WWU Centennial History

Western Washington University Centennial History Project

This interview was conducted with Mr. Harold A. "Barney, retired director of Campus Planning at Western Washington University and former Washington State Senator. The interviewer is Steve Inge. The first interview takes place on April 1, 1999 at Mr. Goltz home in Bellingham, WA. The second interview of the series takes place on April 13, · 1999, also at Mr. Goltz home. A short piece of the first interview was misplaced and the second session recapitulates some of the earlier discussion, plus additional materials.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 1 WWU Centennial History

SI-Today is April 1, 1999. We are talking with Harold A. "Barney" Goltz, who is retired from Western Washington University as dire~tor of campus planning and also a former state senator. The interviewer is Steve Inge. Barney, if you could tell us about your time at Western in the context of pla,nning and campus development.

BG- I came to Western in 1957 to plan and to execute, as it were, the plan for the student union building, and I thought that would be the end of my planning responsibilities at Western. But when I started that project, it became obvious that Western was going to grow very rapidly in the 1960's and that something had to be done to prepare a plan for that growth.

At that time the board of trustees was given a mandate from the governor to have Western Washington College ofEducation become a more comprehensive state college and to allow for considerable amount of growth. Enrollment was just over 2,000 in 1957 and the board of trustees set a goal of planning for a 6,000-student campus. At that time the campus was even more landlocked it seemed than it is today, because we didn't own any of the land south of what is now Carver Gymnasium, and the utilities weren't in in that area. There was no sewer line; there was no water line. In order for the campus to grow some of that infrastructure had to be prepared also. So, we had to do a lot of planning with the city. But the land was relatively cheap and easy to come by.

The first thing that I sensed had to be done was to develop a comprehensive plan so that we would know exactly how we were going to accommodate 6,000 students on the campus. As we started that planning process, the board authorized the hiring of George Bartholick, a local architect, who had a reputation for being a very conscientious and competent planner. And it proved to be correct, that he was relatively, I would say a relative genius at this game of planning, because of one of the things that he was required to do under the mandate of the board was to draw up a plan that would be a pedestrian campus with no traffic running thought it and that meant changing the street patterns. Because the streets and alleys were already platted by the city on the south end of the campus, the college at that time had to seek vacation of those streets and alley rights of way, and we did it by trading the top of Sehome Hill to the city for the land below. That was done, I think as I recall, without even a public hearing. It was done sort ofby a handshake. But the city wanted the top of Sehome Hill for a communications site, and we wanted the bottom part of the city land for campus site, so it worked out very well.

Anyway, it became very clear that the goal of 6,000 students was going to be too small, because we were growing by the rate of nearly a thousand students a year increase. So, we persuaded the board of trustees to enlarge their sights and to plan for a campus - I think we planned for a campus of 12,000. We had George Bartholick draw up the master plan, which included an academic quadrangle on the south end where all of those buildings are now already built and located. And we put in a utility corridor because the utilities that were there when we started this plan were just buried in the ground, running generally speaking from point A to point B, the closest way to get the steam lines to a building and so on. It made for a very (telephone interruption)

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 2 · WWU Centennial History

The board of trustees at the same time asked that future building projects should have art in public places as a part of every project. This was a time before the law was written to require it. But Westem's outdoor art collection started with Haggard Hall and the conditions for the outdoor art collection were really set then: that was that we should only have contemporary artists, living artists, that the artist had to come to the campus either to execute the work of art or to install it, or to participate with the faculty and students as the art was being installed so that we got an educational benefit with the artist at the same time. This process was accomplished by having the architect have an art allowance in the contract and the architect picked the art with the approval of the board. But there were no committees, no lengthy process, which eventually developed when Virginia Wright began to contribute heavily to the art. And she was - she became a contributor to the art at the time when Noguchi sculpture was added to Red Square. That was a project, which Ibsen Nelson was responsible for, because he knew oflbsen- Ibsen knew Noguchi and got him to perform a work of art for very little money. And we invited the Seattle art community to come to Western to meet Noguchi, and Virginia Wright was so impressed that she made a commitment on the spot to help Western continue its program, and it made a substantial contribution over the years to do that.

The other thing that the board of trustees insisted upon was that we would not have uniform style of architecture. In other words, we would not try to develop a single architectural style, but that the architecture should blend and respect each other. We weren't completely successful in doing that, as Carver Gymnasium will testify. If Carver Gymnasium had had the brick facing that was planned for it, it would have been a little less conspicuous I think, but now its fairly well covered by landscaping, so if you can't win it one way, you try to do it another (laughter).

