City College of New York - Microcosm Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 24 text:

ARMY ■ ■ RIP. They’ve finally gotten around to tearing old Army Hall down, now, and it’s prob- ably just as well, too. Now it can become a legend, something in the distant past — Thank Goodness! Everything about this one was a little bit crazy — the numbering system for the rooms, the long double lines into the UBE, even the Whitfield “Lounge,” so called be- cause it was blocked off from the rest of the entrance by a two-foot gate. Those of us who roomed there (the en- gineers, that is, because they closed the rooms in our freshman term) will never forget those wild nights and the “girls who came to visit. The biggest kick, though, came from the concessions — the tiny canteen, the colle- giate men’s shop, printing and typing and, oh yes, the barber shop with the five foot barber. It’s gone, now, but the memory lingers on. And the gnip-gnop of ping-pong balls echoes in our memories. 20

Page 23 text:

COMPTON and BASKERVILLE I hr Chcm Building Baskerville li.ill srrms likr an archi- tect s nightmare two floors above ground and three lx low it. And if you ever had if» climb three floors to wash up, the night- mare came home to roost. Memories linger. . . . The filtration experiment......And heaven help the neighbors when someone left open a hood on a partieularb odiferous experiment. The cleansing solution that burns holes in everybody's clothes comes to mind, and the noisy air-conditioner that had to be shut ofT if the instructor was ever to lx- heard. And. In the way. did the smokestack outside Compton ever really smoke? Aerial view of Compton ami Basket ville llall .

Page 25 text:

About the only thing anyone can say about the destruction of “old” Finley Hall is “hurrah! Those of us who climbed five flights to an unheated classroom at 9 a.m. on a cold winter’s morning (and which of us didn't) got a peculiar kind of satisfac- tion out of hearing the pile-drivers fall. Rocks on the first floor, a seismograph in the basement and rooms that never seemed to have enough chalk arc what most of us will remember. And how about the fire- escape we always “figured would be safe enough to walk on? It was a conversation piece, though. And maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all.... FINLEY Can we ever forget?