College office, SAS depts. return to Logan Hall

The building opened after an extensive two-year, $9.2 million interior renovation that first began nearly a decade ago. In Logan Hall, furniture and empty cardboard boxes still clutter the hallways, "wet paint" signs line the walls, tiles are missing from some of the floors and an entire level is still closed for construction. But students walking into the long-vacant building this week found the second-oldest edifice on campus open for business. Faculty members and administrators began moving into the building during winter break. The historic building at 249 S. 36th Street, originally built in 1880, has been undergoing renovations for more than seven years. Efforts to restore the five-story building's exterior began in 1989 as a deferred maintenance project, and were restarted four years later after a brief hiatus. A $9.2 million interior renovation began in January 1996, marking the first step in the $69 million Perelman Quadrangle project, which is designed to create a student center linking Irvine Auditorium with Logan, Houston, Williams and College halls. The project is scheduled to be completed in about two years. Logan Hall's original occupants -- which included several School of Arts and Sciences department offices and the undergraduate College office itself -- vacated the building in 1991, leaving only one classroom, a ground-floor lecture hall, still in use. The College office -- which moved into the Mellon Bank building at 36th and Walnut streets seven years ago -- is back in its old home, along with the History and Sociology of Science, Philosophy, Religious Studies and Classical Studies departments. The Women's Studies program and the Benjamin Franklin Scholars and General Honors offices have also returned to the building. Sociology Professor Hocine Fetni, an assistant dean for College advising, said Logan Hall is a more convenient location for her office. "If you put someone across from the Mellon Bank building and say, 'This is the College [office],' no one would guess," he said. The restored building includes a 277-seat auditorium, a terrace room, several classrooms and seminar rooms and a ground-floor art gallery. The gallery and terrace room are still under construction, and the entire ground floor is closed to students. Work on the entire building should be finished in about a month, according to Charles Bronk, director of facilities and operational services for SAS. "We were anxious to get our departments back in the building so we pushed to get floors one through four finished," Bronk said, adding that the building's opening had to be rushed in order to be ready for the start of the semester. Several occupants said that such haste is apparent, with Fetni noting that the building still seems "a little bit unorganized." "When we moved in here, we thought everything would be ready," he said. "But? there's still construction going on." Work is also not yet completed on the linoleum-tile corridors, and last-minute details will take "another couple of weeks" to finish, Bronk estimated. But Colleen Gasiorowski, an administrative assistant in the College office, said that "the building looks very, very nice,"despite the constant presence of construction workers "outside our doors." And Sybil Csigi, who works in Logan Hall's business office, said she was happy with her new quarters. Several department offices -- including International Relations, Folklore, SAS External Affairs, the College of General Studies and the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies -- are still located on Market Street, waiting for permanent homes, which Bronk said he hopes will be "available in the center of campus." And while the Logan Hall renovations won praise from most involved, the project left at least one student confused. "It seems like one of these typical Penn things where they shuffle shit around to spend our money without any practical rhyme or reason," College sophomore Scott McWilliams said Monday.