Talk:List of Brigham Young University buildings

Page creation
This page was created per conversation on the BYU main article talk page as a way to save room there. Please help by expanding this article and removing text from the main BYU article. Thank you. --Eustress (talk) 03:20, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Athletics
All athletic facilities can be found at http://www.byucougars.com/athletic_department/facilities/index.jsp. --Eustress (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Info on other buildings: http://cfac.byu.edu/index.php?id=90 --Eustress (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Move from BYU main page
The following text (inside the hidden bar) was moved from the BYU main article and may serve to elaborate on some of the buildings in this article or be used to create building-specific articles:

{{hidden|contentstyle=border:1px solid blue; |headerstyle=color:white; background:#AAAAFF; |header= Campus section (old) |content=

Museums
The campus is home to several museums containing exhibits from many different fields of study. BYU's Museum of Art, for example, is one of the largest and most attended art museums in the Mountain West. This Museum aids in academic pursuits of students at BYU via research and study of the artworks in its collection. The Museum is also open to the general public and provides educational programming. The Museum of Peoples and Cultures is a museum of archaeology and ethnology. It focuses on native cultures and artifacts of the Great Basin, American Southwest, Mesoamerica, Peru, and Polynesia. Home to more than 40,000 artifacts and 50,000 photographs, it documents BYU's archaeological research. The Earth Science Museum was built in 1976 to display the many fossils found by BYU's Dr. James A. Jensen. It holds many artifacts from the Jurassic Period (210-140 million years ago), and is one the top five collections in the world of fossils from that time period. It has been featured in magazines, newspapers, and on television internationally. The museum receives about 25,000 visitors every year. The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum was formed in 1978. It features several forms of plant and animal life on display and available for research by students and scholars. The campus also houses several performing arts facilities. The de Jong Concert Hall seats 1282 people and is named for Gerrit de Jong Jr. The Pardoe Theatre is named for T. Earl and Kathryn Pardoe. Students use its stage in a variety of theatre experiments, as well as for Pardoe Series performances. It seats 500 people, and has quite a large stage with a proscenium opening of 19 by 55 ft. The Margetts Theatre was named for Philip N. Margetts, a prominent Utah theatre figure. A smaller, black box theater, it allows a variety of seating and staging formats. It seats 125, and measures 30 by 50 ft. The Nelke Theatre, named for one of BYU's first drama teachers, is used largely for instruction in experimental theater. It seats 280.

Student housing
One of the earliest student dormitories at BYU, Allen Hall, named for Ray Eugene Allen and his wife Inez Knight, was built in 1938. Originally it was a men's dormitory, but during World War II, a large influx of female students caused the university to make it a women's dorm. In 1962, the building ceased to be a student dormitory altogether, and was used as temporary housing for missionaries while the Church's Language Training Mission was under construction. The success of Allen Hall led to immediate plans for another dormitory, Amanda Knight Hall, named for the wife of Jesse Knight. This served as a home for female students until it was also turned over to the Language Training Mission. Heritage Halls is a twelve-building housing complex on campus which offers apartment-style living. Six of the buildings were built in 1952, and the other six in 1954. The halls received their collective name through a contest among residents. Each of the separate buildings is named after a notable Latter-day Saint woman. Originally, these halls housed only female residents. Today, however, the halls house both male and female students, divided by gender into separate buildings. Each building has ten units capable of housing six people each. Construction of Helaman Halls followed soon after, with the first five buildings completed in 1958, and three more added by 1970. The Halls recently underwent a 12 year renovation spanning 1991 and through 2003. In 1965, BYU completed construction of Deseret Towers. "DT", as it is called by students, originally consisted of five towers, with a sixth (V Hall) added in 1969, and a seventh (W Hall) in the late seventies. The Towers were capable of housing over 2000 students. In December 2006, V and W Hall were torn down. The others followed in 2008 with demolition being completed in May 2008. In 1946, during the postwar BYU growth, President McDonald purchased forty-eight buildings from a nearby Air Force station in order to house students. These buildings were called Wymount Village, and housed both married and single students until 1962. Wymount Village was replaced by Wymount Terrace in that year, intended solely for students with young families. The 24 building complex contains a total of 462 apartments of varying sizes. Another complex originally intended for families was Wyview Park. At first, Wyview was a trailer park, but in 1996 it was razed and rebuilt into an apartment complex. In 2006, the complex began housing single students as well, in order to counteract loss of singles' housing in other areas.