SI - How did we find Ibsen Nelson?

BG- Well, we found Ibsen Nelson probably through Fred Bassetti. Fred Bassetti was hired by the board for the student union building. This was after an architectural firm had started the planning for the student union building, but said they would not make changes in the plan, which I had recommended, and which the board agreed should be made. So, the firm of Bebb and Gould, I believe it was, that was doing the plan was really fired by the board of trustees, and Fred Bassetti was hired then in January of 1958 to start working on the plans for the student union building in accordance with the scheme that are committee.had developed. Fred Bassetti was hired on the strength, I think, of Marshall Forrest's recommendation. He had actually designed a house that Marshall Forrest lived m.

SI - And still does?

BG-No, not any longer. I think John Stewart lives there now.

SI-The one up on the top of Highland ...

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 3 WWU Centennial History

BG-No, it's actually on Chuckanut.

SI - Ok, I'm thinking of a different one.

BG - Anyway, the board wanted different architects and wanted different architectural styles and Ibsen Nelson -well I guess Paul Thiry was the first architect after Fred Bassetti. And he got his reputation from the World's Fair in Seattle in 1962, planning for it. So he was a hot architect at the time. He did Higginson Hall and Highland Hall and Haggard Hall. These were largely concrete buildings, which, as we know, Haggard Hall has been sort ofre-designed. But Ibsen Nelson, Ralph Anderson, Henry Klein - we had, I think we must have had, over the years, 20 or more architectural firms doing work. Sometimes three or four of them working at the same time.

But the major projects that were done early in the 1960's were done by Paul Thiry, Fred Bassetti, Ibsen Nelson and Henry Klein.

SI-At this time did Bartholick have a guiding hand in here? Is he sort of the overall planner?

BG- Yes. We had a committee, of course, and I was responsible for getting the committee to address the issues that were required to be addressed in the plan. And we had a space planner who came in at a certain point in the history of this planning to assist in determining how many square feet we would need for - we decided to have a campus of 12,000. The way it was approached was that you had to make assumptions, and you had to make assumptions about how many square feet of academic space you would have for a 12,000 student campus. This was a fairly easy square footage figure to come, because there is a lot of history in campuses around the country as to how many classrooms you need, how many labs, and so on.

The board also had a policy that we would not build buildings so high that we could not get students in and out of the buildings for a ten-minute class break. So, the buildings that we built during that period had all the classrooms were on the ground floor and all the faculty offices were up on the upper floors and labs were up on the upper floors, so that the buildings could be vacated at class break time very quickly.

Then we had to make assumptions as to how many dormitory beds we were going to have to build. We decided on a formula that said that we would have, we would build no more than 50% of the beds required to accommodate students from beyond commuting distance. We knew approximately how many students would commute and how many students would therefore have to have housing and we sort of divided that between the private sector and ourselves. By doing that, by having a college policy, that way it gave the private developers assurance that we were not going to undercut them and therefore they could get financial assistance from the lending agencies that would finance their projects, and I think its worked out, that part of the planning worked out fairly well.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 4 WWU Centennial History

The one part of the planning that we grossly underestimated was the amount of space needed for parking. The board of trustees at one time even had a policy that freshman and sophomores would not be able to have cars. Only upper division students would be able to have cars if they lived in the dormitory. That policy just never really worked because the students would bring their cars and park them someplace.

SI-And still do.

BG- And still do. But we never realized that as many students would have cars as do. We under estimated that quite a bit and its haunted us ever since. We tried to recommend ramps from the very beginning. We have ramped parking sites. In fact, the parking site below the student union building was designed, and the Viking Union addition was designed to accommodate those levels of parking by having the entrance and the elevator shaft next to the parking ramp. The idea then was to have the upper level of that parking ramp be a building site for future student union type facilities, like a little shopping mall, book store and so on. But of course the parking committee was always dominated by faculty and students who wanted free parking or the lowest possible rate they could get and there were no representatives of the community, who also have an interest in parking. So, the parking ramp dollars just never materialized. Maybe the university should have been more aggressive in seeking state subsidy for parking but it was always told that "Don't ask the legislature for parking. It has to be self-sustaining. Although some state dollars have gone into parking facilities elsewhere.

