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Buildings on a university campus, much like homes, become the settings of major life events; even the academic buildings are where the students live and where their lives play out. They learn, study and collaborate in these buildings, forming the relationships that will shape them as they identify the paths to their own individual destinies.
The University of Notre Dame has the Main Building with its famous golden dome. Harvard has Memorial Hall just off Harvard Yard. These iconic buildings hold special significance to all who pass through their respective campus gates.
The University of Dallas, which equals or surpasses these and other institutions in the academic and spiritual formation of its students, needs an icon of its own. Standing beside Braniff Memorial Tower and serving to capture both imagination and memory, Cardinal Farrell Hall will immediately become our campus’ new front door, the obvious campus entryway as visitors make their way up from the parking lot along a path that offers a view of the Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe just across the lawn. Over time, the building will come to widely symbolize all that is the University of Dallas as it transforms the campus into a setting worthy of the education students receive here.
Currently, students must run from one side of campus to the other, from Carpenter Hall to Braniff Graduate Building, if they want to make financial aid arrangements, pay the semester’s tuition, meet with Human Resources about a job on campus, or register for classes. Cardinal Farrell Hall will offer all of these services in one spot, saving time and preserving patience as students enter through a three-story glass atrium, an open space of air and light, into this building of theirs, and visit the Offices of Business, Financial Aid, Human Resources and the Registrar all in one fell swoop.
Carpenter Hall, named for John Carpenter and his family in honor of their generosity in helping provide a site for the University of Dallas, was the first building on campus. However, more than six decades of shifting Irving soil have taken their toll on Carpenter. The repairs it would require to remain a functional space for learning, teaching and working are too extensive to undertake. Its classrooms were not designed with the modern world — with its need to accommodate technology and different styles of teaching — in mind. Cardinal Farrell Hall will address these classroom needs, featuring three classrooms, each of which will provide the ideal setting for the subject matter and type of learning happening within its walls.
Carpenter Hall, with its decades of memories, will pass the baton to Cardinal Farrell Hall and make way for the next generations of students.
