Lincoln Christian University Bids Farewell to Original Campus Building

 

[November 07, 2023] 

Lincoln Christian University (LCU) has said goodbye to the first building built as part of its campus. Timothy Hall has been in the process of demolition over the last month after multiple issues were discovered that, in essence, “totaled” the building. Demolition was planned and contracted before LCU’s October announcement of its cessation of operations effective May of 2024.

Timothy Hall had served almost every function necessary to college operations other than cafeteria and gym, which were constructed shortly after Timothy Hall was completed in 1951. According to Dr. Tom Tanner (LCU alum and LCU administrator for 33 years) in his book “Verses and Voices: The Story of Lincoln Christian College and Seminary– 65 Years of Lincoln Leaders 1944-2009,” at its dedication on June 1, 1951, the Administration building, as it was called then, “had room for three administrators, 12 faculty, 10 classrooms, and a library with 7,000 volumes.” The cost to build it was “just over “$100,000, almost all of it coming from small gifts from churches and individuals.” The school itself was seven years old.

Over the next decade, the school grew from 250 to 500 students and a new Administration building was completed in 1960. Timothy Hall then began immediate use as the home for Lincoln Christian Seminary. At the rededication of Timothy Hall as the Seminary building and dedication of the new Administration building, Dr. Tanner reports that the campus newsletter records 3,000 people from around the region attending the ceremony. Lincoln Christian Seminary grew from 51 students to 100 over the next five years, requiring greater space, and so Restoration Hall, the current home of LCS, was built in 1965. Thus, Timothy Hall embarked on a new era.

Over four decades of LCU students will remember Timothy Hall not as classrooms and offices, but as a dormitory. One end of Timothy Hall briefly served as a women’s dormitory coinciding with the Seminary usage, and then for one semester as a men’s dormitory before the whole building became the first men’s residence on campus in August of 1965.

Timothy "The Hole" Hall at Lincoln Christian College taken from social media.

A few years later the dorm received the name that it would be known as for the duration of its time as a men’s dorm. Dr. Tanner explains, “Actually, it was the local fire marshal who coined the name. After inspecting the dorm in the fall of 1968 after a prolonged power outage, he simply remarked, ‘What a hole.’ And the name has stuck ever since.” “The Hole” was a men’s residence for the next decades and operated much like a fraternity with traditions, rituals, and occasional shenanigans. Residents were called “Holers” and built a community and a loyalty that still resonates with LCU alumni.

In 2007, “The Hole” was once again recommissioned, this time as the Timothy Center for Global Ministry. It was refurbished with offices and a conference room to house the Christian Ministries Field, which included preaching and youth ministries, along with missions and other departments. It came full circle providing space for faculty and administrative offices as was part of its original purpose. It continued under this use until May of 2022, when LCU restructured and downsized, concentrating all offices and classrooms in Restoration Hall and the Administration building.

Dr. Tanner’s retrospective on Timothy Hall was originally written as an address at its recommissioning from “The Hole” to Timothy Center for Global Ministry on Founders Day in May of 2007. His final words of the address carry a new poignancy as the building is now a rubble of bricks and metal and the school is in its final months. He writes, “It is fitting we bid adieu to this dormitory today, for ‘adieu’ simply means ‘To God.’ Today, Timothy, we bid you adieu. We give you ‘to God.’”

[Stephanie Hall]