SI - Certainly at other state agencies.

BG - State agencie's, but also some on campuses. Evergreen, for example, got its parking paid for by the state. Not ramps, but surface parking.

SI-The utility corridor which you said was Bartholick's ...

BG-The plan had to include a way to serve the building with utilities. One of the ways to do that is to plan your utility corridor first and put your buildings along side. it, so that you can plug them in like a toaster. And that's what we did. We built an eight-foot tunnel right through the heart of the campus and put all of the utilities through it.

One of the things that was talked about at one time for the buildings on the south campus was to have them air-conditioned. That was another mistake we made, was to assume that by putting air conditioning in the new buildings, you could have fixed windows. In other words you create an environment for air-conditioning, and the cost of air­ conditioning was cheap at that time. But as energy prices rose, the cost of air­ conditioning became so high that we never implemented the plan and we built several buildings with fixed sash which then were impractical in the climate we have because you need to have windows open to get air circulation. But I think we only missed on two buildings doing that. And we sold the air-conditioning thing to WSU. We still have the cooling tower.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 . 5 WWU Centennial History

SI-The tower is still there as the welding shop. What's the extent of that tunnel, do you know?

BG - The extent of it. The tunnel goes to the end of the south quadrangle and then it extends in a different- not a walk-through tunnel, but, I think, the hearing elements go all the way to the physical plant.

SI - But the size of it is diminished from the one point.

BG - But it serves Fairhaven and . . . That was another interesting planning exercise. One of the conditions that the board of trustees put on the plan was it should first of all be a pedestrian campus, secondly that it should allow for a ten-minute class break - see how that could be accomplished - and that while the university was getting bigger (I guess we called it a college still at that time) but while the college was getting bigger, we should plan for small academic, administrative units called cluster colleges. We provided for three of those in the plan. The first that was build was Fairhaven and it was conceived to be a small residential college for, I think, 600 students. They had dormitories for 50 students eac4. Then the students decided fairly on, when Dean Harwood had the unfortunate accident and died, the concept of the residential cluster college sort of changed over night. So the residential requirement was not held to, and Fairhaven residences were then opened up to anybody. But Fairhaven College as a college concept still stood. But that was almost a fad at the time. We more or less got our inspiration for the Fairhaven concept at Santa Cruz, where cluster colleges were being built and are still in operation today.

SI- Was Harwood a strong advocate of the residential model?

BG - He was a very strong advocate of the residence and so was Paul Woodring. And so was President Bunke when he was here.

SI - When did the plan subsequently change, because the other two were never built.

BG - Huxley was not a residential college, so Huxley became a cluster college, as it were, had the same idea. But the other two were not built. They were going to be built south of Fairhaven in that valley.

SI - In the Outback

BG - In the bog. In the Outback.

SI - What was the process whereby the plan changes?

BG - I think the planning committee... I should say that it turned out to be kind of a fad. They had a cluster college for minority studies. Ethnic Studies I think it was called. And that college actually folded. The handwriting was sort of on the wall when Fairhaven' s role changed from a residential to a non-residential college, the idea of building cluster Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 6 WWU Centennial History

colleges sort of diminished. There was no push for another cluster college like Fairhaven. That would have happened in the late '60's

SI - So in the internal process, then, the planning committee would come together and say, "Let's clear these items out of this space", and then starting re-thinking how it might.

BG - Right. Those spaces were either abandoned for that purpose or converted to residential housing, like Buchanan Towers.

SI_ so, Buchanan Towers is somewhat sited where one of those would have been?

BG-Right.

SI - In the long term, had the plan always been beyond what is now McDonald Parkway?

BG - Yes. There is, the Bartholick plan showed us buying all the property down as far as Bennett. I think the Parkway was Douglas and down to Bennett. And all the way from the Physical Plant site to 21 st street. There was going to be residential housing, particularly for married students in part of that area. There would be no academic facilities built there.

SI- South of what would is pretty much now Fairhaven would be residential.

BG - Right. There was even talk about putting in a kind of village, a little neighborhood shopping area to accommodate the students that would live in that housing, including Buchanan Towers. Because Buchanan Towers is really little apartments.

SI - That was a little different property too, if I am remembering right. That we bought as a turnkey.

BG-No, we had an architect design it. Birnam Wood is a turnkey.

SI - Oh, that's right, excuse me.

