A More Hall postcard, 1954. Postcard: Courtesy of Andrew Nelson ’02

St. Thomas More Hall, which fell to the wrecker’s ball this summer, may not have been the most comely building on the main campus, but it was hardly the least lovely, a distinction that would have to go to Carney if we’re only counting academic or administrative structures, and to Edmond’s if dorms are in the competition. (As to the Rec Plex’s mash-up of Bedouin encampment and state prison, it’s too odd to deserve any response but wonder, while the Mods have been temporary housing since 1970 and should therefore draw from us the same respect as would a refugee camp that has served a volatile border region long and well.)

Opened in the fall of 1954, More was a 25th-anniversary gift from Boston College to its Law School, which, like all of Boston College’s professional schools, had begun its life in rented rooms “downtown,” first, in 1929, on lower Beacon Street, and later in the 11-story Deco pile at 441 Stuart Street once known as “the New England Power Company Building.”

The move to the main campus was in any case supposed to evince progress: Not only was the University going to bring the school to Chestnut Hill (the foot of it, anyway), but to a made-to-order building designed by none other than Maginnis and Walsh (M&W), the same firm that had given us, in chronological order, Gasson (1913), St. Mary’s (1917), Devlin (1924), Bapst (1928), Fulton (1948), Lyons (1951), and Campion (1955).

More Hall was M&W’s least prepossessing building for Boston College, for though it did “reflect” the campus’s Gothic-influenced architecture (as the Heights kindly said at the opening), its mostly flat roof line, long rows of casement windows, and predominately brick exterior clearly cried out suburban high school.

The interior did, however, offer some gracious spaces, according to stories and photographs, including a moot-court room, a lofty-ceilinged library containing some 250,000 volumes, and a wood-paneled, Persian-carpeted faculty lounge with a marble fireplace that had once graced the East Room of the White House and had become government surplus in 1949 when Harry Truman renovated his new home. More also contained a heating plant large enough to support a planned dormitory for law students and an auditorium wing, neither of which was constructed (which is why, unlike other Boston College office buildings, More was adjoined by commodious parking).

More’s tenure as the home of the Law School was brief, however. In 1975, following Boston College’s acquisition of the Newton College of the Sacred Heart campus, the school, which was doing well and dreaming of an extended building, was relocated there—selected by a task force from a set of candidates that also included the schools of management, education, and nursing, all of whom begged off exile on account of their students’ strong curricular connections with A&S.

Over the next year, a number of proposals for More’s use were floated: These, as reported in the Heights, included a non-lending library designed for reading and “smoking,” a “fine arts center,” a nascent “computer center,” Campus School facilities, and a student center featuring “typing rooms,” “musical practice areas,” and a cafeteria. None of these ideas took root, however, and those that did (some classes met in More and a special collections library moved in for a time) proved unsuccessful at providing the building a new identity.

The Law School cafeteria at More Hall. Photograph: Courtesy of John J. Burns Library Archive. Click image to enlarge.

And then in January 1976, some 15 administrative departments that had been jammed into Gasson Hall took tenancy. Among them were personnel, treasurer, auditor, budget, purchasing, print center, benefits, and payroll, and More suddenly had the slope-shouldered, working-stiff identity it would hold until it was vacated 36 years later—the building in which the sausage got made; the place you went to when you needed to get something done that didn’t have to get done where it could be seen to be getting done.

It was in More, in September 1978, that I interviewed for a public relations writer’s job I’d seen in the paper. I was a just-arrived stranger to Boston, and I entered the building believing it to be the entirety of Boston College, which I’d assumed, given its name and location at the edge of the city and end of a railway line, was a minor-league afterthought of a municipal institution. (The view from the front steps offered no more than a church, the church’s parking lot, and an uninspired experiment in subsidized housing, which turned out to be the Mods.)

Over the decades since, I picked up paychecks, parking passes, and photo IDs in More, enrolled three children in healthcare plans (and claimed them as tax deductions), attended scores of meetings and a few training sessions (including one at which I was permitted to try my hand at something called “word processing”), interviewed for promotions, and signed tuition remission forms for three children. And one day last August, I stood on a sidewalk across from More and watched a mustard-yellow excavator assiduously and, it seemed, thoughtfully—probing, retreating, pausing, jabbing—tear into brick walls, plasterboard, concrete floors, and roof tiles. Two longtime residents of More were already watching when I arrived. ‘The storage room,” one said as a wall fell, and the other nodded. And another former resident soon came by in his car and slowed to call out merrily: “Is Leo still in his office?” referring to Leo Sullivan, the long-serving vice president of what Boston College now calls Human Resources.

As room after room came into sunlit view, I recognized many I had sat in, including one that had housed Jim Kennedy, who was budget director when I arrived, and who, I remembered, liked to put his feet on his desk alongside a wood sign inscribed “And God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee.”

A 490-bed residence hall is being built on the More site. It will be ready for occupancy in 2016. The White House fireplace is safe on Newton Campus.

Corrections: This article has been revised to reflect the following corrections: The print version of the article stated that More Hall was Maginnis and Walsh’s last commission for Boston College. The architecture firm also designed Lyons (1951) and Campion (1955) halls. The print version also stated that Bapst Library was completed in 1922. It was commissioned in 1922, and completed in 1928.

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