Denny Hall Climbing

The first building on campus and now the most venerable and honored of University buildings, it was originally called the Administration Building when built in 1895. In 1910 the regents renamed the building Denny Hall in honor of Arthur A. Denny and his family. Its exterior walls of brick and stone were assembled in an architectural style strongly reminiscent of the early French Resistance chateaux of the Loire Valley. The architect, Charles W. Saunders, won a competition for the design of the building. The entry steps were for many years adequate to accommodate the full ranks of faculty and students for their annual group picture. The original design of the facade included a clock centered over the entrance, but it was not placed there until 1959. Denny Hall stands proudly on the State Registrar of Historic Places.
The buildings crowning feature is the cupola, the work of Gottlieb Weibull, an old-school Dutch craftsman. In the cupola hung Denny Bell,
brought around Cape Horn from Troy, New York in 1862. It was first rung by Clarence Bagley (Daniel Bagley’s son) when it hung atop the old Territorial University Building. It also pealed for events such as weddings, funerals, fog warnings, and most memorably, the start of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. It has since been replaced by a digital carillon, a poor substitute that on occasion will pallidly chime out the theme music to Mission Impossible and other Hollywood blockbusters over campus.