BG - It was built fast.

SI - Was that someone else's project that we inherited?

BG-No, we wanted married student housing, and one of the ways to get it, one of the alternatives was to have a turnkey operation where we had the option to buy. The business manager at that time, Joe Nusbaum, was largely responsible for organizing the financing of that, and it worked out, I think, very well.

SI - In terms of the campus planning process, were those kind - that's something of a deviation from how we would normally have proceeded.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April l, 1999 7 WWU Centennial History

BG-Right. We did a lot things - didn't do everything the same way. The temporaries at High Street Hall was another one of those where we did a turnkey.

SI - And it's still there.

BG- Still there. For the ten years that it was supposed to last, it's lasted, I think, about 30.

SI - It has, just about. And when those kinds of steps were taken, those people such as a George Bartholick, who still, I assume, at that time is in a consulting kind of role for campus development, were they included in those processes - as much as possible.

BG - Oh yeah. George Bartholick actually worked with every project. I think George Bartholick's contract terminated some time in the late 60's, early 70's. Then we hired our own campus architect, Bob Aegerter. And his responsibilities then were to see to it that the plan was executed according to the plan, and there were pressures sometimes to do things differently. The plan, though, was pretty much adhered to throughout the building of the south campus.

· SI - How did landscaping get integrated into the process?

BG-It was very difficult, because the state Department of General Administration didn't want to spend much money on landscaping. So, when we planted the trees in Red Square, we had to sort of bootleg that into the project. And, we did, I think, a pretty good job of getting it. When we built the Ridgeway dormitories, for example, we kept the trees that were there and built around them. There were people who were advocating cutting it - clear-cutting the hill and building the dormitories and planting new stuff. It would have been cheaper, but we wouldn't have had landscaping for years. So, we built around the trees, which of course, the contractors thought that we were a little bit on the environmental side. (chuckle)

SI - But that area would be, by now would have mature trees on it, or somewhat mature, but not anything like we have there.

BG - But that set of dormitories won the award one time, 1966, as the best dormitories built in the nation under ( end of tape # 1)

Transcription Note: The second Goltz tape was made on April 13, 1999.

SI-Today is April 13, 1999, we are talking with- a second session with Harold A. "Barney" Goltz, former director of Campus Planning at Western Washington University. The interviewer is Steve Inge.

BG - on the end of the first tape we were talking about the Ridgeway dormitories having won an award. This award was a national award given by the federal agency, Housing and Urban Development in recognition in their judgement that the Ridgeway dormitories Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 8 WWU Centennial History were the best dormitories built in the United States in that year, which I believe was 1966. As a result of that award, the architect and I were invited back by the Urban America Foundation, I believe it was, to attend the awards ceremony and to participate in the symposium on housing, which we were delighted to do. When the awards were given at the hotel, the person who presented the awards was Hubert Humphrey, who at that was Vice President of the United States and a person that I had known while I was an undergraduate at Macalester College in the 1940's. When I came up to receive the award, he said, "What are you doing here?" I told him I was now the planning director for this college that had received this award. I said it would have been a great honor if you could have made this award in Bellingham. He turned to an aide and said, "Can we put Bellingham on our West Coast tour?" The aide said, "Anything you want, boss." So, he said to see him tomorrow and see if you can arrange it. The next day I arranged for Hubert Humphrey to come to Bellingham. On September 26, I think it was, 1966, Vice president Hubert Humphrey came to Bellingham and presented the award again in Carver Gymnasium before a full house. And it's a case in which I say he perjured himself because he told this Western Washington College what a tremendous student I had been at Macalester College (laughter).

Just as a side light to this, the secret service agent who was in charge of Hubert Humphrey's trip was a person named Jerry Parr, who later wrote a book on protecting the president of the United States and was the secret service agent who threw Ronald Reagan into the car when he was shot at the Hilton Hotel.

One time when Jerry-I sent a little album of photographs to Jerry Parr and Mrs. Parr was the secretary to the person who arranged the trip in Washington D.C. So, I sent a little album of photographs from the Western Washington State College trip, and he was so appreciative of that that we corresponded for a while. And one occasion he was asked to speak before the sheriffs and police chiefs association of the State of Washington at a banquet. He asked that I be invited to sit with him at the head table. Many people at that occasion wanted to know what in the hell I was doing sitting with a secret service agent at the head table of this conference. ·

Anyway, it was a great thrill to win that award for those dormitories at Ridgeway, but that was only one award of many which Western Washington College and Western Washington University architects have won over the years.

