At Arizona State University’s main campus in Tempe, excavators have been loading the steel, brick and concrete remains of Irish, Hayden and Best dormitories for several weeks now onto trucks that are hauling the debris away.
Irish Hall opened in in 1940. Hayden was built in 1951. Best opened in 1956.
I was there in the early 1970s, first as a resident at Irish Hall for two years, and then as a resident assistant at Best for another two years.
Now all three dorms are being leveled to make room for bigger and more modern living quarters.
New dorms and complex will cost $400 million
Tim Smith is the vice president of facilities management at ASU. He says the potential costs of repairs and renovations factored into the decision. As did student feedback about the mid-century designs — which featured shared bathrooms.
“At the end of the day, between the amount of deferred maintenance that was in these facilities, the configuration of the community restrooms was really not an attractive option for current students and prospective students,” Smith said.
He says Irish and Hayden had the feel of military barracks. Smith says these were the only dorms left on ASU’s campuses that still had community bathrooms.
“So the idea of trying to preserve these was considered, but ultimately we ended up deciding that the best course of action is basically to start fresh,” Smith said.
The old dorms housed about 800 students. The new ones will provide between 2,000 and 2,500 beds. The plan is to have the first 800 beds ready by the fall of 2028. The new complex, currently known as The Center Complex, will also house the ASU bookstore, retail space and food/dining facilities.
The complex is being built through a private-public partnership. The developer will put up the initial costs and recoup its investment over several decades through students’ room and board fees. The total cost is estimated to be just under $400 million. ASU will also put up $30 million for some of the non-residential facilities.
'Irish gave us an opportunity to uniquely meet each other and bond'
In September of 1970, Jim Fieberg was a freshman from Chicago when I first met him at Irish Hall. He expected warm temperatures but was in for a surprise.
Fieberg described his first night in the dorm: “The swamp cooler really worked well at night, not so much in the daytime. I was freezing and I didn’t bring a blanket. I thought I’m going to Arizona, it’s hot. … I tried to go to sleep. I didn’t sleep well.”
Fieberg slept fully clothed that night, “because I had no other option.”
According to Fieberg, the community bathrooms and layout of the Irish dorm encouraged socialization.
“C wing had a courtyard, which had some grass,” he said. “We were able to play volleyball and guys were able to goof off … and guys were able to climb up on the roof and they — instead of studying — they played Risk for hours on end.”
In the spring of 1972, that courtyard became the centerpiece of an art project. The residents of Irish C wing appealed to the student housing authority to let the students paint the interior courtyard. The university housing authority inexplicably approved the request. Over several weeks, the residents transformed the drab beige walls of the courtyard to an eye-popping but tasteful palette of red, white and blue.
Tim Agne is a digital editor at KJZZ. Thirty years after my friends and I passed through the dorm, he also lived in Irish C.
By Agne’s description, the dorm hadn’t changed much in those three decades: “You had to walk by everyone else’s room to go to the bathroom or whatever, so you had to get out, and you had to kind of see everybody, say hi and know what was going on.”
Agne says the Irish-Hayden-Best complex was identified as the honors dorms — which wasn’t the case in the 1970s.
“It was a group of guys who were all just nerds from high school because of the honors college thing,” he said. “A lot of us were from out of state, guys who were gifted kids in high school … showed up, didn’t know anybody, didn’t have any friends. I think Irish gave us an opportunity to uniquely meet each other and bond.”
He said the university’s high-speed internet — at least what was high-speed at the time — also helped the students meet each other.
“We had Napster, AOL Instant Messenger … there was plenty of temptation to screen rot. But Irish brought us out, brought us together. There were great video games, Xbox, Nintendo 64, you’d all sit around on a couch and plug in four controllers and play 'GoldenEye' or 'Halo' or 'Mario Kart' or 'Smash Bros.'”
They also undertook group projects like the residents from the ’70s, although not quite as artistic. Their project involved some engineering and fluid dynamics.
“We went to the ACE Hardware store for supplies and the guy there knew exactly what we were doing: building a two-story beer bong to go from the second floor down to the first floor. And this thing, it held three cans of beer — it hit like an absolute firehose.”
'We’re all living this major life moment together'
Alana Peralez was a resident of Irish C at the same time Agne was there. Some things had changed: Irish and all the dorms were now co-ed. But some things — like the communal nature of the Irish-Hayden-Best complex — hadn’t changed.
“Even talking to people that were also at ASU at the time but in different dorms, I don’t think they had that same experience,” she said. “So this is very unique to the setup and size of that dorm.”
There were times when dorm residents were there to support one another, perhaps most notably on 9/11.
Peralez recalls the day vividly, saying someone woke her up telling her she had to see what was happening on TV.
