What was once women’s dormitory housing thousands of women is now being dismantled. Case Hall on Eastern Kentucky University’s campus is being torn down amidst floods of memories from those that lived and studied there.
Case Hall, named after former Dean of Women Mrs. Emma Case, has been a landmark dormitory on EKU’s campus since it was built in 1961. The white-pillared structure was vacated at the end of the spring semester and demolition is on schedule, which the building being demolished piecemeal.
A new dining facility will take its place in the centrally-located area where Case Hall and Annex once stood.
Katie Hadden lived with a group of other women her freshman year in 1968. The memories she and her friends created in Case will last a lifetime.
“We thought we were the coolest dorm, because we had a grill down in the basement and none of the other dorms had that and for a freshman dorm we thought that was great because we could go down there and they stayed open until about nine.”
Hadden says that the twelve friends that bonded in Case still keep in touch and got to tour their old rooms before it was torn down. Before the heavy equipment arrived, EKU President Michael Benson allowed the ladies to tour the dorm.
“We’ve kept in touch the whole time, it’s been 48 years and we are still very good friends. We definitely were thinking oh, if we could just get in there one more time, and I thought, well lets just see if I could find somebody in housing and maybe they’ll let us in.”
Being back in their old living quarters had the group of lifelong friends reminiscing and laughing about their early college years. They were partial to their freshman dorm as it had the best location in the heart of campus, as well as some perks that came along when trying to avoid the ten o’ clock curfew.
“It never occurred to one of us to go say to someone that we need a screen on our window, we just left it without. It became the room for people to sneak in late or sneak out after curfew, so that was a pretty exciting room to live in after all.”
The new dining hall is planned to be erected during fall 2017, and renovation of the current dining building, Powell, will commence.
Before it was vacated after the spring semester of this year to start the razing process, Case was a co-ed dorm for mostly students of the arts.