I think we were also talking about the cooperation that was necessary. I mentioned the cooperation which we had had with the City of Bellingham with the transfer of college Sehome Hill property for city street and alley rights of way. But there is another very significant cooperation incident where the Physical Plant was relocated from the middle of the campus down to the area on 25th street and the area below the high school. And the school district cooperated and the city of Bellingham cooperated to make that more or less industrial site fit within what was then, I think, a residentially zoned area.

I think one of the things that I would also like to comment on is that for the most part the plan that George Bartholick grew and which the board and the city approved of, was Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 9 WWU Centennial History followed very carefully and for the most part was carried out. One significant exception to that, although its been partially completed by the daytime closer of High Street, but the plan was to close High Street except as a emergency vehicle, service vehicle and public transportation corridor through that part of the campus. And that had received serious community opposition, particularly from people who lived at the top of Highland Drive, and that was led by Dr. Arthur Watts, who felt that it was necessary to use High Street to get from his house to the hospital, which at that time, St Luke's was still in operation. But otherwise the plan was pretty much carried out as drawn.

SI - And that's - we may have touched on this before- the function of people like Bob Aegerter and Harry Skinner was the monitoring of the plan and supervising its integrity, would that be true.

BG- I think that's fair to say, and also they had another role to play and that was to be sure that the college and university standards were applied wherever possible to new construction so that we didn't have a hodge-podge of electrical systems and security lock systems and so on.

There were a number of people on 'the faculty who were important to the process also, because all of our projects had building program statements. These program statements were largely drawn by committees headed by faculty members. As the project went into the design phase, it was up to the program committees as well as the planning office, to see to it that the architect converted the program into the drawings. When it came to buildings with a single occupant, it was fairly easy to do. But where you had competing departments, like in Bond Hall you had math and physics. But the trickiest one was the · performing arts center, where you had three departments, music, drama and dance. We felt it would have been very difficult to have a program chairman from one of those departments, so we went outside of those departments and had the head of the chemistry department, Andy Frank, become the program chairman for Performing Arts Center, and he did a very good job of doing this, seeing to it that the competing interests of these three departments were at least negotiated and, for the most part I think, solved satisfactorily.

SI - Picked the chair for the committees?. Was that your office?

BG- Well, I think we would recommend, but I think it was done by the - we didn't have provost at that time - but I think it was done largely by the dean of the college that had the departments within it.

I remember another incident which, I don't know ifwe talked about before, but it was generally understood, that if you got one major project in a legislative session, you were doing well. There was a time when the Environmental Studies Center was a high priority for Western, but a marine laboratory at Shannon Point was a high priority also. President Flora wanted very badly to have those two projects offered to the legislature and approved by the legislature in a single session. We were aware of the general rule and difficulty in achieving two projects like that, so we did something which I suggested and Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 10 WWU Centennial History was somewhat skeptical about its working, but we put the two projects together as one project. We had part of the project for the Western campus and part of the project for Shannon Point and went through as a single project with two locales, which I thought was ..

SI-That's pretty good.

BG - It almost taught you to use that technique again.

SI-A lot of people think that the Shannon Point lab is part of Huxley, although the reportage of the lab is to the provost directly. But it may be because they came about at the same time that that confusion has lingered.

BG-I'm not even sure of how the administration works today. But there were some wonderful program faculty members. Environmental studies.center and the Shannon Point marine lab, Carter Broad, and for Parks Hall, which was the college of business and economics, Rox Collier.

SI - How was it that speech pathology ended up in there?

BG - It ended up there for two reasons. It was always a very high priority for getting new facilities because the facilities they had in College Hall were most inadequate, and it was a very popular program. And the other thing that was required of it was public access, and public access was infinitely better on the south campus than it would have been somewhere in the middle of the campus. So it was for that reason that the public access, consumer friendly location was selected for the speech pathology programs.

SI - College Hall would be particularly difficult for people who had been stroke victims. It still is a difficult building when you think about it.

BG - Yes. Did we talk about the decision to relocate the administration building?

SI- We touched on it briefly.

