as a Cardinal Ambassador. As an ambassador, I serve as an official tour guide of U of L and have the opportunity to show prospective students my great university. As a part of our program some of my coworkers and I had the opportunity to take a historical tour of U of L led by longtime archivist and metro-council member Dr. Tom Owen.
In an hour tour I learned that the area Belknap campus currently resides on was once a cemetery. After the cemetery failed to attract enough tenants, the city of Louisville sold the land to the Louisville House of Refuge--later named the Industrial School of Reform. The House of Refuge was an orphanage and also provided homes for wayward youth. During that time they built several buildings still used by the university today. The oldest of those buildings was Gardiner Hall. Originally a dormitory built in 1872, it currently houses arts and sciences advising and is home to the religious studies department at U of L. In addition to Gardiner Hall six other buildings belonged to the Louisville House of Refuge that are now classroom buildings. Those buildings are Oppenheimer Hall, Ford Hall, Gardiner Hall, Gottchalk Hall, Bridgman Hall, Patterson Hall, and the Playhouse. The playhouse was originally the chapel of the reform school and sat where Ekstrom Library is now. When the reform school closed and the area became a city college all of the wood from the chapel was preserved and later erected in the Liberty Park area on campus.
In addition to the various buildings that are still used by the university, it was interesting to see how the University bought and renovated the existing neighborhoods-now a part of campus. For example the walkway through the College of Business was once Brandeis Street. The area between Miller Hall and Davidson Hall was First Street and the Honor’s Overseers House was a residential house on First Street.
I found the tour to be very informative and really shed a new light onto the way campus was laid out. I found that since a main tenant of the McConnell Scholar’s Program is showing Kentucky’s future leaders the great parts of the state it only seems natural that we would learn more about the actual university our program was founded on. Perhaps in the near future we scholars-as well as the public- will have the opportunity to do just that.
Samantha Roney is a senior McConnell Scholar studying political science and finance. She is from Danville, Ky.