Farewell, Tuttle House
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As seen June 19, Tuttle's rubble is heaped in front of Lile House, also headed for the wrecking ball.photo by Hawes Spencer
In the ongoing project to replace 11 residence halls built to accommodate UVA's rapid expansion in the mid-1960s, another has fallen. This time it's Tuttle House, which was completed in 1964 and stood until June 17 at the corner of Alderman Road and Tree House Drive across from the Aquatic & Fitness Center. Like Watson, Balz, and Dobie (each destroyed two years ago), Tuttle housed 144 first-year students in four stories of suites. The replacement buildings– the first of which began rising in 2008 as a smaller prototype called Kellogg House– will typically stand six stories and hold 420 students. In addition to putting more students in the Scott Stadium area, the new residence halls offer air-conditioning instead of the long balconies offered by their predecessors.
4 comments
Piles of huge dead trees on the ground at this site last Thursday when I drove by.
What about the names : Balz, Watson and Dobie? Wete these names of people who were important or long-serving, or especially beloved by tne U at some point in time? Do their names and legacies now get relegated to the dust bin of history because no one can remember back that far ? Who is Kellogg, and why is that the new name?
Jeez Amigo clearly you're new here, but that's a great question. It seems like legacies last as long as the money does (Scott Stadium?).
Dean Robert Kellogg: http://news.clas.virginia.edu/english/x9374.xml
I was a Dobie resident (highest place on grounds) but never knew anything about the namesake.
Albert George Adam Balz (1887-1957)
Balz was a Charlottesville native who received a bachelor's degree (1908) and a master's degree (1909) from U.Va. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1916. After completing his residence requirement at Columbia in 1913, Balz returned to the University as an assistant professor in philosophy and was promoted to associate professor upon completing his Ph.D. in 1916. In 1917 he married Dorothy Dean and they had three children. An instructor and adjunct professor of philosophy from 1910 to 1912, Balz became full professor in 1920. For many years, he was chairman of the philosophy department, as well as chairman of the Charlottesville School Board.
Armistead Mason Dobie (1881-1962)
Born in Norfolk, Dobie received three U.Va. degrees – a bachelor's degree in 1901, a master's degree in 1903, and a bachelor's of law in 1904 – and in 1922 he received Doctor of Juristic Science from Harvard. As a law professor at the University, he was a specialist in federal procedure and was dean of the Department of Law from 1932 until he retired to accept a federal judgeship for the Western District of Virginia in 1939. He was appointed to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 1940. He retired from the bench in 1956, married Elizabeth McKinney in 1958, and died in 1962.
Thomas Leonard Watson (1871-1924)
Born in Chatham, Watson received bachelor's and master's degrees from what was then the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Virginia Tech), in 1890 and 1893, respectively, and subsequently took a Ph.D. from Cornell University. While there, he was a member of the sixth Peary Arctic Exploration, which went to Greenland in 1896. A researcher at the U.S. National Museum, assistant geologist of Georgia and teacher at Denison University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Watson was the Corcoran Professor of Geology at the University from 1907 to his death in 1924. He was also state geologist from the founding of the office in 1908 until this death. He married Adelaide Stephenson of Atlanta in 1899 and they had two daughters and four sons.
I lived in Tuttle House when I was a UVa undergrad(transferred my second year from the UVa Extension in Madison, Va) and lived in Tuttle my second and third years.
Sorry to see it go, lots of fond memories from those days long ago.
I believe Mr. Tuttle was a biology professor at Uva some time in the last century. Its sad to see the name lost.
Interestingly, years later, when the Alderman dorms became exclusively first year,Tuttle housed one, or maybe both, of the Burge twins,stars of UVa womens basketball in its greatest era in the early 90s.