BG - I think that is one of the classic ways in which a decision was made by the president to change the location of the administration building. The original plan was to build a new administration building, again for. public access primarily, at the south end of the campus, and then use Old Main for a social sciences building. Remodel it. Old Main, with its wide areas between corridors, would have made an excellent social - sciences building for classrooms and the faculty would have been close to the library. There were good reasons why it should have happened. But when some of the social science faculty members learned that they were going to inherit a remodeled Old Main, they didn't have the vision to see that it would have been like a new building. It looked like an old building to them and looked like it would always be an old building to them. Whereas a new building was going to be a home for administration. They went to Dr. Flora and objected, saying its just like the administration to get the new stuff and give the Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 11 WWU Centennial History hand-me-downs to the social sciences faculty. President Flora said, "You want the new building? You can have the new building. We'll stay in Old Main." So the decision to convert Old Main to administrative offices and keep administration there, which is a very difficult building to get to for the public, and to move the social sciences to the south campus, which is essentially Arntzen Hall, was made, I would say, as almost a split­ minute decision. But that's how that decision got made.

SI - Then there was no other review process then. It was within the president's authority.

BG- Well, I suppose he probably ran it past the board, but essentially it was taking a volume of one building and making it do a different function than was planned in the plan.

SI-Was there funding for the building at that time, or was it the next one?

BG - It was the next one up.

SI - So· it that had been done the other way, then social sciences would have sort of been stuck in a variety of places until the Old Main remodeling was done. Or they could have done in the same way that it was done, that is half the building was done and then the other half of the building. And they were all in there already. ·

BG- Social sciences weren't there. They were in the humanities building primarily. No, Geography and sociology were. Economics was in Old Main too.

SI- Were there other people in the process of planning and conceptualizing what the campus would look like. You mentioned earlier that Marshall Forrest had been a strong advocate for Fred Bassetti.

BG- He was a strong advocate for developing a master plan too. He was, lthink, largely responsible for George Bartholick being hired. He was ... Marshall Forrest as a local trustee and the person who was knowledgeable about and interested in local architects and so on, saw a kind of genius in George Bartholick that not everyone saw, but which was certainly there. And he just worked. George Bartholick had no concept oftime, where he would put all the time in the world on that project and work day and night with different plans. His drawings are, I think, now in the archives. But it shows an evolution of a number of ideas, including the completion of Red Square and another south campus quadrangle. And the circulation plans and putting the parking on the perimeter of the campus and keeping the campus pedestrian oriented. A lot of those things, I think, even the city of Bellingham thought were impossible. Until we got the by-pass for Highland Drive down to 21 st street approved, which was a hard thing to get past the city engineer at the time. You couldn't get the traffic to the peripheral of the campus. It went right through where Carver Gymnasium is on 21 st street.

SI- Was the city concerned about the grade?

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 12 WWU Centennial History

BG - They were concerned about the grade, and, of course, you had to fill. If you look at what happened, was that they actually filled from 21 st street back up to the hill, because the contour that was there was a grade that couldn't be used. So, they had to ma!ce a new grade. Then they put an underpass under it. That underpass is probably not used very much, because is doesn't really lead from the parking lot. But the underpass to Fairhaven is used a lot. And those underpasses make it possible to walk all the way from Edens Hall, all the way to Fairhaven and to Birnam Wood, as a matter of fact, without crossing a city street.

SI - When they did the fill, where did the - was that from another campus project, or ..

BG - I don't remember where the fill came from.

SI - It became one of those places where everyone can dump dirt for years.

BG - It was probably weeks.

Another - I don't think when I mentioned some of the architects, another architect who . was very important in Fairhaven College was Paul Kirk. He was a very outstanding Seattle architect, who worked very closely with Harwood and Woodring and others - And President Bunke was very much interested in the cluster college idea. But that was a Paul Kirk design. And probably one of the saddest condemnations. When we bought land on both the north end of the campus and the south end of the campus, we usually could negotiate a price. I think we had three or four condemnations. One of those condemnations was the Fairhaven site, which was owned by an elderly gentleman who raised small animals and had a raspberry patch and a little farm in that valley. He didn't want to sell to the university - to the college. When the board of trustees declared it as a public need, he went to court, and the courts offered him a much - the jury offered him a much better price than what the state was offering him. So from that point on, the land to the south of the campus all went up in price.

