A Look at Campus History

Our St. Christopher’s campus is the realization of a long-held vision, according to Mr. Billy McGuire ’85. In the past few decades, the school has under-gone significant changes in its landscape. These include the renovation of the woodworking shop and construction of Ryan Recital Hall, the Luck Leadership Center, Ryan Dining Hall and Bolling Field House. While tastefully-updated, these new buildings paint over a much older truth of the campus: one with a history classroom in a house from an episode of Hoarders, a dining hall shaped like the Millenium Falcon, a dirt floor basement for a senior lounge, a smoking bench outside of chapel and a clipboard shaming students with hours. This was a version of St. Christopher’s with dirt paths in place of the paved ones, Upper School classrooms across St. Christopher’s Road (where the Lower School now sits), an admin office for a band room and a gym that “was basically a dungeon” under the basketball courts of our modern athletics facilities. In addition, there wasn’t air conditioning nor asphalt parking lots.
 

The changes from these past periods can be attributed to a change in the philosophy of the St. Christopher’s endowment. Before Mr. McGuire (a teacher, farmer, fire chief, part-time architect and STC history enthusiast interested in our campus’ past) joined the faculty in 1993, the endowment had done little in the way of building modern structures and updating teaching facilities. The science classrooms didn’t have labs, the band didn’t have adequate space to practice and the cafeteria didn’t have enough seats for all of the boys. So, the decision was made to change the purpose of the endowment from just keeping the school running to allow for fundraising for new buildings. All of a sudden, many new improvements started to be planned and built.

But, “you don’t build a fancy new building and have it out-side a dirt patch” according to Mr. McGuire. With these new buildings came major updates to the campus, including asphalt parking, paved pathways, street lights and maintained areas of plants and greenery. All this modernization for the most part was good, but it left a gap in St. Christopher’s cultural fabric. The stories these buildings held within their walls have been lost to more and more students over time.
 

For example, the former history classroom known to the students as “Dave’s Museum” stood where the senior porch now is. It was a house that had become the personal hegemonic domain of the history teacher Mr. Dave Booney. Mr. Booney collected, among many other things, Life magazines, (dating back fifty years) which were stacked in the corners of the room. He maintained a historically accurate collection of bomb sites, guns and swords all lying around for students to touch. On the walls of this room were layers upon layers of posters for music festivals, political debates, concerts (etc.) that were decades old. Thus, the classroom was rightly called a museum, and was one that gave generations of St. Christopher’s students the tactile ability to interact with history. 
 

Under the house turned classroom, there was a dirt floor basement that, for many years, served as the old senior lounge. The area was dingy, poorly lit and likely infested with any number of rodents. It wasn’t much, nor was it officially sanctioned by the administration. The lounge’s couches were “leftovers – dis-carded from people’s houses” and dragged in by enterprising students. This was not a place you would take a picture of, yet, among the boys of the senior class, it was their place. It’s the type of spot that seems almost mythological, having many stories and school legends based around its red clay walls.
 

Learning more about our campus’ history is both interesting and important to the historical record of St. Christopher’s. Additionally, by getting a glimpse of life decades ago, we’re also able to further appreciate the spaces and structure that make our STC community what it is today.