MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College art students are making their new home in the same building where some of Cornell’s greatest athletes competed.
McWethy Hall, Cornell’s newly renovated facility for the art department, was for almost a half-century the epicenter for physical, recreational and athletic activity. The top-floor gymnasium, where 12 conference championships were claimed in wrestling and four in men’s basketball, today holds large teaching studios, a darkroom and classroom space. The original maple gym floor remains and the original wood ceiling and trusses have been exposed.
Cornell will dedicate McWethy Hall on Saturday, Oct. 19, during homecoming. The dedication ceremony is at 11:30 a.m.; the building will be open for viewing from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“The building seems entirely new. It’s a very creative use of space by the architects,” says Tony Plaut, chair of the art department and a 1978 Cornell graduate. Project architects are Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture of Des Moines.
McWethy Hall was originally known as Alumni Gymnasium when it opened in 1909. Cornell’s 1947 wrestling team competed in Alumni on its way to becoming the smallest college to win the NCAA Division I championship. Alumni was home to six Olympic wrestlers and hosted training runs by Glenn Cunningham, former director of athletics at Cornell and a two-time Olympian in distance running.
When Cornell’s new Field House opened in 1953, Alumni was remodeled for the department of health and physical education for women, then later as offices for part-time coaches and college faculty.
In 2001, the college began renovations to convert Alumni for the art department, which was outgrowing space it shared with the music and theater departments in Armstrong Hall of Fine Arts. Besides the changes to the gymnasium space, additions include offices for faculty and studios for faculty and students. The former dance studio is now the Peter Paul Luce Gallery, built with a $1 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation in honor of Peter Paul Luce of Englewood, Colo., son of Luce Foundation founder Henry R. Luce and a Cornell life trustee. An annex just north of the building houses a kiln room and foundry and helps enclose an outdoor courtyard for sculpture and ceramics projects.
The building is named for chief benefactor James McWethy, a 1965 graduate living in Downers Grove, Ill. He pledged $2 million toward the $5.3 million renovation. McWethy earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and business and mathematics. For more than 20 years he worked in his family’s business, Berry Bearing Co., once the largest privately held bearing distributor in the world. McWethy was chief financial officer when the business was sold in 1993. He currently works as an independent businessman and serves on several boards, including the Cornell Board of Trustees since 1995.
Cornell’s fine arts renovation project continues as the theater addition to Armstrong nears completion and Armstrong itself, which opened in 1938, undergoes renovations for the music and theater departments. The theater is scheduled to open in December; Armstrong will reopen in fall 2003. The total fine arts project cost $16.3 million.