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Constructed: 1961
Architect: Frank C. Shattuck and M.F. Siewert and Associates of Neenah (college architects)
Named for: Samuel Plantz, seventh President of Lawrence University, affectionately known as "Doc Sammy."
"General Information and Rules for Men Students, Summer 1966" (PDF)
Opened in fall 1961, Samuel Plantz Hall housed 167 men in 65 double rooms and 37 singles. It replaced three aging frame buildings that had been used as dormitories and was built on the site of the Hamar Union and the Sigma Phi Epsilon House. Most residents took their meals in their respective fraternity houses; those men not affiliated with fraternities ate their meals in Brokaw Hall.
The promotional literature was very proud of the fact that public areas were kept to a minimum; the main floor lounge was only twenty-six by seventeen feet. Economy of space carried over to the residents’ rooms. The average single room was nine by sixteen feet, while the doubles were twelve by sixteen feet, with built in furniture.
Marguerite Schumann ‘44, Director of Publicity and Publications for the University in 1961 described the interior: “If Paul Gaugin had been an Appleton housepainter instead of a French painter-at-an-easel, one might suspect that he had a hand in the interior of Samuel Plantz Hall… For the newly completed… dormitory displays a spectrum of hot, tropical colors that recall Gaugin’s impressions of the South Seas where he spent his artistic life. There is a mating of orange, raspberry and blue that is as exotic as the pattern on a sarong or the feathering of a cockatoo.”
At a cost of $755,000, Plantz Hall was financed through a loan to the federal housing and home finance agency. Construction began on June 1, 1960 and the first male students moved in October 1961. A last minute crisis occurred when new beds, ordered fourteen months earlier, had not arrived a week before move in day. The story goes that someone spotted the truck bearing 167 beds sitting across the street from the police station just forty-eight hours before new student arrival.
For more information about Samuel Plantz,. Lawrence’s building president, see the Digital Collection on Lawrence University Presidents.
Today Plantz Hall is home to 171 male and female students.