Features Editor: Eric Hofer

Throughout Gustavus’ history, many buildings have come and gone. However, the

housing selection has remained largely unchanged, with the exception of renovations and the additions of new residential halls. The only residence hall to be decommissioned and demolished (without the aid of the tornado) is Wahlstrom Hall, which had been in use from 1947 to its demolition in 2005. It was taken down due to the completion of Southwest Hall, to make room for future construction, and safety concerns. 

Construction on Wahlstrom Hall began in 1946 as a response to a surge in enrollment following the end of World War II, naming the building after Matthias Wahlstrom, who had served as Gustavus’ president from 1881 to 1904, transforming Gustavus from an academy to a degree-granting institution. 

The building was initially designed to house women, but was switched to a men’s residence to secure government funding, with 60% of the men living in the building being veterans. In the meantime, women were reassigned to Uhler, which had previously been the men’s residence.

After the completion of the hall and the securement of government aid, Wahlstrom became a women’s residence hall, with Uhler returning to a men’s residence. Though it had originally been designed to house 200 people, it was forced to accommodate nearly double that, with most students sharing an 8’ x 10’ dorm with a roommate. This situation continued into the late 1960s due to high enrollment rates. In the late 1970s, Wahlstrom Hall became a coed residence, housing men and women for the first time.

In a 1994 post on Usenet, an early Internet forum service, former Campus Network Manager Dan Boehlke noted that Wahlstrom had a different construction and layout from the rest of the campus. Boehlke described the decor as that of a “1930s or 40s Catholic hospital.”

It’s difficult to find much information about what people thought of the decision to demolish Wahlstrom. The college offered an opportunity for employees to salvage wardrobe units. Alumni were invited to attend a decommissioning service. Ryan Rud, a former Gustavus Technology Services employee, managed to get a video of the demolition through a professor’s office window in Vickner. Unfortunately, this video has been lost to time due to the discontinuation of Adobe Flash Player. 

In two 2005 blog posts, Marissa Lingen (Class of 1999) reminisces about her memories in Wahlstrom and revisits campus to give a final farewell to her dorm. Lingen wrote, “I think it would have been unbearable to say goodbye to Wahlstrom if it hadn’t been such a nice time seeing my physics profs again.” She said she was “utterly panicked” after not being able to see Wahlstrom in an aerial photo taken after the tornado, believing it to have been destroyed in the disaster.

Lingen also reflects on other students not being able to experience Wahlstrom, as she writes, “I wanted some other wide-eyed little girl to get to become a grown-up in that kind of place… I’m not ready for it to be gone.”

Despite her many fond memories of her time spent in Wahlstrom, Lingen is able to see the flaws in the building, pointing out sickly walls, loud heaters, and cramped living spaces. “It was a wreck when I lived there. It’s likely still a wreck. You’re allowed to love things that are a wreck.”