A Piece of History

Today it seems as if nothing remains the same for very long. We are always pushing forward, building new modernized buildings and tearing down the old, perhaps less desirable ones. Our world changes around us faster than we could ever expect, and in that rush of progress, we lose some important things along the way. By advancing our society so recklessly in an attempt to better ourselves, we lose a sense of history and hurt the environment that supports us.

In life, it is very important to know where we’re are headed, what the future holds for us. Yet, even more important than our future is our history. Sometimes we forget where we’ve come from, where we started our journey. We push forward often without taking a second to reflect on the past. The advancements we try to make in society are not always successful ones, and if we forget where we started from, how will we ever know how to get back to a better place when we screw up? The famous Spanish American philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The past holds endless power in the knowledge we can gain by remembering and learning from our mistakes. The past is wisdom. The quality of our lives can be greatly improved with a healthy knowledge of our past struggles and downfalls. We need to preserve any and all great reminders of our past, and the one such reminder is Washington and Jefferson College’s Old Main building.

Old Main the embodies Washington and Jefferson College entirely. It is a grand; an architectural masterpiece not unlike the masterful education the college bestows on its pupils. With its solid stone foundation, it has stood strong throughout the years, its two magnificent towers, representing Sirs Washington and Jefferson's namesake colleges that combined to form our illustrious hub of academia, overlook the city of Washington gracefully. The building is the centerpiece of the college itself. Those two magnanimous towers gracing the college’s logo, remain to be the most recognizable symbols on campus. The best part about Old Main is that the community of the college embraces it. Every student that attends the college will take at least one class in Old Main before they graduate. The building bursts at the joints of each wall with the history of every Washington and Jefferson student that has been there before us.

The marble floor greets me as I enter, beautiful spiraled stairways on both sides of I, and I examine the bust of Thomas Jefferson on the second floor that was the actual model for the head of the Jefferson memorial in our nation’s capital.

The great history of the building speaks to the quality of the people that have graced it as students, professors, and founders. As to our history as students, Old Main reminds us that we don’t need anything more than some desks and a chalkboard to learn. That’s all the first students here ever had to work with, but they were all successful. The process of bettering oneself relies more so on a strong desire to do so more than anything else. Old Main should be standing as long as nature will let it. Losing such a valuable piece of the college’s history would be devastating.

Fortunately, it appears that the communtiy here at W&J understands the value of Old Main and truly appreciates the building. No plans of demolishing the building have been discussed or even brought up by the college. However, renovations have been mad to the building. Although the updates that were made were relatively low scale and helped to ensure the functionality of the building, the fact that we did in fact make renovations means that there are probably more to come in the not so distant future. The prospect of such renovations or even at some point in time the destruction of Old Main, which would greatly hurt our value of history, as well as our environment, scares me. Taking down Old Main would stand to be a difficult process. The building is located right in the middle of the campus and sits directly across the street from the cafeteria and alongside both the business office and fitness center. Demolishing a building of that size would certainly cover the said adjacent buildings with a film of dust as well as possibly damage them with debris. Also, the amount of dust released into the air would greatly affect air quality on campus. The fossil fuels burned off by the machines that would be used to destroy the building, as well as those used to build the replacement buildings, would just add to the air pollution problem. Even renovations seem to be a bit troublesome. Working on a building as old as this is both costly and a bit dangerous because of the lower grade of structural standards that were held when it was built, and over time these renovations would change the look of the building and damage its historical value.



There appears to be no reason to change Old Main. Sure, the building is very old, but renovations can be made strictly for improving structural integrity of the building to increase safety, without damaging the historical value of the building. In addition, the college gets great use out of the building with the recent updates. Old Main houses numerous offices for professors and loads of Mathematics and English classes. Math and English require very little to no in class technology, so the building should be able to support such classes for years to come without any more updates or renovations. Even if a teacher decides they want to use computers for a specific activity for a class, there are always free rooms in the tech center, and there is even one computer lab in Old Main. Professors from those fields can easily get the job done on a regular basis with just a chalkboard and books. The building also serves as a home to the PAL program, a peer tutoring service for students. Old Main can serve today, and for a long time to come, as a fully functioning building, so why even think about undergoing major renovations or tearing it down.




Progress benefits our society greatly, but just like anything else of life, even though it is good, it can become a problem if we have too much of it. We tend to move forward as a society with no regard for the past, and that mindset must change if we want to survive. We need to always keep our past experiences in the back of our mind to use them as a guide for what we do in the future. The best way to do that is to keep around great reminders of our rich history, such as the shining example of Old Main. These are the types of losses that we could not afford to take as a community.