With ETSU turning 100 years old this year, so did two of the buildings on its campus, Carter Hall and Gilbreath Hall. These halls were built when ETSU was named East Tennessee State Normal School. Carter Hall has been housing students since its open in 1911.
This hall was named after Mayetta Wilkinson Carter. Recently renovated in 2008, the hall now houses 146 female students.
One thing about the hall that has remained the same throughout the years is the common room, or parlor that the students share. It has an antique grand piano in it, along with warm memories for those who remember it from long ago.
“[The common room] was once the social center of campus,” said Fred Sauceman, executive assistant to the president for university relations. “In my student days, in the late 1970s, it was always full of couples on ‘study dates.’ It was a warm and wonderful place to be. The university’s very last ‘dorm mother,’ Mrs. Marguerite Keefauver, had an apartment in the building, and she rarely left. She and my wife, Jill, were very close. Mrs. Keefauver treated her ‘girls’ as if they were her very own daughters.”
Sauceman said students’ fondest memories centered around that residence hall and its parlor. In 1980, when Sauceman and his wife were married, neither one had a living grandmother, so Keefauver played the role.
Gilbreath Hall was named after ETSU’s once president, Sidney G. Gilbreath. Today it holds several classrooms, labs and the Bud Frank Theatre.
“Gilbreath was a very strict president,” said Jennifer Barber, coordinator of technology and communication. “He had a very tough moral code, especially for the female students Because of this, many legends still make their way around campus about him.”
It is said that his ghost still walks the halls of Gilbreath, enforcing his rules.
“Many people there after dark have claimed to have seen it,” Barber said.
Gilbreath Hall has undergone many renovations, from the stairways and halls to outside landscaping.
The very first lecture hall in Gilbreath Hall looked as though it could seat more than 500 students and only had wooden chairs and a small stage with the same chairs for the lecturers. Though these buildings may be the oldest on campus, in many ways it also makes them the most original.
These memories, “hauntings,” and remodels are only some of the few things that makes them very much still alive today.
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