Law School renovation gets OK

University Trustees, in their first meeting of the semester, voted yesterday to allocate $4.7 million toward the renovation of Silverman Hall, the oldest portion of the original Penn Law School building. The money will be used to renovate the building's lobby, which is known as the Great Hall, as well as for the creation of a new mock appellate courtroom and a new conference center, according to Gary Clinton, the school's assistant dean of student affairs. The renovations will cost a total of $11.2 million, with the remaining $6.5 million coming from a gift earlier this year by University Trustee and Law School graduate Henry Silverman. At the meeting the Trustees voted to give the $11.2 million to school. The Trustees must approve all allocations, including donations designated for a particular purpose, like the Silverman donation. Silverman's $15 million gift is among the largest ever given to an American law school, and the building -- formerly known as Lewis Hall --Ewas renamed Silverman Hall in his honor this February. The building is located at 34th and Sansom streets. Silverman, 57, is the president and chief executive office of Cendant Corp., a consumer and business services company. He holds stock options in the company valued at $700 million. The value of Silverman's stake in the company plummeted over the summer when it revealed inaccuracies in its accounting procedures, causing a major drop in the price of its stock. Work on the project -- which will also include building a new faculty lounge, cleaning the outside of the Law School building and replacing all of the building's major windows -- will begin this January and are tentatively scheduled to be completed in November 1999, Clinton said. Apart from the Great Hall, the Silverman building's Sharswood Room and Goodrich Hall will also be renovated in the next year. The building, among the oldest on campus, was finished and dedicated in 1900. It has undergone numerous renovations since then, including renovations in the 1960s designed to increase its classroom space. Lewis Hall was renovated internally in 1996, when the Howard Gittis Law Clinic was built, along with the construction of two new classrooms, a reading room in Goodrich Hall and a mock courtroom. With the money allocated yesterday, the second part of the renovations can begin. Although the latest phase of the renovations has not begun yet, students reacted positively to the announcement. "This is a historic part of the Law School, and beautifying and improving it is important since Silverman Hall is a part of the original building," said first-year Law student Rosanna Perretta. She also stressed the value of the clinical suite which was built during the last set of renovations. "Every top school is trying to improve their clinical program, since law schools in the past have relied solely on theory, not practice," Perretta said. Brian Gurtman, a second-year Law student, said the new, larger appellate courtroom would prove useful to law students who participate in the "Keedy Cup," a mock trial competition involving Law School students.