In part it was due to the road that when we put in the· south campus road, which is now Bill McDonald Parkway and South Campus Way to get a new approach, a new entry to the campus from the south, that was all done with state money on the basis that the state had an obligation to tie its institutions to the highway system. I-5 was put through and created a new approach to Bellingham, but never connected that approach to the campus. We worked with the local legislators at that time; I remember that Dick Kink was one of them. We got a sum of money, not enough to landscape it but we got enough to lay it out and bring the road to south campus. We also put in water and sewer to the south campus. When the owner of the property at the Fairhaven College site took this to the jury, and the jury came out - here was this wonderful road leading to Fairhaven College. I think we sort of were penalized for making improvements, which we then. Had to

SI - Increased the value of his property.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 13 WWU Centennial History

BG- Increased the value of the property that we were subsequently going to buy. What we should have done was bought the property first and put in the road.

SI - Were there other trustees that played any particularly active role?

BG - Yes, there were a number. David Sprague from Seattle; Steve Chase from Everett, Joe Pemberton from Bellingham. There were a number of others too. I'm having a hard time recalling their names, but there was a banker from Bellingham.

SI - Harold Philbrick?

BG-He was important too. He was from Seattle actually. He was very interested in everything that happened. I would say that during that time when the campus was growing that most of the activity of the board, the board agendas were - and the board meetings were heavily involved in campus planning, building, financing and all the issues that were involved in growing into a more comprehensive state college. I think the board had a clear mandate from Governor Rosellini back in the 1950's. When Governor Rosellini became governor- I think he was elected in 1956 - one of the first things he did in the 1957 legislative session was to increase the size of the board from three to five members. So, he had two new appointments and on~ replacement appointment in his first year.

By having a majority of Rosellini appointees on the board, he gave them, if not a written, at least a verbal order that their responsibility was to see to it that Western Washington College of Education should grow into a more comprehensive state college and should expand its enrollment as quickly as possible to accommodate the young people who were already in the pipeline, heading for college from the "baby boom." And therefore from the very beginning of my time at Western in 1957, there was this tension on the campus between those who were in favor of growing into a more comprehensive state college and those who thought it meant the demise of the important function of teacher education, which had been the hallmark ofWestern Washington College·ofEducation. The education faculty, which consisted I suppose of more than 50% of the faculty in school, took a very skeptical view of what this new board was up to. When they hired a president, Jim Jarrett, who came from a Great Books background, he didn't look to them like a person who would be much concerned about K through 12 education. He looked like a liberal arts type. While I think it is true that Jim Jarrett was a liberal arts type, he really had a lot interest in education. He was not at all anti-education.

But there were departments of the college at that time that were thought to be central departments and those which were peripheral departments. The whole matter of tenure, granting of tenure, and promotion to full professors and so on were involved in whether you were a central department or whether you were a peripheral department. Two departments that were thought to be peripheral by the board were technology for one and home economics for another. The faculty rose up in arms and said that these departments are just as important and just as central to role and mission of Western Washington College of Education as any other department and that created a major tension on the Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 14 WWU Centennial History campus during that time. Arthur Hicks led the argument for equality of departments. The board sort of gave in on it. I think they thought it was unwise to fight that one to the death.

SI - But they had actually then made a listing of departments in those two categories?

BG- At least those two. (Side one of 4/13/99 ends)

BG- The vehicle research institute. That's an amazing history. Mike Seal's been a genius. No question about it. Those kids that went through that program and became professional automotive engineers and designers and did it without an engineering school.

SI- It will be interesting in Mike's case, when he retires as to what happens to that program. He's not about to retire yet, but he's not that far away from having the opportunity. There is nobody waiting in the wings that I have heard of.

BG - There is no other Mike Seal.

SI - No, that's right

BG-They don't.come about except by, I think by genes rather than by training.

SI- Were there any major disasters that ever, in the process of building the campus that came up?

BG- Oh, We had some - what we thought were disasters at the time, where we ran into soil conditions which were unexpected. We hit a coal mine vein, a coal vein in the Ridgeway area that cost us a few thousand dollars. It seemed like a lot of money in those days. We spill more than that now. We had bid prices, which sometimes would come in high over the estimates. We would have to re-design or ask for more money, or do something. But that's what that whole process is about. Take them one at a time, and. resolve them.

SI - You mentioned earlier - we talked a bit about the process selecting architects, and how, other than visually, what they were offering and how you made those determinations.