A unique form of housing on campus is found in the Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR) complex. The twenty-five apartments in this complex provide housing for students in foreign languages. Residents of these apartments agree to speak only their apartment's assigned language during the school year while in the apartment. This immersion experience is available in nine languages, and students are accompanied by a native resident throughout the year to enhance the experience.

Helaman Halls is served by a central cafeteria called the Cannon Center. Branches of the BYU Creamery provide basic food and general grocery products for students living in Heritage Halls, Wymount, Wyview, and the FLSR. The store, begun in 1949, has become a BYU tradition and is frequented by visitors to the university and members of the community, as well as students. It was the first on-campus full-time service grocery store in the country. }}

Square footage
Glad to see improvements on the article. Would it be reasonable to remove the column for square footage? I don't see any other FLs with such a column (see WP:FL, Listed buildings), and it doesn't seem to add much value to the objective of the article. Furthermore, we need space to make the pictures of the buildings bigger. —Eustress talk 13:49, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Eustress, I'm glad to add the information I found. I don't mind removing the square footage and increasing picture size. I just added the information available in the document I found. I do think adding square footage might be interesting. I don't know if it would be better served in a separate statistical section or added to building Infoboxes should any unique articles be written about buildings. I'd welcome your input. I'm also glad to see you got permission for several nice photographs from the University photographers. I'm wondering if similar requests could be made on other buildings or if it would be easier to just get personal photographs and license them appropriately? —GreenwoodKL talk 17:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Helaman Halls
The article currently says that Helaman Halls "underwent a 12 year renovation spanning 1991 and through 2003." Although this is the language of the cited BYU Newsnet article, I was under the impression that all of the buildings were torn down to their foundations and then rebuilt. Being a former resident of May/Merrill halls, I saw this for a fact when May hall was demolished and rebuilt in 2004. Additionally, the occupation date of the Cannon Center is listed as 2008. The Cannon Center is actually much older than that (I don't know when exactly). It was demolished in 2006/2007? (I also don't know exactly when) and then rebuilt in a slightly shifted location. I wonder if two occupation dates should be listed for all of the buildings, in the format of /. For Merrill Hall, for example, it would be 1959/2004. Vidalian Tears (talk) 17:10, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The Cannon Center was rebuilt. They built the new building ajacent to the old one so that they could keep it operational until the new one was ready. Thus even though both are named after George Q. Cannon they are no more the same building as the current Joseph Smith Building and the old Joseph Smith Memorial Building.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:44, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Demolition of two B- buildings
In August 2010, two service buildings near the Clyde building and Fletcher building were demolished. I think they were B-34 and B-38. I suppose this would be updated next release of the BYU building inventory. They've expanded the parking lot in their place. Vidalian Tears (talk) 17:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Based on this map of campus, I've moved B-21 and B-32 to a new "Former Buildings" section and added a description to B-21 labeling it as an "Auto Shop". —GreenwoodKL (t, c) 14:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Former Buildings
With the new "Former Buildings" section, should other buildings be added, too--for example, the Smith Family Living Center (SFLC), which was demolished and replaced by the JFSB (Joseph F. Smith Building)? Or what about more minor changes, such as when they gutted the JKHB (Jesse Knight Humanities Building) a few years ago, rebuilt the interior, built an addition, then renamed the whole building to JKB (Jesse Knight Building)? Vidalian Tears (talk) 19:32, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I would be fine with adding more "Former Buildings," or others adding them. I would lean towards SFLC over JKHB -> JKB as a priority first, where entirely new buildings/structures sit on the site of former, whereas Helaman Halls and JKB are extensive but remodels of the prior building with a similar look and feel as the old.  I could think of a few others, like the houses by the Marriott Center and Bean Museum, DT halls, ALUM, Knight Magnum, etc... —GreenwoodKL (t, c) 21:58, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Cannon Center
I would say in general the rule should be if the building is fully destroyed it is a new building, otherwise there is only a renovation. One clue is if the new building is announced as such. The Joseph F. smith building was built by entirely destoying the old Joseph F. Smith Family Living Center, and it is totally a new design.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:47, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

