The Three Wells Halls

All three editions of Wells Hall were named for Judge Hezekiah Griffith Wells (1812–1885).

H. G. Wells (not the famed author) was born in Ohio and studied at Kenyon College. In 1833 he came to Kalamazoo, where he served as county judge and was elected to five terms as village president. He was appointed one of the original members of the Board of Agriculture by Section 36 of the Reorganization Act of 1861. In 1869 he became the first elected president of the board.^† In 1874 U.S. President Ulysses Grant appointed Judge Wells as presiding officer of the Court of Alabama Claims. Wells tendered his resignation to the board but by unanimous acclaim he was convinced to withdraw it, and for several years he served in both roles. He remained president of the board until 1883.¹

“The Agricultural College owes much to Judge Wells’ ability, and his zeal in behalf of the school, for its present high position and prosperity. He spent one whole season before the state legislature, when efforts were being made to have the College removed to Ann Arbor and made a department of the University. He was confident that such a course would be detrimental to the best success of the College.”²

Wells Hall the First (1877—1905)

After Saints’ Rest was destroyed in late 1876, the state Legislature granted a $25,000 appropriation to replace it. The result was this larger and much more elaborate design by architects Watkins & Arnold. Wells Hall was built in 1877 and was located to the south of College Hall, on a site now occupied by the east wing of the Main Library. The first Wells Hall met the same fate as the building it replaced, when it burned down on February 11, 1905.³

Wells Hall the Second (1906—1966)

The second Wells Hall was designed by E. A. Bowd, who started working almost before the collapsed walls of first Wells had cooled. The state legislature quickly authorized a $55,000 appropriation ($5,000 less than the Board’s request) and in July 1905 Chittenden & Skinner of Lansing were contracted to build it on the site of its predecessor. Construction was completed in time for fall term 1906. It too was a student dormitory and consisted of six units, or wards, separated by brick partition walls that were intended as a means of fire prevention—a design that might have helped to save the building when nearby Engineering caught fire in 1916. Until the 1920s the dormitory lacked hot water, and men “warmed their shaving water by conducting steam through a rubber tube from the radiator.” Second Wells lasted until April 1966, when it was demolished to make room for the new East Wing of the Main Library.⁴

Wells Hall the Third (1967)

Today’s Wells Hall is an office, classroom, and lecture hall building in the International style. It was built in 1967, with the D-wing added in 1970. At the time, B-108 Wells was said to be the largest lecture hall on campus. A major addition to the B-wing was finished in 2012 to accommodate units of the College of Arts and Letters that moved from soon-to-be-razed Morrill Hall.

1. Beal, pp. 343–344. 1st AR (1862), pp. 49–50. Minutes, 9 Feb 1869, p. 182. ↩︎
2. Beal, p. 344, biography “probably prepared by T. C. Abbot.” ↩︎
3. Lautner, p. 46. Beal, p. 270. ↩︎
4. Minutes, 1 Mar 1905, p. 270; 30 Aug 1905, pp. 298–302. MAC Record, 10(38), 13 Jun 1905, p. 1; 11(30), 17 Apr 1906, p. 1. FSD (1906), pp. 3–28. Kuhn, p. 325. ↩︎

1. † The Governor of the State was, by law, an ex-officio member of the Board of Agriculture, and for its first eight years it was “customary to elect the Governor of the State to be president” of the board. When “it was seen that his many official duties did not leave the Governor time to attend to the details of college business,” in 1869 the board elected for the first time one of its appointed members—Wells—as president.[22nd AR (1883), p. 17]↩︎