Date of Construction: 1970
Architect/Designer: Whiteside, Moeckel and Carbonell
Contractor: Ernest Disabatino and Sons
Current Function: Department of Computer and Information Sciences; Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures; Department of Political Science & International Relations; Department of Sociology; International Relations Program; Women's Studies Program; Criminal Justice Program; Information Technologies--User Services, Systems Security and Access, and Microcomputing Resource Center
Built in 1970 for the College of Arts and Science, Edward Laurence Smith Hall contains classrooms, auditoriums, conference rooms and 115 offices. On the exterior, the main building is rectangular with auditoriums fanning out from three sides of the first floor. A concrete grid accents the exterior of the three upper floors, and brick stair towers stand in each corner. The architects of Smith Hall used white concrete and red brick veneer to echo the buildings on the mall.
The interior is organized around a three-story enclosed courtyard. For the busy first floor, the architects chose a single large space over multiple corridors in order to avoid congestion between classes. Although skylights in the ceiling originally provided natural light, concerns about the computer equipment below prompted construction of an impervious and opaque roof over them. The four tapered pillars in the courtyard are part of the building's superstructure. Smith Hall's interior is the embodiment of popular ideas about spatial organization in the late 1960s.
Smith Hall stands on the former site of the Knoll, a 19th-century frame farmhouse that was the residence of Presidents Mitchell and Hullihen from 1917 to 1944.
Edward Laurence Smith, for whom the building was named, graduated with a master's degree from Delaware College in 1896 and later studied at Columbia University and the University of Paris. He returned to Delaware College in 1902 as a professor of modern languages. Enormously popular with the students, Smith was promoted to Dean of Arts and Science in 1915 and Dean of Delaware College in 1922. Both he and his wife died suddenly and unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1923.
Smith Hall currently houses the departments of Computer and Information Sciences, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Political Science & International Relations, and Sociology, as well as a variety of university computer-related services.