In the case of the Smith Family Living Center they leveled that building and then built a new one with an entirely different foot print on the same general site. The Jesse Knight Building/Jesse Knight Humanities Building seems to have involved only alterations to an existing building. It appears the building was always clearly there during renovations. The current Joseph Smith Building on the other hand is on a site that is so distinct from the old Joseph Smith Memorial Building that the JSMB was torn down after the JSB was built.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Another former building that needs adding to the list is the former George Q. Cannon Center. The current Cannon center was built in mainly 2007-2008 on what had been a parking lot adjacent to the old Cannon center. From what I have been told apparently some of the Heleman Halls Administrative Offices space in the new Cannon Center were not completed until after the old Cannon Center was razed since they were built on space covered by the old Cannon Center.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

The site offices/other non-ffod functions of both the old and new Cannon Centers should not be ignored. However in actual usage the Dining Hall function was always the chief one in people's minds, to the point where the question "when does the Cannon Center close" would be answered "8:00" even though on most days the comp-uter lab, open study lounge and such in the old Cannon center was open until at least 11:30 and the Housing Front Desk about as late. It is not even that the people involved in such a conversation would have been ignorant of the computer lab and other things being open later, it just was that "The Cannon Center" meant the Cannon Center Cafeteria in common usage, although the building had lots of space beyond this. The old Cannon Center also had Cosmos Connection and Tomasito's Pizza which were operated by the Cannon Center Cafeteria put were distict from the main cafeteria area, although staff at the later two locations were used to run the main cafeteria, especially in the dish room, on Sundays and the space occupied by Tomasitos would be transformed into part of the main Cannon Center Cafeteria on Sundays as well as during high use times over summer. I know this because I was an employee of the Cannon Center, and worked in both Tomasitos and later the main dining area. I mention the dish room from personal experience.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Proper treatment of the Cannon Center seems to have a good potential if the housing section is split off into a seperate section. I am almost wondering if the Cannon Center would merit its own article.  However, this would then lead to a question of should there be one on the old Cannon Center and one on the new Cannon Center, or should there just be one article.  I vote that for now we seperate housing (as argued elsewhere in this discussion page) and that we then make a section on the Cannon Center.  I am not sure it would need to be included within a list per se in a seperate article on housing.  It could be discussed in depth in the overview section on for the Heleman Halls sub-section.  Since there is one Cannon Center it does not need to be listed.  On the other hand the Morris Center to some extent had a similar function that is probably worth discussing.  The Cannon Center was always better though, not only in food quality and service, but in that it had a much better built lobby area that was actually usable.  I, as a freshman resident of Helaman Halls when the Cannon Center was open most nights past midnight (a practice since discontinued), and thus a good place to hang out, and later an employee of the Cannon Center Cafeteria who fully embraced our pro-customer service approach, am of course not biased in any way.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Resources for more indepth coverage
Here is the link to the L. Tom Perry Librariy's BYU Archives discussion on available resources on buildings. http://lib.byu.edu/sites/byuhistory/universityhistory/pst/buildings/

There is also a book Brigham Young University: 1000 views of 100 Years. The text gives quite in-depth coverage of most buildings through 1974 that were built as permanent stuctures. It largely ignores most of the post-World War II temporary buildings.

