FROM FSU LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS:

The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Monday July 16, 1962

IN USE MORE THAN 50 YEARS

Old FSU Social Welfare Building Coming Down to Make Way for Labs

Special to the Times-Union

Tallahassee, July 15 --- A cacophony of squeaks from ripping boards and clatter from falling building materials mingles these days with more pleasant sounds from the nearby School of Music as Florida State University's oldest building comes down.

The white frame social welfare building, between the music building and the psychology building which are its nearest neighbors on Copeland Street, is being razed to make room for a $850,000 psychology laboratory building.

The psychology building will be four stories and have 34,000 square feet of floor space within its walls of 80 by 117 feet. It will be built with a $327,928 grant received last week from the U.S. Public Health Service and $525,000 in state funds from a $25 million revenue certificate issue. University officials hope to start construction by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the white frame structure which it will replace is rapidly being dismantled. The building is of one story, with two wings.

The high windows with rounded tops, steep gables - some with gingerbread trim - and the central cupola mark it as a building of the Victorian period. It looks like an old fashioned public school building - it was for years before becoming a part of the FSU campus.

University records indicate it was built around 1877 and served for years as a Negro school. FSU got the building about the turn of the century by trading the site for what is now Lively Technical School.

The building formerly occupied a site north of the present one on Copland Street. It was used as a gymnasium by Florida State University College for Women from about 1910 to 1928. There was a swimming pool inside.

When the present women's gymnasium was built in 1928, the structure was turned over to the School of Music which used it until the present School of Music was built in 1949. The old building was moved uphill to its present site.

It was used until a few months ago by the School of Social Welfare, housing some classes during the 1961-62 school year.

A few weeks ago the building was put up for bids and was bought by W.L. Rabon of Monticello. He is wrecking it. Some of the lumber reportedly will go to a house at Monticello and some into a beach cottage on St. George Island.

In contrast to the old frame structure, the psychology research building will be up to date in design. Of red brick, it will be built with a minimum of window space and practically all of the interior will be in laboratories.

It will be connected on the second and third floors with the present psychology building a few feet to the south. The new building, which will be utilized for basic research, will allow the present building to be used for classroom and laboratory instruction and offices.