About the Contributors
Ellen Cowhey, Tower/TBN Advisor
Ellen Cowhey has advised and co-advised Tower since before the term “social media” was ever coined. She began in 2004, the same year local Dobbs Ferry...
Strayer Hall Renovations
January 15, 2022
The music and sports building, Strayer Hall, is currently under construction as the floods during preseason left the gym damaged.
Strayer: Repaired but still not renovated
The music and sports building, Strayer Hall, is currently under construction as the floods during preseason left the gym damaged. Although Strayer Hall was not scheduled for renovations, the repairs and refurbishing of the facilities are improvements that have been in the works for a while. That being said, the Department of Performing Arts (DoPA) is still awaiting renovations, which have been high priority for multiple years now.
Strayer Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Before the current Dining Hall was built, Strayer was the food hall. In the time since there have not been any full renovations. When the building was turned into a musical rehearsal space, walls were added to create more practice rooms.
Since the building was not built for musical practices, the rooms are not the ideal size for the musicians. “Right now the rooms that are generally set aside for private lessons are too small for ensembles, but actually too large for private lessons,” Jennifer Carnevale said, the department chair of DoPA.
“[The Masters School] did put up soundproofing panels in room seven and they did create walls in ways that didn’t used to exist,” Carnevale said. The walls helped the program but still the absence of specialized facilities is notable. “We fit ourselves as a program into a building that wasn’t designed for this program,” she said. “I think functionally, Strayer needs some renovations, but I have never had any issues,” said Oluwademilade Oni, who has been playing the Cello at Masters for six years and has participated in ensembles and private lessons.
There have been plans in the past to renovate Strayer. Up to two times in the last decade, the process went as far as having meetings with architects. However, both times plans fell through.
“I would say the number one need is to have a building that’s designed for programs such as ours: acoustically, in terms of dimension, all of those things,” Carnevale said.
Along with some visual and structural issues, Strayer has its fair share of technical difficulties as well. Having programs being run through suboptimal situations can be frustrating. “There isn’t frustration that we aren’t valued, it’s the frustration when you get up to trip a fuse for the 800th time,” Carnevale said.
Carnevale made it very clear that the issues were not a testament to the maintenance department. “We are well cared for by maintenance and facilities, we are well cared for by custodial staff but it’s at this point where everybody’s doing everything they can with this building,” Carnevale said.
No one is denying the fact that Strayer is in need of renovations. “Administration is well aware which is why we are on the priority list,” Carnevale said. “The process is what the process is because the financial climate and the world changes, the financial climate around the community changes and nobody has any particular control over that.”
There is not a set timetable yet but renovations are sure to be on the horizon. An administrator was not able to be interviewed about Strayer.
DoPA, even with facilities that can create roadblocks, is a completely functioning program at Masters. “We are committed to and provide excellent programming but we often find ourselves having to do a few extra layers of work in order to make the program function inside the space.” Carnevale said.
With an old building comes memories and nostalgia. Strayer has a uniqueness that comes with its age. “There is something to be said for being able to walk down the hall and hearing music from all sides,” Carnevale said. “What we will often hear from current students is ‘oh man, yeah this poor building’, but what we’ll hear from graduate students is ‘oh, I spent so many good hours here’, so sometimes the trappings fall off and it’s your memory of how you felt in this space.”
Renovations in the FC and Strayer gym are all set to be completed within the next month. The next spaces to re-open are the FC dance studios, which will be ready on Jan. 21.
Update on FC, Strayer renovations
The FC dance studios and Strayer gym are set to be completed by Jan. 21 and on or about Feb. 4, respectively, Craig Dunne, head of engineering and maintenance, said. Hurricane Ida caused over one million dollars worth of damage to the facilities in September 2021.
The first goal was to get all of the faculty and staff back into their FC and Strayer offices after winter break, which was accomplished.
Dunne said that the dance floors were completed this week and that the remainder of the mirrors have to be put up before dancers can return to the spaces by next Friday.
“When the water poured into Strayer, it went into one of the mechanical rooms. All of that work has been done,” he said.
Before starting construction on Strayer gym, “We had to air test the buildings, which I did and found that there was mold because of the flooding, which meant that we had to bring in the insurance company and they dictated policy on what had to come out and what could stay. We ended up demo-ing more than three quarters of the spaces that were flooded by the water.”
The air has been tested throughout the entire construction process, he said.
Afterwards, the construction team had to test the floor and, fortunately, it was asbestos-free. Dunne said that he thought they would be able to leave-in some of the floor and save a month’s worth of work, but the dimensions of the new flooring caused problems.
“We had to strip-up the old floor and then we had to go through this huge process of stripping up all of the old glue that was used on the original floor from the 1950s. That took three weeks on its own.”
Dunne provided an update on Strayer’s current status.
“That floor is now going back in and is probably halfway done. I also have grillwork there and some prep work with the walls that still have to be done, but other than that, the gym will be handed back to athletics probably three weeks from today [interview: Jan. 14].”