Princeton’s Hun School has new fine arts building

By Katie Wagner / Staff Writer
   The former athletic center at The Hun School has morphed into the Landis Family Fine Arts Building, with renovations completed in time for the school year.
   A certificate of occupancy for the transformed three-story building, which will house most of the school’s fine arts classes, has been issued, according to Maureen Leming, the school’s director of communications.
   The building will include three sound-proof practice rooms, two sound-proof music studios with the potential to become recording studios, one darkroom, one digital photo studio, two art studios and storage space for musical instruments. All fine arts classes other than video, sculpture and theater will be taught in the center. Other fine arts classes, such as painting, music and photography, were previously offered in various locations on campus.
   ”We will see the benefits of the Landis building from a lot of areas; from the top down as a development tool it’s a great addition to the school,” said David Bush, chairman of fine arts department. “Visually, it says we care about the arts.”
   Through converting the former athletic center, which included locker rooms, a weight room, offices, a wrestling room and storage space for sports equipment, into a fine arts classroom building the Hun School is in a sense going back four decades.
   Originally, the building served as the center of all academic classes for the school.
   ”When I was student this was a very small school, probably about 150 boys,” said the school’s headmaster, Jim Byer, who was a Hun student between 1958 and 1962. “The building itself served the needs of the population pretty well. … The average class size was about 10 boys. It was a very busy building.
   ”The memories I have of that building are warm and vivid and were considered in trying to keep the integrity of that building,” he said.
   Mr. Byer added, “To recreate the feel of that building as an academic building built in 1930 was quite a task and I give the credit to the architects. We had to knock down all the walls in order to create a place for classrooms.”
   The bulk of the renovation work was done to the interior of the building, which included installing a new elevator, redoing all the classroom spaces, tearing down walls and installing new walls.
   The 7,000-square-foot Gothic-style cottage that was built in 1930 retained its original slate roof, limestone frames and dormers, but received new window panes and exterior refurbishing, such as painting.
   ”The external structure is almost exactly as it always has been, but when you open those doors it’s difficult to even recognize the open space,” Ms. Leming said.
   After the building was transformed into an athletic center in the late 1960s, the window panes were replaced with frosted glass to accommodate the spaces being used as locker rooms.
   The new window panes are more similar to the original ones, Mr. Byer said.
   Planning for the project began in the winter of 2005 and construction started in May 2007. Over the summer, lighting was installed, walls were painted and other finishing touches were completed.
   ”Within the last two weeks, faculty have been taking ownership of their spaces,” Ms. Leming said.
   The renovation of the building was made possible by the donations collected through the capital campaign Hun just completed, she added.
   The new fine arts center was named after the Landis family, a major contributor to the project.
   A grand opening for the building is scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 18.