Alumni Get First Glimpse Inside Sedgwick Hall

Sedgwick Hall has been a lot of things over the years. But it’s been a while since it’s been under construction.

Anyone who has been on campus since December (or looked at the University’s social media pages) will probably have seen what Sedgwick Hall now looks like from the outside, with construction having kicked off on a $23 million renovation that will see the 1914 building transformed into the home of the Saint Luke’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, the centerpiece of the For the Greater campaign.

However, until this week, few outside of the construction crew had seen the inside of the building in this stage of its renovation.

On Friday, Ray Sonnenberg, ’69, Mike LaPorta, ’68, Mel Lavery, ’68, and Larry Rues, ’68, donned hard hats and orange vests to head into the stone skeleton of Sedgwick Hall with JE Dunn representatives for a tour of the site and to get a sense of what it will look like when it reopens, which is scheduled in the fall of 2022.

Even stripped of most of its defining interior features, it did not take long for just being in the first building on campus to start jogging the memories of the alumni. From classes taken, to notable Jesuit faculty, to the location of various offices and classrooms in the building over the years, and even the splendor of starting at the trees outside the windows while daydreaming during class, going back inside Sedgwick was a treat, Rues said.

“It really brought back all these memories,” he said.

Sonnenberg remembered clearly what campus was like when he was a student at Rockhurst High School.

“In those days, that building was bustling,” he said.

And though much has — and continues — to change inside of Sedgwick, he said he’s glad to see that the building will continue to serve future generations of Rockhurst students.

“It’s great to see the building is being remade like this,” Sonnenberg said. “I can’t imagine tearing it down. To a lot of the guys I went to school with, that building is Rockhurst.”

Learn more about the Sedgwick Hall renovation and about the campaign supporting this and other campus projects at rockhurst.edu/forthegreater.