“And it was such a traumatic experience, let alone to have to do it by yourself, but at least we had each other to talk to, and we kind of were kind of focused on the TV and trying to figure out what was going on,” she said. “And it was kind of a major memory for me of something so awful happening, but sharing with other people, and we’re all living this major life moment together.”
There’s not much of Irish, Hayden or Best dormitories left, but the memories will remain.
“Everyone was part of that same community, and everyone was able to get along really nicely, just because of that kind of setup,” Agne says.
Peralez agrees: “I think our situation honestly was very unique because of the way the dorm was set up, and that it was sort of an open plan with the courtyard.”
Fieberg treasures the memories he made more than 50 years ago.
“People that I met in that complex — including the women’s dorms — you know, they were very good years,” he said. “I had a lot of fun, I met good, close friends and I wouldn’t have traded it.”
The new dorms may be a better fit for today’s high-tech world, where students connect via social media and virtual platforms. But the old buildings — where board games, bathrooms and beer bongs brought Sun Devils together — held a magic that will be hard to replicate.
Full conversation from The Show
MARK BRODIE: ASU has torn down three dorms that dated from the middle of the last century. Irish, Hayden, and Best halls opened in 1940, ’51, and ’56 respectively on the south side of ASU’s Tempe campus. All are now gone to make way for more modern student housing.
With me now in studio are two former residents of Irish Hall and two current KJZZ employees: Al Macias and Tim Agne. Guys, good morning. Welcome, thanks for being here.
AL MACIAS: Hey there, Mark.
TIM AGNE: Good morning.
MARK BRODIE: So, how long, let’s start off, how long did each of you live there? Al, you were there a few years before Tim, right?
AL MACIAS: A few years, yeah. I was a resident in Irish for two years, and then I was an RA in Best for two more years.
MARK BRODIE: So, all four of your college years were on this complex?
AL MACIAS: Well yeah, but I spent more than four years in college. I was on the five-year plan.
MARK BRODIE: Tim, how about you?
TIM AGNE: I spent two years in Irish C from 2000 to 2002. Then I moved off campus and lived in a house.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So, Al, can you guys sort of describe these buildings? I mean, they’re obviously from the ’40s and ’50s, and there were three of them that kind of made up this complex?
AL MACIAS: Yeah. Irish had three wings, and if you think it was kind of a U, and Irish C was on the southern part of that. And then just south of there was Hayden, another hall, was just a long run, and then to the west was Best, which had three wings of its own.
So initially I was at Irish C, which had a grass courtyard, which was great. Irish B had a concrete courtyard. Different group of people over there. Irish A was just also a long run.
So Irish C was an open area, we had community bathrooms at the corners of each floor. It was all male at that time. In the ’70s, the dorms were still fairly segregated. Although, jumping ahead, by the end of my tenure at Best, one of the wings had been converted into a women’s dorm. So, it was kind of the first co-ed, if you will, dorm.
MARK BRODIE: OK. And Tim, what did the buildings themselves look like?
TIM AGNE: So, the Irish B and C buildings were unique in that it was kind of an open rectangle. All of the rooms walked out to a central courtyard, so that when you went outside you could see all of the other rooms and whoever was out and about that day.
It was unique to me and one of the reasons that I had kind of chosen to live there out of the other dorms in what was then the Honors College complex, was because it felt like the vibe of a motel in Florida or something like that, a place that I had visited when I was a kid. It felt very kind of like tropical.
At that point, they had paved over that courtyard in Irish C. We had a couple of palm trees and a couple of picnic tables. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the courtyard, but we still hung out there quite a bit.
MARK BRODIE: But you liked, the motel vibe kind of appealed to you?
TIM AGNE: It did, yeah.
MARK BRODIE: In what way?
TIM AGNE: It just felt — Arizona was exotic to me at the time. And coming from St. Louis, I was like, “Oh, this is these cool vacation vibes, and this’ll be a nice place to live.”
MARK BRODIE: So, Al, you reported a story that aired this morning on Morning Edition here on KJZZ and you talked about sort of the sense of community, like that the structure of the buildings, the courtyards, like y’all kind of knew each other?
AL MACIAS: Yeah, and kind of like Tim — although I’m from here — I had encounters with people, guys from all over the place. One of the guys I mentioned in the story, Jim Fieberg, a good friend of mine, he came from Chicago. There was other guys from other parts of the country that were there.
And, as Tim says, at the time it was an open grass courtyard. You came out, you saw somebody across the way, you talked to them, you asked them questions. Me being from here, people might ask me a few more questions about Arizona or whatever. And so it was, yeah, it just opened itself up.
And then the community bathrooms, which I referenced in the story. It was it was just the way — I mean, you went in there in the morning to take a shower, you shaved or whatever, you bump into somebody, and sometimes in the morning, you know, they weren’t in their best appearance. So, you saw people about as fresh as you could sometimes.
MARK BRODIE: Tim, did living in that kind of environment help shape your college experience, being in a place where you were like, as you said sort of the motel vibes, running into people all the time?