BG.:.. Well, oftentimes there were several architects in competition and in consideration for a project. When you had several architects, the typical way to resolve and make a decision as to whi~h of several would be the designing architect, you would have them make a presentation. I remember a presentation for the Viking Union Addition, where Ralph Anderson was one of the architects who came in. The board of trustees would call them in one at a time, and have them make their pitch and then discuss their relative merits and demerits. I remember Ralph Anderson brought a slide projector in and set it

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 15 WWU Centennial History

up and knocked it over on the floor. (laughter) He sort of caught the attention of the board. I think they felt so sorry for him that hired him on the spot.

One of the things that happened, I think after Fred Bassetti and Paul Thiry were hired, Western became sort of known in the Seattle community for a college that was interested in hiring different architects for different projects. So as the projects became known, architects would write and ask for consideration out of their own interests. Many of them had access then to the board for consideration.

We never considered it necessary to hire a so-called specialist. There are some architects who have reputation for designing theaters, or . . . I don't think Henry Kline ever designed a recital hall but when we had a recital hall, Henry Kline got the job for other reasons. Not because he was a recital hall designer, but because he was a person who had a reputation for being a very thorough person.

Another criteria which was used often times was the reputation of the architect to design within a budget, because there were architects who had a reputation for not being able to design within a budget. We would consult with other clients of those same architects and try to get from them their frank evaluation, their strong points, their weak points. We went through quite a process of judging, of getting architects who were held in high regard.

SI-The ability to deliver within budget, I would imagine, became a primary ..

BG - It was a very important one, because we were always with finite budgets. Or, we thought they were finite. We sometimes made them more than finite. (laughter)

SI - But to go over the budget would mean to have to go back to Olympia.

BG- And we did that on occasion. We would scale back on occasion, Sometimes we would phase the project; build the shell and go back for interior finishing.

SI -Portions of Miller Hall, if I am remembering, in the renovation of the older portion, upper level was left unfinished.

BG - I think that's true. That's right. Kind of like the attic. Sometimes that was done deliberately because you didn't need all the space at first, but you made some expansion room, elbowroom for future use. That was done with Haggard Hall too. We had some unfinished space in Haggard Hall when it was first build, I think.Knowing that the campus was growing and we would have more faculty and classes than we had designed the building for and it was supposed to last. We thought we were building it for a hundred years, I think. It didn't last that long.

SI - Have you been in Haggard since ..

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 16 WWU Centennial History

BG - Yes, I think it's wonderful. I think that's one part of the plan that the university in this generation of planning has improved upon the old plan considerably. Never occurred to any ofus that you could expand the library into Haggard Hall. Haggard hall seemed like a forever science building; and built like a bunker. Our plan for expanding the library was to build in front of the library to encircle a courtyard. In front of the north entrance and to extend the library into the green area. Not too far, but out in that direction.·

SI- But eliminate the original north fayade?

BG - The north fayade would stay, but would stay - would be inside a courtyard .. Which probably would have worked. In fact the one wall of the library, on the north side of the library is a wall that you can knock out and expand in that direction very easily. It's knock out wall in the existing library.

SI - In the original portion?

BG-No. In the addition, in the Bassetti addition. But I think the use of Haggard hall was a stunning idea.

SI - One of the things that emerged in that renovation was - well, what happened was the elimination of the steps between Haggard and the Library. There are a couple of versions of the story about why those steps were built they way that they are. I was curious, because they were never quite one step, they were never quite two. They were an odd · spacing. Do you recall ...

BG - I don't recall what caused that particular design.

SI - One version was that because there was a big rock there that it was the easiest way to just build steps over it.

BG - There was. That's what happened.

SI-But also that the angle of them was because that way you could drive a vehicle up; because they were on a very low pitch and that was some part of the thinking.

BG - I don't know.

SI - Any other thoughts?

BG - I can't think of any right at the moment. One little joke that I thought of The University of Washington has a retirement association that has built a retirement home in the Wallingford District of Seattle, out of financing which the retirees put together. They have apartments for retired faculty to rent. I said that if Western ever had a retirement association project like that for retired faculty at Western, we should name it after President Jarrett, and call it Jarrett Hall (Geritol). Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 17 WWU Centennial History

SI- I've always figured that Jarrett would never get a building named after him because nobody wanted to call it Geritol. (laughter)

BG - But a retirement home is something else.

SI - But a retirement home would work. That might be a good next p~oject. Bring the Bridge Project back to life.

Mr. Harold A. "Barney" Goltz April 1, 1999 18