If anyone is a BYU student or lives near BYU there are several potential lines of inquiry to improve this article. BYU also has old maps of campus that could be used to better understand the location of some buildings.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:28, 9 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm a BYU student, what needs doing? Vidalian Tears (talk) 17:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The main issues are the descripion sections and the former buildings section. The later is especially in need of revision.  It would also be nice if someone was able to identify how the current Talmadge building and Knight buildings differ from the originals.  The expansion of the Knight building in the 1960s is fairly easy to find information on.  However the re-modeling of the building since 2005 is fairly elusive.  I was able to find information on who one of the contractors was if I remember correctly, but the nature of what was done I was not able to come up with any good leads on.  I am still not sure if the building was expanded or if it was just revised.  There is also the issue of us not having any pictures posted of former campus buildings.  I do know there are some on-line available photos of the old Smith Family Living Center.  I am not sure to what extent they would be under copyright and whether they could be used here or not.  BYU special collections has several works relative to this.  Plus there is Hatch's book on the BYU campus, which BYU has two circulating copies of as well as one in Special Collections.  I actually have an outstanding inter-library loan request for that book.  The request for that book was sent by inter-library loan last Thursday, so I hope to get it soon, but maybe it will not come in before break.  That book, though published in 2001, only covers through 1974.  There is also a book entitled something like "1000 views of 100 years" that I have looked at/ read.  It is mainly about BYU's buildings.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I just recalled that one issue I was trying to research and not able to come up with any leads on was the Heleman Halls and DT pools. I specifically recall Edwin Butterworth's book "BYU: 1000 Views of 100 Years". I do not know if either of these pools are extant. The Helaman Halls pool was in the general vicinity of where Helman Halls Dorm #9 is, although this is only a generalized guess on my part since I have not been on BYU campus since March of 2005 and so only have a sense of that building's location from using google maps. I do know that the DT swimming pool was built before the Helaman Halls swimming pool. My preliminary searches for information only turned up references to the pool in the Richards Building. I am sure that the two pools that I mention did at one time exist, because I distinctly remember one summer I was enrolled at BYU and living in DT we had a ward party at the DT pool where one of the very few ward members we had under age 18 managed to get a large gash in his head requiring stitches and since he was under age 18 this involved a complicated attempt to contact his parents to get permission for this. I have other very specific memories connected with the DT and Helaman Halls pools, although I would have to say that I cannot verify that the DT pool was entirely distinct from the Cremery Building. Thus I know that Butterworth's book has infomation on this matter, but it might be a bit much to cite the book since I have not looked at it in about a decade.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

This page is too big
The Splitting guidelines say that any page above 100 kb should be split. This page is currently at 103 kb and has the potential to grow beyond that since not all former buildings are listed, there are some structures that might arguably be classed as buildings not listed (see my new discussion on this matter in post below), there are many structures that do not have photos, most notably all of the former buildings and several buildings have no explantion of their function. While some of the current explantions of building function, such as the one for the BYU Motion Picture Studio might arguably be condensed here and moved to the main article, it appears some more drastic action needs to be taken. I will propose a specific drastic action, but think general consideration of drastic action is in order. The size guidelines actually strongly suggest division of the article if it is more than 60 kb, so it is not like this article is in the questionable range, it is in the "this article has gotten to long and unwieldy" range.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

