University marking the end
of Falls Hall dormitory on Monday
By David King
Texas State will have a ceremony for the decommissioning of Falls Hall on Monday, beginning at 2:30 p.m.
Falls Hall, from the University Star.
The ceremony and a reception will take place outside the construction fence on Concho Green, adjacent to Butler Hall.
The program will include a reading of the history of Falls, filling a time capsule and ringing the carillon once for each decade the hall was in service. The time capsule will be kept in the University Archives.
Falls Hall will be razed on March 7. The space will be used for the new performing arts center, which will feature a 400-seat theater and a 300-seat recital hall as well as rehearsal spaces, staging areas, classrooms and a lobby.
The dormitory opened in 1966, at the height of a building boom at the university. It opened at the same time as Buckner Hall, which now is the site of McCoy College. Also under construction during that same period were Sterry Hall, Jackson Hall, an addition to the Jones Dining Hall and what became the J.C. Kellam Administration Building.
Falls was named for Elizabeth Falls, who was on the faculty from 1914-38. She initially was the supervisor of the training school, an on-campus facility where local children were taught by students and faculty from Southwest Texas State Normal.
Elizabeth Falls, from the 1919 Pedagog yearbook (Photo courtesy Texas State University Archives.)
According to a report sent to the Board of Regents in 1954, she was a specialist in elementary education and was a pioneer in American childhood education.
She graduated from Columbia University in 1907 and earned a master’s from the school in 1923, according to records from the Texas State University Archives.
After her death in 1959, her estate was donated to the university library, to be used for buying new books.
When Falls Hall opened, it was a dormitory for women upperclassmen. It was designated as a freshman dorm in 1971.
Read some student recollections about Falls Hall in the University Star.
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I was an RA here for a few years. It was a crazy place to live and even moreso to manage. But the community in this building was unlike any other on campus. Sometimes better and sometimes worse but always virbant! I will miss this place. Wish I could be there for the ceremony.
Why can’t they name the new performing arts center after Elizabeth Falls?