Smith Hall Complex (Huntington, West Virginia)

Current use: The entire complex houses: a seven story Educational building, occupied by classrooms and faculty staff offices, the Birke Art Gallery, ( 1st. floor of Smith Hall at the NW corner) is controlled by the Art Department. Smith Music Hall is home to the Department of Music. It contains classrooms, faculty studios, practice rooms, a listening laboratory, a music library, a 490-seat recital hall, and other facilities. An 84-car parking garage in the lower level.

Location: Third Avenue at the northwest corner of campus.
Designers: Dean & Dean, Architects, Huntington, WV
Completed: 1967

Name: In honor of Stewart H. Smith, President of Marshall University from 1946 to 1968.Birke Art Gallery was named to honor Helen Birke, a former Huntington benefactor & patroness of the Arts.Smith Music Hall was named to honor Eve- lyn Hollberg Smith, whose husband served as President of Marshall University.
Smith Hall is really a complex of three functions: the tower, which houses classrooms and faculty staff offices, the Birke Art Gallery, the Smith Music Hall and the Communications building.

Smith Hall tower is arranged in a clear symmetrical plan, with an axial circulation corridor. Elevators and staircases are at each extreme of the main building. The exterior skin is of red brick masonry walls, but expressed as a non-massive, coating surface, as they are circumscribed into a thin reinforced concrete structure. Narrow windows are on vertical strips at each side of the columns.Windows have a triangular top, which refers to the tall, gothic openings of medievalbuildings, but in an abstract manner, avoiding any decorative detailing.

Smith Music Hall and the Birke Art Gallery appear like a tall ground floor, and its facades appear rhythmically divided with sections of grey columns embedded into the walls, with triangular tops.

The 2nd. story bridge connection to Old Main’s North side walkway was completed in 1989, and this addition poses a remarkable, different space which allows the onlooker to get multiple views up and down, in a narrow, vertical open space.

The Communication Building, completed in 1970, located at east end of Smith Hall, is a compound of huge boxes with limestone rendered edges, almost windowless, with the same design criteria of the others buildings.