Buckman Hall is a historic building located in Murphree Area on the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

campus in Gainesville,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. It was designed by architect

William A. Edwards William Augustus Edwards, also known as William A. Edwards (December 8, 1866 – March 30, 1939) was an Atlanta-based American architect renowned for the educational buildings, courthouses and other public and private buildings that he design ...

in the

Collegiate Gothic Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europ ...

style and opened in 1906 as one of the two original buildings on the University of Florida's Gainesville campus along with nearby Thomas Hall. It once was a multi-purpose facility but has been used exclusively as a student

dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or universi ...

since the 1940s. Buckman Hall was added to the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on January 11, 1974.

History

Background / Multipurpose building

In June 1905, the Florida legislature passed the

Buckman Act The Buckman Act was a Florida law passed by the state legislature in 1905. It reorganized the state's institutions of higher learning and created a Florida Board of Control to govern the system. The act, named for legislator Henry Holland Buckman ...

, which reorganized the state's university system and established a new University of Florida in Gainesville. Construction at the site began in late 1905 with a planned opening for the 1906-1907 academic year. The first two buildings completed were Buckman Hall, which was named for Buckman Act author

Henry Holland Buckman Henry Holland Buckman (1858–1914) was an attorney from Duval County, Florida, who became a member of the Florida Legislature and served on the Judiciary Committee. Buckman is known for being the author of the Buckman Act, a 1905 law that reor ...

, and Thomas Hall, which was named for Gainesville mayor William Reuben Thomas. When the first students arrived in September 1906, Buckman and Thomas Halls were home to all functions of the school, including classrooms, dormitories, and administrative offices. Buckman Hall housed the university's first cafeteria, gymnasium, and infirmary.

Andrew Sledd Andrew Warren Sledd (November 7, 1870 – March 16, 1939) was an American theologian, university professor and university president. A native of Virginia, he was the son of a prominent Methodist minister, and was himself ordained as a minis ...

, UF's first president, also lived there for a time.

Dormitory

The university's campus grew along with its enrollment in the early 20th century, and newer buildings gradually took over many of the former functions of Buckman Hall. It has been used exclusively as a dormitory since the University of Florida became

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

following World War II. Buckman Hall functioned as a student cooperative dormitory from 1974 until 2003. In exchange for lower rental rates, students performed most day-to-day maintenance such as general housekeeping and minor repairs. Residents also elected student officers who had the authority to make decisions concerning many aspects of residence hall life in addition to the duties of

resident assistant A resident assistant (RA), also known by a variety of other names, is a trained peer leader who coordinates activities in residence halls in colleges and universities, mental health and substance abuse residential facilities, or similar establish ...

s living in conventional on-campus housing. The cooperative program lost popularity with students over the years, and Buckman Hall became a regular dorm for the spring 2003 semester.

Air conditioning

Buckman Hall and Thomas Hall were the first two buildings to open on the UF campus, and they remain the last without

central air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

. Due to Buckman Hall's old wiring, even portable air conditioning units were not allowed for many years, and students often cooled their rooms by running a box fan in an open window. As part of an extensive renovation project during the 2006-2007 academic year, Buckman Hall's electrical infrastructure was completely replaced to better handle loads from computers and other modern electronics. These improvements also made it possible for residents to utilize portable air conditioning units beginning with the fall 2007 semester. Ductless air conditioning units were installed in every room in 2013, eliminating the need for students to purchase their own.

References

External links