Sills Hall

The Building

Sills Hall Doorway: Bowdoin College: Brunswick, Maine The German department is located in historic Sills Hall. The building is shared by German, Romance Languages, Russian, Classics and Film Studies, as well as the Language Media Center, a branch of the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. Since Bowdoin is a small liberal arts college, faculty have the opportunity to build ties to faculty and departments throughout the College.

The Koelln Room

Classroom 107 in Sills Hall is dedicated to Fritz C. A. Koelln, a charismatic teacher of German at Bowdoin from 1929 to 1971. Besides a dedicatory plaque and a silhouette of Goethe, it displays tablets commemorating the winners of the Old Broad Bay Prizes in reading and the Consular Prize in literary analysis.

Peucinian Room

The German Department collaborated with the Classics, Russian, and Romance Languages Departments to establish a student library in the Peucinian Room in Sills Hall. The room is also used for seminars and other small classes.

German gathering

A German Gathering in the Peucinian Room

Language Media Center

Film and video are an integral part of course instruction. The Language Media Center, located on the lower level of Sills Hall, houses an extensive collection of German videos and films. The Language Media Center has laser disc, video, and audio equipment that enhance language instruction, and computer stations where interactive work with the Internet can be done.

Language media Center: Bowdoin College
Language media Center: Bowdoin College

History

Attention to the campus and buildings had been delayed by World War II; because of the war, the Sesquicentennial of 1944 was a modest celebration. After the war the Sesquicentennial Fund was launched, and plans were made for new college facilities. The most dramatic outcome of this activity was the 1948 rerouting of Harpswell Street which led it through the Pines to Federal Street. The old Delta where Adams Hall and the baseball diamond stood was united with the rest of the campus. What is now Sills Drive was built by the College with the approval of the town of Brunswick. This bold move made it possible to develop a new area of the campus. The President's Gate was moved and placed to allow automobiles access to the new cross-campus road.

Sills Hall: Bowdoin College: Brunswick, Maine

sills hall postcardNo new classrooms had been built since 1894. In December 1948 the faculty committee for a new classroom building was appointed, as was the committee of the Governing Boards, chaired by Harold L. Berry '01. It was natural, by now, to turn to McKim, Mead and White for designs for the classroom building and the new chemistry building.

Ground was broken for Sills Hall in October 1949 after a several-months' delay to rework the plans. The following September the new building was dedicated, and in May 1951 James Kellum Smith, the architect for McKim, Mead and White, was given an honorary degree for his work on this and other buildings at Bowdoin and at other colleges. It was not until two years later that the building was named for Kenneth Charles Morton Sills, who had announced his retirement.

Text From:
Patricia McGraw Anderson's The Architecture of Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1988). © Bowdoin College. »