Old Sem

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Rebuilt after a devastating fire
Rich in tradition
Cornell’s first building
Will stand to welcome generations
of future college students
long after most of us are gone.

– The Cornellian, March 13, 1959

Old Sem is Cornell College’s first building, with construction beginning in 1852, a year before the College’s founding.1 Back then, the college was known as the Iowa Conference Seminary and the building was known as the “seminary building.”2 The construction of Old Sem was an arduous one as the wooden timbers used for the floors and support beams had to be transported via the Mississippi River, then dragged to the building site by oxen-drawn carts.3 However, the community of Mount Vernon was determined to bring the seminary into existence, and it is they who helped finance and build Old Sem.4 Once completed, the building was 72 feet long by 40 feet wide and three stories tall.5

When classes began on September 5, 1853, the Seminary building was not complete, so classes met in the Methodist Episcopal Church, now the site of the First Street Community Center.6 The building was officially dedicated in a ceremony on November 14, 1853. Faculty and 161 students (57 women and 104 men), along with townspeople, marched from the Church in downtown Mount Vernon to the college’s new home on the Hilltop.7 They crowded into the first-floor chapel of the newly finished building to hear the benediction that dedicated this “Large and Commodious building.”8 Despite the lack of indoor plumbing and wood fire heating, it was a promising start to the college.9

In 1855, just two years after the completion of Old Sem, the Board of Trustees ruled that the rooms would be occupied by three students instead of two.10 A mansard roof was added in 1891 to provide another story for the building, although some, like Alice Fellows Rigby, a student during the early days of Cornell, said, “We never liked the mansard roof – it never harmonized with the rest of the building.”11 In 1869, a new two-story wing was added to the back of Old Sem.12 This “ell,” a 30 x 20 addition that creates an “L”-shape to the building, was built to provide a kitchen and dining room space, and was given a second floor in the early 1900s.13 It was the first major renovation to Old Sem and was home to the school’s kitchen and dining room and storage.14 In 1899, the first floor had been converted into a history lecture room, which it would remain until it became part of the chemistry department sometime prior to 1931.15

The usage of the Seminary building began to change after the establishment of College Hall in 1857.16 Male students ceased to board there and the building began to be used as a women’s dormitory, and referred to as the Ladies Boarding Hall. By 1862 it also held the primary school and music departments.17 After the completion of Bowman-Carter Hall, the building then became Science Hall, although some students still called it “Old Sem.”18 In 1891, Cornell’s library was moved out of King Chapel and onto the second floor of Old Sem, where it would remain until the completion of the Carnegie Library in 1905.19 Between 1885 and 1959, it was home to the chemistry, physics and biology departments.20 Old Sem also housed art studios on the fourth floor from the mansard roof construction in 1891 until the fire in 1924.21

In the 1950s, a gift from the Cowles Foundation allowed the college to remodel Science Hall (Old Sem) into a building for administrative use.22 The first floor became home to the offices for business, admissions, and the registrar (admissions has since moved, and now residence life is on the first floor), the second floor is home to the offices of the president and deans of the college and the development office, and the third floor became home to the office of public relations, the faculty lounge and conference room, and the service center (the third floor has since been rearranged to include the chaplain’s office and the business services office).23 After the 1959 renovation, the building was re-christened “Old Sem,” with “old” referring to the building’s venerable history.24

Video – “The Old Sem Fire”, written by Robert Yohe, Class of 1925

Begin Video Transcript

The Old Sem Fire, Written by Robert Yohe, Class of 1925

It was the second month, the 16th day in the hills of Eastern Iowa. And the year of 1924, memory holds forever more. The first real trace of faint soft gray foreshadowed the break of reluctant day. Clouds of slate obscured the sky and a cold North wind was howling by. Then all of a sudden the shrieking whale of the fire siren pierced the gale, shocking the students at old Cornell and rousing Mount Vernanites as well. Maynard Spooner ran to the phone, asking Central, “What goes on?” Then relayed the news that came from the wire. “Hey gang, Science Hall’s on fire.”

We dressed with mad and frantic haste and across the wind-swept campus raced. I picked the lock on the wide front door as I had done many times before. Then did the town’s volunteers arrive, a afoot and running along the drive, pulling the hose reel’s two-wheeled cart, ready and willing to do their part. The hoses were run through the open door and up the stairs to the old third floor, where the chemistry lab was now ablaze and filled with smoke and fumes and haze. A group of students dashed through the gloom, carrying things from the balance room and from other labs on other floors, toting them safely out of doors.

Now still more lines of hose were laid, bringing more much needed aid from the ground outside like deluging rains in through the broken window panes. And then, disaster, the pressure was down in the water mains of Mount Vernon town. No longer did nozzles gush and spout, but feeble useless streams put out. The flames leaped higher, a sickening roar marked the fall of the whole fourth floor, and the superstructure, the mancered roof, collapsed in one gigantic poof that threw the sparks and embers high, with clouds of smoke in the wintry sky, smoke in the North wind making a streak across Cedar Valley bleak.

