Opening Remarks at Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall Dedication Ceremony - September 29, 2006
Good morning!
This building we are dedicating today, the Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall, has been beautifully renovated and redesigned. But let us recognize it is important for reasons that go beyond bricks and mortar.
It is central to this university’s history. And it is vital to our future.
Completed in 1919, this was the university’s first real gym and assembly hall -- our first building designed to be enjoyed by everyone. That brought a sense of community and shared purpose to a campus that was barely over a decade old.
Old photographs show this building all alone, shadowed only by longleaf pines. A field nearby remains a field to this day, but a very different one indeed: Florida Field.
Such was the need and desire for a gym and gathering place that Gainesville’s residents even pitched in, donating the funds needed to overcome a budget shortfall to get the building completed. That’s worth remembering this year, as the university celebrates its 100th anniversary in Gainesville.
Everyone called the building the “new gym” because it replaced UF’s original exercise room in Thomas Hall. There was so much enthusiasm about the building that UF’s president and Gainesville’s mayor invited the New York Giants here for spring training! The team came that spring of 1919 – but only after UF agreed to install showers. In later years, the Giants moved on to other spring training grounds, but I am sure our athletes continued to appreciate those showers.
Architectural fans will note this building’s expansive windows, so skillfully integrated into brick arches and buttresses. These windows were designed to provide ventilation in the years before air conditioning, while also exposing the clear span of the basketball court.
For many years, this place was the heart of the University of Florida. The two biggest events on the social calendar each year, fall and spring frolics, were held here. The dances were so popular that there was a lottery to attend, with the band playing two complete sets for two entirely different crowds of revelers.
After the university began admitting women in 1948, the new gym became the Women’s Gymnasium. The name endured even as the building slowly fell into disuse and disrepair. As Neil mentioned, the Women’s Gym sat empty for 27 years, its proud history slipping into obscurity.
Six years ago, Kathryn Chicone Ustler came to its rescue.
Kay is a great friend to the University of Florida who comes from a family of great friends to this university. She is a UF alumnus, a 1961 graduate with a degree in sociology. It won’t surprise you to know that she believes strongly in the importance of historic preservation and has been active in preservation efforts in her home of Orlando.
As a university, we cannot know where we are going unless we know where we have been. So in preserving this building, so central to fostering the university’s sense of itself as a warm and welcoming community, Kay has helped preserve our past and our purpose. For that invaluable gift, I want to thank Kay and her son, Craig, who has also contributed. I also want to pay tribute to the Chicone family, who has been committed and valued supporters of the university’s athletic program for many decades.
There is a symmetry about the Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall that is striking. It is the former Women’s Gym. Its restoration is sponsored by a woman. It is UF’s first academic center to be named exclusively after a woman. And, of course, the Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall will serve as home to the university’s women’s studies programs.
In that capacity, this building so vital to our history, will also remain central to this university’s future.
The field of women’s studies is an essential component of any large research university, and that’s certainly true at the University of Florida. Virginia Woolf wrote famously of the need for a woman to have a “room of her own.” While I think we have made great strides since Woolf’s era, I believe it remains important to give women’s studies a nurturing home, one that fosters both lively conversation and great scholarship.
With its sunlit classrooms and offices, its libraries and galleries and its garden, Ustler Hall will do all that and more.
I know that all of you share in my pride today as we dedicate the Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall.
Thank you.
Bernie Machen