Then & Now Tour: Stop 1
Old Main, Steensland, Art Barn, Flaten Hall, Hoyme Chapel
Old Main
To begin the tour, we start with St. Olaf’s oldest building: Old Main. When it was constructed in 1878, Old Main was one of the only buildings on campus. It housed male students, the president, classrooms, offices, and the dining room. As the campus grew to include more buildings, Old Main was converted to a classroom building and currently houses the Religion Department.
Steensland Hall
Off to the left is Steensland Hall, which was St. Olaf’s original library when it was built in 1902. After the construction of Rolvaag Library, Steensland began serving new purposes. It became a recreation center, then a concert hall, a rehearsal space, and eventually the college’s art gallery. When the gallery moved to the Center for Art and Dance, Steensland sat empty for nearly two decades. After a substantial renovation, Steensland reopened in the fall of 2021 as the new space for the Hong Kierkegaard Library, home to the largest collection of works by and about the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard outside of Denmark.
Art Barn, Flaten Hall, Hoyme Chapel
One of the reasons Steensland became home to the art gallery is because behind us was the location of the Art Barn, built in 1931, and later Flaten Hall, built in 1956 and named after Professor of Art Arnold Flaten, the founder of the department. Both of these buildings were torn down in 2006 to make way for Regents Hall of Natural Sciences, which you see here. Before the Art Barn was here, this was the location of Hoyme Chapel, which was built in 1906 but unfortunately burned down in 1923.
On the Way…
Looking down the hill to the right was the site of the school’s original power plant, which stood about where the Holland Hall parking lot is. Where you see the smoke stack farther away is the current heating plant, which supplies steam heat to every building on campus. Built in 1923, it was the first building to use the signature gray limestone used on every St. Olaf building built since then.
