To commemorate the more than a century-old former MSU landmark Morrill Hall, the university began selling bricks from the dismantled building through the Surplus Store and Recycling Center Friday.
More than a thousand red Jacobsville Sandstone bricks, primarily manufactured in the Upper Peninsula, are being sold for $35 per brick. Each brick includes a certificate of authenticity and is available to purchase online and pickup from the Surplus Store.
James Ives, the store’s sales specialist, said the bricks went on sale Friday morning and 75 bricks were sold in the first few hours.
“Every single project that we’ve done involving selling bricks for memorial keepsakes has sold out in the past,” Ives said.
The money from the bricks sold will go to the endowment fund through the office of MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon.
The university has been selling bricks as keepsakes since the original terra cotta Sparty moved indoors in 2005, which is how Ives said the idea to sell the Morrill Hall bricks came about.
“We sold the bricks from the old Sparty platform that was torn down and that seemed to do very well, so we continued to sell bricks for other campus landmarks,” Ives said.
Alumni, faculty members who worked in the building and students who have had classes in Morrill Hall have been the main buyers, Ives said.
“It’s just another way for fans of Michigan State to grab a piece of the history and have it in your hands,” he said.
Built in 1900 and originally called the Women’s Building, Morrill Hall contained living quarters for 120 women and included a two-story gymnasium, dining room on the third floor, cooking and sewing laboratories, woodworking shop and music rooms.
By 1937, the number of women on campus increased and a larger, more suitable women’s dormitory, Sarah Langdon Williams Hall, was opened. The university remodeled the Women’s Building and renamed it Morrill Hall after Vermont senator Justin Smith Morrill, whose name was attached to legislation that established MSU as a land-grant college.
Prior to the Morrill Hall demolition, the building was used for the university’s history and English departments.
The academic units that were housed in Morrill Hall have since moved to locations in Wells Hall and the Old Horticulture Building.
University engineer Bob Nestle said the building, which caught fire during its demolition, had to be taken down because the wood frame structure supporting the building was not designed to support what it was being used for.
“It was going to be too expensive to change out the structure of the building so we had no choice but to tear it down,” Nestle said.
After the buildings demolition, a rededication ceremony was held in August to rename MSU’s Agricultural Hall to Justin S. Morrill Hall of Agriculture.
Doug Morrill, an employee with Infrastructure, Planning and Facilities and fourth cousin of the late Justin Morrill, said it came as a pleasant surprise to him and his family when during the ceremony they received bricks from the original building named after his ancestor.
“We had no idea that (MSU) President Simon would be honoring us with a brick,” Morrill said. “I’m so glad they salvaged them … it meant a lot to have a piece of family history. I will have it forever and it will be passed down to my children and grandchildren.”
The original Morrill Hall will be replaced with a plaza that will contain pieces from the dismantled building and will be used as a gathering space and green space in the foreseeable future.
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