Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Lincoln Hall to be rededicated on Feb. 12, a century after first ceremony

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Formal wear isn’t required to attend the Lincoln Hall rededication ceremony, to be held Feb. 12 on the U. of I.’s Urbana campus. But wearing a stovepipe hat wouldn’t totally be out of order.

The ceremony, held on Lincoln’s birthday and 100 years to the day of the original building dedication, starts at 4 p.m. in the Lincoln Hall theater and will celebrate the end of a two-year, $64 million top-to-bottom renovation project.

The project was funded with nearly $58 million in state capital development funds and almost $6 million from the U. of I.

For the rededication, U. of I. Board of Trustees Chairman Christopher G. Kennedy and U. of I. President Bob Easter have invited Gov. Pat Quinn and other state dignitaries to join them in delivering remarks on the efforts leading to the hall’s completion.

There also will be a ceremonial ribbon-cutting, a performance by the U. of I. Black Chorus, refreshments and self-guided tours of Lincoln Hall, whose offices and classrooms were reopened last fall.

“We’re excited to have the governor on our campus and we are grateful to the state of Illinois in this landmark effort,” said Ruth Watkins, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which is housed in Lincoln Hall. “The renovated Lincoln Hall is a fitting tribute to Lincoln’s vision of access to higher education for students from all backgrounds.”

The building was given a complete makeover, with special care taken to restore the historical integrity of the building – originally built as an homage to the 16th U.S. president.

Lincoln Hall is the most frequented academic building on campus, with most of the 44,000 who attend the university annually taking a class there at some time.

Two years of preparation work and two more for the actual construction work displaced thousands of students and employees as the interior of the building was redesigned and classroom, research and office space was expanded.

“The end result is a state-of-the-art facility appropriate for teaching, learning and scholarship for the 21st century,” Watkins said.

Classrooms are now outfitted with new computer-aided projectors, large screens and speaker systems, and designers switched the orientation of some of the larger lecture halls, putting professors closer to students.

The Lincoln Hall project was as much restoration as renovation.

The theater work demanded artisans painstakingly restore original plaster wall reliefs; and the bronze Lincoln bust in Memorial Hall – its nose rubbed raw for good luck by thousands of U. of I. students over the years – was polished, refurbished and readied for another 100 years of rubbing.

Outside, the slate roof, oak trim and terra cotta panels depicting Lincoln’s life were carefully restored.

In addition, the building was mechanically retrofitted to meet LEED environmental standards, and includes “smart” sensors that adjust light and temperature controls automatically as part of an overall “sustainable design.”

Read Next

Life sciences Photo of Michael Ward standing in tall grass on a riverbank.

How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010