A history of the Culp Center

The grand reopening of the D.P Culp Student Center on March 5 will unveil a renewed structure and direction for the decades-old building that is steeped in history. 

The Culp Center’s story begins with the building’s namesake and ETSU’s fourth president, Delos Poe Culp.

Culp became ETSU’s first out-of-state president in 1968 after an extensive career in education, including presidency of Livingston State College and University of Montevallo, formerly Alabama College.

Culp recognized the need for extensive modernization on campus and quickly got to work securing funds and plans for multiple buildings, including the ETSU Mini-Dome and the Culp Center. The president’s house on campus was actually removed to make room for the new center, and Culp and his family moved to the newly purchased Shelbridge as the first ETSU president to live there. Culp also worked closely with U.S. Congressman James Quillen in creating the Quillen College of Medicine. 

The drive for the creation of an updated student center was present before Culp’s arrival, however. ETSU alumnus Donald Carter worked extensively across campus to gauge student needs before Culp had arrived, and Carter summarized his vision for a new student center in his 1964 master’s dissertation titled “A Plan for the University Center at ETSU.” Carter went on to become the first director of the Culp Center after closely impacting the design, layout and purpose of the building during its planning phase in the early 1970s. 

Upon its completion in 1976, the Culp Center won the Governor’s Award for Design and exemplified the Brutalist architectural style that was popular at the time. It also led early efforts to incorporate accommodations for students with mobility issues, including extensive ramps throughout the building. Despite these efforts, however, the Culp Center fell below federal regulations after new legislation was passed.

“This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in Congress,” said Tony Warner, former assistant vice president of Student Affairs, director of the Culp Center and ID Services, now retired. “We actually had a couple of big investigative committees from D.C. there to see this building because it was talked about as so accessible. We were on the cutting edge before, but we were just a year or two or three too early on several things.”

Warner’s tenure began in 1985 and continued until 2015. Under his direction, the center saw two major renovations, one of which Warner said was mostly cosmetic. It consisted of color, carpeting and mild layout changes, and the other consisted of major “behind the wall” renovation in the late 1990s that was invisible to students. Wiring had become out of date and couldn’t keep up with the technological needs of the Culp Center offices, so a major center shutdown was needed to rewire. Students faced a similar closing and scattering of offices across campus, with only mild cosmetic differences to show for it. 

Warner also described a slow change to the Culp Center over time, with offices and administrative centers slowly encroaching on student spaces. As ETSU grew, student spaces and meeting rooms were converted into offices, including arts and crafts areas and an art gallery. Upon current ETSU President Brian Noland’s first tour of the Culp Center, Warner said he could tell that students needed more space to live and work in.