Admin building’s firey history

Most University affiliates are familiar with the Administration Building, but not everyone is aware that it’s not the original Administration Building. 

It took 10 years for the first Administration Building to be built as it was done wing by wing. The building was completed in 1899 and seven years later — at 2 a.m. on March 30, 1906 — the building went up in flames.

“At first it hardly seemed possible that the entire building would burn, but fire swirled up the open stairway, engulfed the redwood interior, and within a few hours left nothing but ‘the gaunt, staring walls of the great building,’ in the words of Jay Glover Eldridge, dean of the faculty,” wrote Keith C. Petersen in “This Crested Hill, An Illustrated History of the University of Idaho.”

Jay Glover Eldrige, the dean of faculty at the time, was also the registrar. While the building was burning, Eldrige used a ladder to get into his first floor office and save his desk drawers full of important documents, wrote Rafe Gibbs in “Beacon for Mountain and Plain, Story of the University of Idaho.”

“But the desk drawers were more important. Yanking one out, Eldridge carried it to the open window, and glanced down … ‘Judge!’ shouted Eldridge. ‘I’m going to toss out all the record drawers. Pick up the stuff that falls out'”

“‘Fire away!’ returned the judge, and, as desk drawers bounced on the ground about him, he stuffed back spilled contents,” wrote Gibbs.

At the same time, a group of students entered the President’s Office and rescued the “Silver and Gold Book.” It was a valuable box with precious jewels embedded into it and on which a picture of the Administration Building was etched, Gibbs wrote.

The Administration Building was the University of Idaho, at the time. All classes and labs were housed in the building, wrote Petersen. When the building burned, the university lost almost everything.

“Nearly all of the valuable contents were destroyed, among them being almost priceless collections of plants and insects, a valuable library and nearly all of the expensive equipment with which the building was fitted,” wrote the Moscow Evening Journal. “As the flames shot upward from the main section and began burning the woodwork at the base of the steeple, an order was issued to keep the crowd back as far as possible for it was believed that the mass would fall forward. The structure fell unexpectedly, but instead of falling forward settled into the flames below.”

After the fire, some believed the building’s structure was sound enough to rebuild the inside. The structure of the building remained mostly intact while the interior was burnt.

The day after the fire, Julia A. Moore wrote to her friends.

“They were surprised to see the same form there — the walls — chimneys — cross walls — concrete steps — even the plaster on the walls, and very little traces of smoke or blackening. Everything that could burn was burned — on the window sills the melted glass can be seen, but the structure from foundation up seems to be in good condition.”

However, it was not possible to renovate and so the building was blown up with dynamite, wrote Petersen.

The cause of the fire was never found. Flames were discovered in the basement stairway of the west wing, wrote Gibbs.

“It was discovered early in fighting the fire that some of the University fire hoses had been cut, and the nozzle of a hose, certain to have been in place the afternoon before the fire, was missing. Arson was suspected. Proof was never found,” wrote Gibbs.

Before the fire, the University of Idaho had been struggling to maintain funding and support. That changed after the Administration Building burned down. A new and much larger building was built in the same location and the university gained more support through the process, Petersen wrote.

The process of rebuilding the Administration Building brought Southern and Northern Idaho together, Gibbs said.

“That structure symbolized the University of Idaho’s growth and maturity as a major institution of higher education,” wrote Petersen.

Amber Evans Pinel 

can be reached at 

[email protected]

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