Washington Hall was built in 1928 as part of an overall campus expansion and improvement project that began soon after the college began admitting women in 1918. It is named in honor of George Washington, who received his surveyor’s license from the college in 1749 and served as William & Mary’s first American Chancellor from 1788-1799. A second building (Rogers Hall, now known as Tyler Hall) was built at the same time across the Sunken Garden. Neighboring Ewell Hall had opened two years earlier.
When I was in school there, Washington Hall was the home of the biology and foreign languages department, as I recall.
I have two specific memories of classes I had in this classroom.
French 211-212
I had gone to college intending to major in French. I had taken four years of French in high school (along with three years of German). I liked learning foreign languages and I had a knack for them. I don’t know that I thought much about what I would actually do with a French major – but then I didn’t think about much in those days.
However, my French professor (named Pierre Ustinov, a cousin of the British actor Peter Ustinov) was pretty dreadful. I remember him walking into our class every day (it was held in this lecture hall, although it probably had only about 20 students in it), barely acknowledging our presence, putting his copy of our French literature textbook on the lectern, telling us what page to turn to so we could follow along, and then reading from it to us for the entire class period. A quick google search revealed that he was later named the Chancellor professor of modern Languages and Literature. This class met at 12:00 noon, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is important for the anecdote that follows.
This classroom had two doors in the front – on the left and right side, behind the area where the person who took this picture was standing. You all probably remember the rules (maybe unwritten?) about how long college students had to wait in the classroom if the professor was late. The rules were different depending on the level of the professor – full, associate, or assistant. I think Professor Ustinov was an Assistant Professor in 1965; at any rate, we had concluded that we had to wait 10 minutes before we could leave without consequences. He was always late, so we had discussed this before. Anyway, on one Friday in the spring of 1966, Professor Ustinov was late again, and we were all watching the clock in the front of the room. The minute hand of the clock didn’t move smoothly around the dial -- it jumped with each minute (like in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. 12:01, 12:02, 12:03, 12:04, 12:05, 12:06, 12:07, 12:08, 12:09 – we were all packing up our stuff, ready to go to lunch. The minute hand clicked over to 12:10 – and Professor Ustinov walked in the left door as we all trooped out the right door. Off to lunch we went, on a beautiful spring Friday afternoon in Williamsburg. He never commented about this.
Educational Psychology (Psychology 301 or something like that)
I took this class in my junior year, 1967-1968.
This class was taught by Professor John Lavach, who was adored by his students and admired by his colleagues. I didn’t realize until I was researching for this essay that this was his first year at the college. As I was writing this essay, I googled him and was reminded that he passed away in 2012. The obituary confirms my memories of him. If you want to read about him, click here. Unlike my French class in this lecture hall, every seat in Professor Lavach’s class was filled.
I loved this class. Professor Lavach was wonderfully entertaining. I remember specifically his lecture on operant conditioning, which he illustrated with an anecdote about flipping chickens. As he paced back and forth across the front of the lecture hall, gesturing animatedly, he described an experiment in which researchers gave a chicken a food pellet every time it jerked its head backward. Soon, the chicken was jerking its head backward more frequently and more forcefully in order to receive the reward. It didn’t take long before the chicken did a back flip. I remember Professor Lavach imitating what a back-flipping chicken looked like. I could point out to you where he was in the room when he performed this demonstration.
Professor Lavach’s obituary noted that in 1970, an editorial in the college newspaper (The Flat Hat) protested the limit of 150 students in his classes. In my senior year, my sorority (Kappa Kappa Gamma – more about that in my Stop 13 essay) invited Professor Lavach and his wife to dinner in the dining room at the sorority house. I recall sitting across from him at dinner, thinking that college was a pretty wonderful place.
I have other memories of Washington Hall as well.
Tim and I spent a lot of time studying while we were at William and Mary. We really did. We studied together whenever possible, and by that I mean we really did study together. We went to different places around campus (and sometimes off-campus) just to have a change of scenery, but then we studied hard – sometimes not talking for hours at a time. One place we liked to study was in a third-floor classroom in Washington Hall; the room we liked best had a view of the Wren Building. The campus buildings were generally not locked during the day, so we could wander in, find an empty classroom, and set ourselves up to get some work done.
I remember one day in particular. It was a warm Sunday morning (I think), so we had the windows wide open (no AC in those days). The windows were huge and didn’t have screens in them, and there was enough of a breeze that the room was comfortable. But our studies were soon interrupted by the sounds of a colonial fife-and-drum corps that was apparently practicing nearby. Only at William and Mary.
Join me next Friday for Stop 4 – Barrett Hall
Interestingly, I also took four years of French and three years of German in high school. Another student in my French 4 class had German relatives, so we spoke Grenlish to each other that year.