Knutti Hall
Knutti Hall’s pale brick walls, stone foundation and tall columned entrance reflect an era when college buildings were designed to give education a prominent place in the community. Completed in 1904, the building became an important home for academic life at the institution now known as Shepherd University.
Its construction followed a significant loss. An earlier classroom and library building, erected in 1895, burned in March 1901. The replacement provided space for the college to continue growing, with buff brick and sandstone giving the new building its distinctive appearance. It became known as Knutti Hall in honor of John G. Knutti, one of the college’s early administrators.
The library moved into Knutti Hall’s first floor in the spring of 1904, with students and faculty helping carry the collection from McMurran Hall. Faculty initially managed the library themselves. In 1924, the college hired its first librarian, Stewart E. Arnold, who remained in that role until 1950. She would have been the librarian during my father’s likely time at the college.
My father, Roger, attended Shepherd State Teachers College for what I believe may have been one or two semesters. Knutti Hall was already an established part of the campus, housing classrooms and the library. I do not know which courses he took or where they met, but this may have been a building he entered to attend classes, find books or study.
The library remained here until 1965. On October 28 of that year, the college community moved 40,297 items to a new library building in just four hours. Remembered as the “Book Walk,” the move echoed the collective effort that had brought the library into Knutti Hall more than sixty years earlier.
For me, Knutti Hall offers a tangible connection to a brief chapter of my father’s life about which I know very little. Its history is documented, even where his remains uncertain. Standing before it gave me a place to consider him as a young student, before the Army and the wartime letters that would preserve so much more of his story.
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