Epilogue: When Rocks Hit the Roof

Epilogue: When Rocks Hit the Roof McGill University

| Skip to search Skip to navigation Skip to page content

User Tools (skip):

Sign in | Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Sister Sites: McGill website | myMcGill

McGill News
ALUMNI QUARTERLY - winter 2008
McGill News cover

| Help
Page Options (skip): Larger
Home > McGill News > 2003 > Winter 2003-2004 > Epilogue: When Rocks Hit the Roof

Epilogue: When Rocks Hit the Roof

Caption follows
Dawson Hall, circa 1900.
McGill Archives

If you're a McGill Arts or Science graduate, chances are you've spent some time in Dawson Hall. For serious students, it might have been to seek an academic advisor, or for the less intense, perhaps it was to plead the case for dropping a course that interfered with extracurricular activities. Tucked in next to the Arts Building, Dawson Hall has been a part of the downtown campus from its earliest days. Dr. Frost, former director of the History of McGill Project, tells us what's gone on there over the past 160 years.

Why Dawson and why Hall? The answer goes back a long way. When Principal John Bethune erected the first buildings in 1843 there were just two of them, the Arts Building and the East Wing. The later name was a hopeful one rather than an accurate designation. The idea was that one day the two buildings would be joined, and that the eastern structure would really become a "wing" of the Arts Building, but at first it was simply a detached annex.

Inside it was a rabbit warren of small rooms housing the vice-principal, the bursar, the college bailiff, the steward and all their families and servants; two bachelor lecturers, one of whom had a servant (at least he called her his servant, although he kept her in his rooms - for which he was strongly censured); and away up in the attic there was an undetermined number of students. The cooking and sanitary facilities are best left to the imagination.

Then the city began blasting the new reservoir on the mountain behind and above the buildings. Rocks rained down on the roofs and made the buildings uninhabitable. The vice-principal, the bursar, the bailiff, the steward and the academic classes departed to safer quarters downtown. But some of the students stuck it out, and the East Wing became the Boarding House.

In 1885 the rain of rocks stopped and the roofs were patched, and the new principal, a Nova Scotian named William Dawson, moved in with his family. The ground floor served as the University offices, the Dawson family lived on the second floor, and some students still maintained themselves precariously in the attic. But also decorously, for with the floors uncarpeted one dared not kick up one's heels, even on a Saturday night. The building was now given dignity as "the Principal's Residence."

William Molson gave the Arts Building its much needed west wing in 1862. Included in it was a Convocation Hall, so the western addition was properly named Molson Hall. He also joined the three buildings with connecting structures. Thirty years later, the young principal had become the old and venerable principal and retired laden with honours.

The new patrician incumbent, Sir William Peterson, was housed in the Prince of Wales Terrace. The Law Faculty, which all these years had remained downtown (and heaven knows what they got up to on Saturday nights) was now brought back to occupy the third floor of the renamed East Wing and a fourth floor was added to house them more commodiously. The second floor, like the first, now accommodated the expanding University administration. What had been Lady Dawson's drawing room became the new Principal's Office, the seat of all power and authority. Here reigned, in turn, that formidable trio, Sir William Peterson, Sir Arthur Currie, and Principal F. Cyril James.

But the University continued to grow, especially after World War II when all those veterans came flooding back. So the lawyers were packed off to Chancellor Day Hall, the Registrar's Office was given the ground floor and University administration occupied the rest, except for the fourth floor, where the infant Graduate Faculty lived as precariously as had the students a century before.

Towards the end of the James era, the administration continued to swell mightily and began to cast covetous eyes on the great Biology Building - what splendid offices they could have there! No sooner thought than done. But the old East Wing, bereft of its former dignity as successively, the Boarding House, the Principal's Residence, and the University Administration, was being left as mere faculty offices - Arts, Science and the now very vigorous Graduate Studies. Some more seemly designation should surely be accorded. If the west wing was a hall surely the east wing should be given the same dignity? But which of its many rich associations should be honoured?

It was from that building that for nearly 40 years Principal Sir William Dawson and his family had sallied forth to church on Sunday mornings, to walk through the pleasant campus he had created out of a derelict farm. As they reached Sherbrooke Street they could look back at that dignified stone residence which he had imbued with such high scientific reputation and unrivalled principalian virtues. Principal James had the new name carved in stone above the old lintel: Dawson Hall.

view sidebar content | back to top of page