What is a building?
This question is specifically prompted by the noninclusion of the "Victory Bell" and its structure on this list. Since this is a small structure just beyond the southwest corner of the Marriott Center, which serves to keep the Victory Bell off the ground, it is not a building by some definitions. However it is something, and being the location of the Victory Bell, probably more notable than some of the sheds listed in the article. In addition to this there is the former location of the Victory Bell at the top of the stairs up from the Smith Field House. I am not sure if this structure still exists, but it was mentioned in Wilkinson's history of BYU, so it might merit mention in the former buildings section. There are also various underground vaults, some that were connected with BYU's nuclear reactor, that might merit mention. However, I am thinking such things might be worth including in a general article/list on "BYU grounds". The nature of some of BYU's past farms and its current preserves and ranches might also more lend themselves to such a cetegory. Other things worth mentioning in there might be specific parking lots, especially if they are notable for some reason; status on BYU, the BYU statute garden between the Mmuseum of Art and the Harris Fine Arts Center, named quads/malls and the like. In the case of the farms, ranches, preserves, off-campus buildings, the LDS Motion Picture Studio and the like while there are buildings associated with these sites, many of them are more than just the buildings. This is definitely clear of the farms, ranches and preserves. They have at least as many outdoor as indoor functions, so they do not quite fit as buildings. Also the pond/fountain below the carillon bell tower is not a building, but it is something, and the same can be said of the area along the hill south of campus. John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:41, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Should we split out the section on housing?
I noticed that there is a specific notice that the article on BYU housing was merged into this article. In light of the form of the housing section of this article it would seem worth while to split out the housing section into a seperate article again. Whatever the reasoning for merging that article into this, with this article over the 100 kb threshhold, such a split seems logical. This is especially true since there are still several Heritage Halls buildings that have not had specific entries placed on their name sakes. The DT section also could include statements on which of the DT buildings had been specifically named after people. These statements could be fairly short since they were all named after general authorities who already have aritcles in wikipedia, but since we are already over the almost universal threshhold for splitting an article it would seem that with clear prospects for the article expanding more such a split would be reasonable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

If people are curious where the controversial experiments occurred.
I always assumed the controversial aversion therapy experiment(s) occurred in the SWKT. Turns out out they occurred in the Joseph F. Smith Family Living Center. Here's a link, although I'm unsure of how reliable it is. http://www.affirmation.org/therapy/with_all_thy_getting.shtml (Accessed 1/12/2012) I feel this is important information to add to this historical building since aversion therapy at BYU was deemed a notable issue on other Wikipedia pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.187.97.22 (talk) 02:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Name of campus
I am including this section due to a user's insistence in creating a label for the BYU campus that is not only completely unnecessary, due to its redundancy of the prior, opening sentence, along with the fact that it is a made up "title" or label for the campus. In this instance, the user does not appear to be interested in engaging constructively in WP contributions, as this edit clearly makes no sense but it continues to be made. ChristensenMJ (talk) 14:13, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on List of Brigham Young University buildings. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090222030051/http://kennedy.byu.edu/aboutus/welcome.php to http://kennedy.byu.edu/aboutus/welcome.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071118203442/http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/45808 to http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/45808
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071118203500/http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/60723 to http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/60723
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://newnewsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/59897
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/68813

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 09:46, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on List of Brigham Young University buildings. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110719154810/http://comms.byu.edu/fileadmin/comms/user_files/Documents/alumni/finalmag2009.pdf to http://comms.byu.edu/fileadmin/comms/user_files/Documents/alumni/finalmag2009.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100402182414/http://www.byucougars.com/athletic_department/facilities/richards/ to http://www.byucougars.com/athletic_department/facilities/richards/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110719155710/https://wilk.byu.edu/content/wsc-directory to https://wilk.byu.edu/content/wsc-directory
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071023063950/http://www.byu.edu/oncampushousing/rooms/room_options.shtml to http://www.byu.edu/oncampushousing/rooms/room_options.shtml

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 14:49, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Page Split Proposal
As noted in previous comments on this talk page, the list is rather long and unwieldy. I think it's worth looking into splitting the page again, potentially into 'current buildings' and 'former buildings' to help streamline the purposes of the page and as to not simply undo the merge a while back with 'housing'. I'm sure there are lots of other great ideas though Superlucer (talk) 23:17, 2 September 2023 (UTC)