TIM AGNE: It did. In fact, when my parents first drove away in the rental van that they had brought me out in, I went back to my room realizing that I didn’t know anybody at this huge university. My roommate, who I had met, wasn’t home at the time.
And as I’m sitting there in my room, two guys pop their head in and ask if they can play a song for me. They’re holding acoustic guitars. They start playing this Weezer song. Another guy pops in, he’s like, “Hey, is that ‘My Name Is Jonas’?” and he just starts singing along.
And so all of a sudden, I have three brand new friends, guys that I remain friends with to this day. And they’re from all different parts of the country and of course, everybody in the dorm that year was big Weezer fans as well.
MARK BRODIE: Has the band gone on tour?
TIM AGNE: No, I think they’ve broken up since. They’re in different parts of the country now.
MARK BRODIE: Al, did it shape your college experience? Because you had four years sort of in this complex, two just sort of living there and two working.
AL MACIAS: Yeah, it did and I earlier we were talking — and I know some people might find it hard to believe — but I was I was kind of a shy, reticent guy, coming out of high school. And I think for whatever reason, just that open atmosphere just kind of encouraged me and everybody else to just open up. Nobody really — I don’t want to say held back because it wasn’t that type — but everybody was pretty open.
And we didn’t have anybody walking in and playing — and Weezer certainly wasn’t around. I mean, I think their parents were around when I was there. But yeah … somebody’d have some music playing, “Oh, hey, you know, I’ve got that album.” “Oh, yeah. Hey, where did you get that?” and that type of stuff.
So, and then as we all got to know one another, it became much more social. We had some parties.
MARK BRODIE: Really? That’s shocking.
AL MACIAS: Yeah, I know.
MARK BRODIE: In college? In the ’70s?
AL MACIAS: Yeah, I know, yeah. We were groundbreaking.
MARK BRODIE: OK, I need a second to wrap my head around that. So, Al, I want to ask you, because you reported this in the story, so these are for reference, these are some buildings that are kind of on the south side of the campus close to where Gammage Auditorium is. What is going in there? Like why were these torn down?
AL MACIAS: Well, speaking to Tim Smith, the facilities VP at ASU, he said basically, they looked at renovating these dorms, to bringing them up to modern standards, but the cost of renovating and upgrading just didn’t make sense, financial sense.
So, they’re they’re blading everything. Last time I was there was Friday, Best C was the only thing left standing. And then they’re going to replace them with new, modern dorms. I think they’re going to go five or six stories up. The old setup had about 800 beds, and the new one will have about 2,000 to 2,500.
MARK BRODIE: So a little more housing.
AL MACIAS: Yeah, and there will be retail space. The campus bookstore is moving into that space. So it won’t be just strictly dorms. So, that’s that.
MARK BRODIE: OK. So Tim, before we wrap up: This place obviously, as you said, shaped your college experience. Like what does it mean to you that it’s now sort of in pieces on the ground?
TIM AGNE: We were very lucky that, thanks to Al and thanks to Tim Smith, I got a little chunk. So, I have a weirdly shaped hunk of concrete that used to be part of one of the Irish Hall buildings, and I’ll cherish that.
I’ve talked to a lot of my friends, including my friend Alana who was in the story, and this dorm was home to us. It shaped us, and it’s the reason that we are still in touch, the reason that we have so many of the friends and know so many of the people that we know today.
So, it feels like kind of a big loss. Certainly, it wasn’t really a place that you could go back and visit. They were very fenced off. Even walking to Gammage, you can barely catch a glimpse of Irish C as you walk from the parking structure to the theater. But there was some comfort in knowing it was there.
And now, I go back to campus pretty frequently for football games and events like that. But it is a little sad to know that I’ll never get to see my dorm again.
MARK BRODIE: Yeah, interesting. All right, guys, we’ll have to leave it there. Tim Agne, Al Macias, thank you to both for the memories.
AL MACIAS: Absolutely.
TIM AGNE: Thanks, go Devils.
-
The Arizona Board of Regents has filed a lawsuit, on behalf of Arizona State University, so the school can acquire a privately owned historic property. -
Many of us have had the experience of lying in bed in the middle of the night, trying desperately to fall asleep and not being able to. Researchers at the University of Arizona will be studying how being awake at that hour can impact our decision-making abilities. -
Questions raised about integrity of Big 12 games after Texas Tech QB ruled eligible despite gamblingA ruling from a judge in Texas has led to a lot of consternation over one school in the Big 12 — that’s the conference in which both Arizona State University and University of Arizona play. -
The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into Arizona State University; the feds say they’re looking into diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, practices at the university. -
High school teachers from across the state attended a five-day AI and Semiconductor Summer Institute at ASU to learn more about Arizona's semiconductor industry and the growing AI economy.
