1988 Fall Saint Benedict's Today

              
Commemorating
25 years at the BAC 

What was it like without the Benedicta Arts Center? 
In the 1950s, the College of Saint Benedict was truly a small college, with enrollments fluctuating between 400 and 500 students. Two questions were on the minds of the administration and faculty: What did the college need to do to attract more students? How could it become more visible to the civic community? 
A new facility to include art, 
music, theater/dance and an 
auditorium appeared to be a 
partial answer to these questions. 
The impetus for such a complex 
came from the faculty in the arts, 
who were laboring with woefully 
inadequate instruction and 
performance spaces. 

Imagine an art department functioning in the west section of the old library in the main building or a crowded music wing on the second floor of Saint Cecelia's Hall, where five teacher studios, one classroom and seven practice rooms comprised the total extent of the music department. Some sisters can recall struggling to pray in the chapel nearby while a volley of sound emanated from eight open windows. 
Or imagine S. Colman O'Connell teaching speech and drama in one classroom on the fourth floor of the main building. When she presented a play as an extra�curricular activity, the St. Joseph elementary school stage was rented for rehearsals and performances. 
There was no auditorium. A large room above the library in Saint Teresa Hall accommodated about 200 persons. This assembly hall had a small raised platform �the site for lectures, plays and concerts for a 50-voice chorus and a 30-piece orchestra. Indeed, there was a case for a new facility. 
During a community chapter meeting in July 1959, Mother Richarda Peters, prioress, constituted a building committee: S. Colman O'Connell, S. Jacqueline Dubay, S. 
10 Saint Benedict's Today 
by S. Firmin Escher O.S.B. 
professor emerita and 
former director of fine arts 

Mary Patrick Murray, S. Mildred Ann Blatz and S. Firmin Escher, chair. 
Building experience among the members of the committee was indeed limited. Before a litany of requirements was tabulated, committee members needed to learn what direction the college wished to take, for how many students it would plan and how it might serve the general public. 
The college decided to take a bold 
step into the future and build for 1,200 students. It would revise and upgrade the curriculum an~ plan its first building, an arts complex to include an auditorium and areas for art, music, theater 
and dance. 
The college engaged the services of Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Architects and Engineers of St. Paul, Minn., and scheduled visits with architect Curtis Green to 12 colleges in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa which had a newly built arts facilities. 
The committee worked from November 1959 to the spring of 1962, when ground was broken for a new building to include an auditorium connected to a smaller theater by a common stage house, facilities for theater and dance, an art wing, a music wing, general classrooms, gallery space, lobbies, and a full lower level to house practice rooms for music, costumes, make-up and prop rooms for theater, a dance studio and spaces for art storage. All for $2,750,000! 
The building was planned for flexibility and adaptability. Elevator stages in the Auditorium and Forum theater, for example, could be elevators for props, seating space for an overflow audience, or performance space for musicians and actors. It was designed as a functional space of beauty and simplicity. Light through Mondrian�like windows played with shadows at the end of almost every hallway, adding beauty and openness at every turn.