Everyone at Stout is familiar with the current Harvey Hall renovation. We’ve all expressed our annoyance with the online classes and professor offices being moved to North Campus.
But what many don’t know about is what is going on behind the scenes to give students, staff and the public a glimpse of Harvey Hall past, present and future. Heather Stecklein, UW-Stout’s Archivist is the person responsible for collecting, organizing and providing that information about Stout and the community.
Stecklein’s office is in the Archives Center in the Robert S. Swanson Learning Center. The room is large large but filled with a lot of paper, boxes and posters of unique Stout history. Not only does Stecklein have a degree in history and political science, she also has Master’s degrees in public history, library science and American history. But even though it may seem that schooling is the best way to prepare for a career as an archivist, Stecklein assures that it’s much more to it that just reading a textbook.
So how does an archivist decide what is saved and what’s not? Stecklein says that she has to try and make the best guess she can based on her history degree. “We can’t keep everything…so how do we decide what from those papers do we keep and preserve. And so that’s where the history degree comes in, is being able to try to make the best guess that I can.” Stecklein says that she and her team can never guess the kind of interest people will have, but attempt to have a good depiction in the archives.
When asked what her favorite thing to archive is, Stecklein immediately mentioned pictures and oral transcripts. She continued by talking about having some pictures of people in the 1800s hiking at Devils Punchbowl and mentioned she loves seeing the contrast of pictures then and now. Then her passion shined through, “that’s what’s so great about history is that you see starts and stops, and then you see these things that are constant.”
According to Stecklein, sometimes some issues come up that deal with legal processes. There are a lot of records that involve some federal regulations and laws that restrict access to records. One situation that stood out was when an exhibit asked to use a unique artifact from a previous job as an archivist at Rush University Medical Center. The Abraham Lincoln Museum wanted to borrow a piece of her collection, medical kit from the 1840s, for an exhibit on Civil War Medicine. Stecklein said, “there’s a lot of paperwork for how do they borrow it who’s going to pay insurance on this and that or the other thing but knowing that so many people are going to be able to interact with that item and appreciate it, it’s really great…”
Recently, Stecklein has been focusing her energy and excitement on the Harvey Hall renovation and The Centennial Project. The point of the project is to portray Harvey Hall as it has been in the last 100 years. Stecklein feels, “it’s a great time for us to interpret the history of the building.” The project will allow students get to use their own skills, knowledge and voices to portray Harvey Hall through their own eyes. They will use the historical materials in the Archives to create their own vision and put that vision to use with the project as well as their own resumes. The “big vision” is that all of the students involved and their creations will help create a game-like design that lets students, staff and the public see Harvey Hall in many different lights through the last 10 decades. In this interface, users will be able to go through the floors of Harvey Hall through the different eras and interact with the ‘game’ to learn about the history of the building. “It won’t be a book,” says Stecklein, “It’ll be something much more now, much more interactive and much more your choice.”
HARVEY HALL HISTORY
-Harvey Hall is the third oldest building on campus.
-There is a tunnel that connects Harvey Hall to Bowman Hall
-It is a part of a National Register of Historic Places District along with other buildings in Menomonie.
-There is a mural painted on the auditorium ceiling that is covered up with paint.
-Harvey had skylights and glass panels in its floors that allowed natural light to come down from the roof to the third floor. Architects hope to restore those in the renovation.
-The library was located in Harvey Hall until 1954 when it moved to the Robert L. Pierce Library, which is now the Vocational Rehab building.
-Harvey Hall once held laundering
classes in the basement.
-Harvey Hall was remodeled once before in 1977. The project cost $1.2 million.
*All photos courtesy of www.uwstout.edu and chippewa.com