When Harmy and I walked by that night, a few little flickers of eerie light came from the dying fire within where yesterday a lab had been. This was the end of Science Hall, but the old brick walls did never fall, blackened and icicle draped, yet good, mute tribute to their builders stood. As Mr. Jarvis, my good friend’s dad remarked, the builders really had put lots of Christianity into their mortar, obviously. As the Phoenix arose from its ashes gray, old Sem revived in a different way. New rooms were built within that shell to serve the needs of fair Cornell. Where the shadows slant across the hill, old Sem stands firm and serves us still. Stands in the midst of old Cornell, abides in our memories as well.

Written by Robert Yohe, class of 1925.

End of Video Transcript

The Fire

On February 16, 1924, at around 6 a.m., a small fire broke out in a 3rd floor freshmen Chemistry lab inside Old Sem. A maintenance man named Charles Curnutt saw the fire through the window just before it exploded, shooting out red and green flames.25 Curnutt sounded the alarm and soon hundreds of students, teachers and townspeople arrived to help douse the flames.26 Although the fire on the third floor was extinguished within an hour, sparks had spread to the fourth floor which, made entirely of wood, caught quickly and “went up like a matchbox.”27 This, combined with the burning of numerous chemicals and the water pressure giving out, set the fire burning for almost six hours, completely gutting the building’s interior.28

The total damage amounted to $50,000. Fortunately, due to the early hour, no one was inside the building and so none were injured.29 There was some controversy at the time over whether or not Old Sem should be rebuilt or simply torn down and a new building created, as college officials were unsure of the integrity of the walls, which were the only thing left after the fire.30 Ultimately, it was decided that the building should be repaired, although the fourth floor was never rebuilt.31 A year later another small fire broke out in Old Sem; fortunately, this one was extinguished relatively quickly and there was little damage done.32

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Related Sources:

  1. “Only person living who moved into Science Hall in 1853 tells stories of happy days in ‘Old Sem,’” The Cornellian, February 19, 1924, 1. ↩︎
  2. Ibid. ↩︎
  3. “Old Sem: A Many-Splendored Life,” The Cornellian, March 13, 1959.  ↩︎
  4. Mae P. Hutchinson, Florence Keys Mitchell, Nellie M. Hartung, Geraldine Hughes, S.V. Williams, Frederic M. McGaw, Mary L. Parsons, Elizabeth B. Ink, and Elmer J. Miller. A Centennial History of Mount Vernon, Iowa, 1847-1947 (Mount Vernon, IN: Windmill Publications, 1991), 29.  ↩︎
  5. “Old Sem: A Many-Splendored Life.” ↩︎
  6. “Only person living who moved into Science Hall in 1853 tells stories of happy days in ‘Old Sem’.”  ↩︎
  7. “Happy Birthday, Old Sem,” Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun, November 10, 1977, 13.  ↩︎
  8. Plaque on the outside of Old Sem.  ↩︎
  9. C. William Heywood and Richard Harlan Thomas, Cornell College: A Sesquicentennial History, 1853-2003 (Cedar Rapids: WDG Pub., 2004), 22.  ↩︎
  10. “New ‘Old Sem’ is Gift of Cowles Foundation,” The Cornell College Bulletin, February 1959, College Archives.  ↩︎
  11. “Only person living who moved into Science Hall in 1853 tells stories of happy days in ‘Old Sem’.” ↩︎
  12. “New Faculty Lounge Opens,” Cornell College Alumnus, Accessed June 20, 2016. ↩︎
  13. Ibid. ↩︎
  14. Ibid. ↩︎
  15. Ibid. ↩︎
  16. “Only person living who moved into Science Hall in 1853 tells stories of happy days in ‘Old Sem’.”  ↩︎
  17. “New ‘Old Sem’ is Gift of Cowles Foundation.”  ↩︎
  18. Charles J. Milhauser, Cornell College: 150 Years from A to Z (Cedar Rapids: WDG Pub., 2003).  ↩︎
  19. Campbell S. Yaw, “American Gothic in Mount Vernon: King Chapel and the Community,” December 14, 1973, Cornell Archives.  ↩︎
  20. “Fire in ‘Old Sem,’” February 27, 1925, College Archives.  ↩︎
  21. “Old Sem: A Many-Splendored Life.”  ↩︎
  22. “New ‘Old Sem’ is Gift of Cowles Foundation.”  ↩︎
  23. Promotional Pamphlet. “Administration building,” College Archives.  ↩︎
  24. Milhauser, Cornell College. ↩︎
  25. Greg Poduska and Grant Rasmussen, “The History of Old Sem.” Copy made January 2011. College Archives.  ↩︎
  26. “Fire in ‘Old Sem’.” ↩︎
  27. “‘Old Sem’ Burns to the Ground Morning of February 16” The Cornell College Bulletin, The Cornell Alumnus, February 1925, College Archives.  ↩︎
  28. Ibid. ↩︎
  29. “Old Sem: A Many-Splendored Life.” ↩︎
  30. “Cornell Alumni of earlier days hold vision of a greater Cornell.” The Cornell College Bulletin, March 31, 1924, College Archives.  ↩︎
  31. “Old Sem: A Many-Splendored Life.”  ↩︎
  32. “Fire in ‘Old Sem’.” ↩︎

Cite this Page:

Brad Kane ’18 and Hannah Robertson ’18, “Old Sem,” Mount Vernon Iowa History Tours.

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